Firmness and commodity in the service of delight; Sean O Laoire pays homage to engineer extraordinaire Peter Rice, whose career is celebrated at Dundalk County Museum this autumn
Four words from the beginning of Finnegans Wake as a title for an essay on Peter Rice may seem to reinforce a stereotype of achievement by people born in Ireland as centered inevitably on great literature. My emphasis, however, is on how these words convey the Vitruvian ideal of ‘building well’, the notion of a journey, and of cyclical reconnection: themes that are interwoven in this essay. To speak of traces, in English or in French, is to convey a sense of a mark (trace de la main), a remnant, a path, a vestige, and of the layers between and beneath each of the words: ‘commodious vicus of recirculation’.
To the Irish in America, the irony of using funds from a Fenian club to buy a set of Malton views depicting Georgian Dublin was not apparent, writes Christian Dupont
Linda Brunker’s female avatars affirm nature and spirit. Mark Ewart talks to the Irish sculptor as she departs California for France
The magic realism of Sweeney’s transformation from man to bird continues Gabhann Dunne’s association with the natural world, writes Susan Campbell