various WRITINGS Marie Foley

A muse on Marie Foley

What she makes has the power of sacred object: we can supply the ritual and
the ritualist - shaman or priest/ess. Or be secular citizens and admire the
craft mastery/ms.tery in her use of tool and material. We can read what she
makes as if it were a great poem - where the poem sustains 7 possible
readings including the polar opposite of our first reading.

Her work has both the strength and vulnerability of human breath. She can
make porcelain feel as thin as skin, as thick as skin. Two words I would
use about her and the work? Integrity. Compassion.

Her naturalist's eye is precise and disciplined; it draws the processes of
nature into her art, so the object is familiar. Suddenly you blink and it
functions as 'familiar'. You're in the otherworld. The object then obeys
different laws. Spirit laws.

I imagine if I had to make the whole universe up from scratch that I could
reconstruct it from a piece of Marie Foley's art - not just the weird and
oft dysfunctional culture of this island but aeons of tool use and song.
She is an anthropologist of the sublime.

Were I asked to nominate something human-made to send, say, on a space
mission to find other intelligent beings in the cosmos, I'd choose
something of hers. It would certainly show 'them' the best of what we can
be.

Paula Meehan
Dublin 2002