Puffballs:
From the Inside out.

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The National Botanic Gardens in 2007. 240cm L x 120cm
D x 18cm H.
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Sculpture in the Garden - Brigit's Garden 2009,
246 cm L x 102cm W x 30cm H. [€3,500] |
Crafts Council of Ireland Sculpture trail at Bloom 2008. |
- Outside:
Insight, Sculpture in the
Gardens 2009
- Craft
Trail at Bloom 2008
- Sculpture
in Context 2007
For
the last few years, hidden and unknown
organisms in the natural world have fascinated me.
In my work I have tried to make a world often invisible -
available
to all. For this
years exhibition my
inspiration comes from fungi and as David Attenborough so simply put it
–
“Fungi are very strange organisms”.
He
wasn’t wrong! Neither
plant nor animal and with no stems, roots or leaves they
spend most of their life hidden underground in an unseen network of
interwoven
tissue of branching threads. Yet their spores sail high in the sky,
float on
rivers and in the sea and these remarkable organisms are present in
every type
of habitat and ecosystem in the world.
Estimates
suggest that over 1.5 million species
of fungi exist but despite their importance to all life on earth, less
than 5%
of these have been described. They
are
said to outnumber flowers by as much as 6:1 and are classed as a
kingdom in
their own right. Indeed,
the largest
living organism in the world is the Honey fungus,
covering an
underground network of some 40 acres - if it continues it will cover an
area
larger than our own Botanic gardens!
In
this piece I have focused on Puffballs, these are round or pear-shaped
fruiting
bodies that contain spores. They
can grow as large as
50 cm in diameter and become hollow inside as they mature.
During this process
the walls of the ball hardens and becomes so rigid that a raindrop
would cause
it to vibrate and crack open thus releasing the spores in a cloud of
smoke.
This piece is my interpretation of a dissection of
a Puffball as it disintegrates and becomes hollow.
In
this piece I hope the viewer will be given a glimpse into the
mysterious world
of fungi. It is
only when a fungus
“flowers” that we see evidence of its existence.
Yet these
structures on the outside are merely a hint of the inside surface and
so we see
it From the inside out.
In
2008 Puffballs:
From the Inside Out
was exhibited at The
Craft Trail at Bloom 2008 .
In 2009, the seven piece Puffball sculpture was featured in the
beautiful woodland setting of Brigit's Garden in Co. Galway for the
annual Outside:
Insight, Sculpture in the Gardens exhibition.
Price: €3,500 [7 pieces, €695 large (43cm diameter) & €375 small (27cm diameter).]
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| Puffball
after the spores are released |
Limestone
rocks on a beach in Co. Clare. |
Giant
Puffball as the skin hardens. |
Constructing
and Glazing the Puffballs:
Installing
the Puffballs:
Finished
Installation shots: