Environmental artist Sean Corcoran’s biography could be titled A Rake’s Progress. Recently he visited the strand that fronts US president Donald Trump’s property in Doonbeg and under the watchful eye of the property’s security personnel, used his rake and calligraphic skill to draw the words “Free Palestine” in the sand.
No death threats followed, unlike his experience after posting images online two years ago of his raked portrait of Greta Thunberg in the sands of Kilmurrin Cove on Waterford’s Copper Coast, just below the home, studio and art gallery, The Art Hand, in Bonmahon, that he shares with his artist wife Miranda.
Earlier this month, he put his rake aside and we sat together in his van to chat, and I looked out at some poor divil in the pouring rain digging away for bait on the beach in Kilmurrin Cove, or so I thought.
I was in fact witnessing the creation of a work of art by the British sculptor Justin Vibert Wilson on the opening day of the five-day festival of land art, Talamh, which Sean started three years ago and which attracts environmental artists from near and far to work on the beach at low tide, with the occasional excursion into the countryside and the odd yoga session.
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While still a teenager Sean set up that much-loved Waterford institution the Salvage Shop with his late father Jim who was an entrepreneur to his fingertips and once unsuccessfully answered an ad looking for a home for a retired elephant. The lively rows and banter between the pair gave the playwright Jim Nolan some inspiration for his father-son drama which starred Niall Toibin and which he called The Salvage Shop.
It was in the Salvage Shop that Sean honed his trade as a designer and artist working with recycled materials, often for high-end projects such as the refurbishment of Michael Flatley’s Castlehyde pile.
Of late, though, Sean is best known for a monumental work of art in Dungarvan called Crockery Mountain, which would not look out of place in the sculpture hall of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. It is simply breathtaking in its size, vision and capacity to stir emotions about the everyday objects that surround us in the home and to ask important questions about consumerism.
Crockery Mountain is in fact a wall on Richard A Walsh Street, at the side of the cinema, which was unveiled in August. The work is 12.14m wide and 4.2m in height. It comprises 244 frost-proof panels embedded with 10,000 pieces of crockery. The title echoes EEC 1980s lingo for excess of supply, such as that old farmers’ favourite the Butter Mountain.
The idea came to him 15 years ago and has become a reality with the support of Waterford City and County Council’s Action on Climate Targets initiative (ACT Waterford). A call went out across the county to “donate-a-plate” at six locations which had to be closed after three weeks as the crockery flooded in.
According to Sean, “Crockery Mountain is the first artwork of its kind in the world that delves into a conversation that hopefully sparks behaviour change about consumerism and over-consumerism, through crockery specifically. It makes you think. The amount of stuff we have in our homes is just incredible. That’s what this project is really about.
“There were three types of crockery that came in. There was the damaged stuff, the surplus which our cupboards are overflowing with, and thirdly there was the sentimental stuff. The sentimental stuff was what really surprised me. There were some really amazing precious pieces, intact pieces from the early 1900s.”
It’s an astonishing range of artefacts including Christmas-themed bric-a-brac on one panel. Pope John XXIII on a plate is surrounded by fancy gold crockery. Another panel holds the cup a mother drank her tea from every morning.
In 1916, Ann Maher from the Glen of Aherlow eloped with railway man, Tom Power, from Waterford. When the dust settled, they received a wedding present of a large willow pattern platter which now takes pride of place on a panel assembled by their granddaughter, Eileen Hyland, along with some cups and saucers from her mother’s collection.
Eileen was one of the 150 volunteers who went through a series of mosaic workshops with Sean over a seven-month period in preparation for Crockery Mountain, but she agonised a bit before giving up this family heirloom even though the platter dish was hardly used.
Eileen says: “My sister and I were thinking about it. We will donate it and lose it but another way of looking at it is that we have it forever now. It’s our family plaque on the wall. That’s the really magic thing about this. It’s not just a random collection but each panel has a little story of its own. Most of them have.”
Some of the excess crockery was put to good use during the Talamh festival, colourfully decorating mounds of sand on the beach at Kilmurrin Cove, but its final resting place has still to be decided as Sean turns his attention to finding another wall. Crockery Mountain may yet turn into a mountain range rippling along the Waterford coast.
