‘What do you do when the life you’ve been building shifts in ways you didn’t expect,
your body lets you know it’s changing, you leave your job and you find yourself in an empty nest?’, wondered Irish poet Mary Kennelly. She spoke to some friends about it and artists Rebecca Carroll and Susan Hitching, themselves living in the aftermath of serious illness and profound change in their lives responded to the question.
‘Seven Steps to Birth a Crone’ is a strikingly beautiful collaborative work, seeped in the colours and sounds of Ireland, which attempts to answer the question that plague most of us at some stage; ‘How do I recast myself given times’s shifting sands?
The title itself was a point of discussion and at times even dissent. Why refer to themselves as Crones? That’s the name given to the third age of womanhood in Celtic mythology. Is that the only choice for women? Are our choices limited to being either youthful and fertile or wizened and no longer of use? The male equivalent for an aged man is a hermit, with implications of wisdom and voluntary withdrawal. Why is it that many terms referring to women are so easily made into something negative?
‘Seven Steps to Birth a Crone’ is a shared journey, using image and words, through acknowledgement of change, the use of creativity and imagination to seek out acceptance, and the rejection of negative stereotypes. It is a determination to embrace one’s dance even when the steps have changed.
The exhibition features original artwork, limited edition giclee prints of blended words and images and limited edition books. For further details on the writer and artists see; https://marykennelly.com, https://rebeccacarroll.ie/ and www.susanhitching.com
Seven Steps To Birth A Crone is available for exhibition and/or poetry readings from November 2023 and 2024.
Please contact Mary on 087 7606836 or radharcnari@gmail.com if you have any queries or would like to discuss the possibility of booking the exhibition.
