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During our visit to Galway on Ireland's west coast, we encountered this 3-meter high "Seated Figure" along the Claddagh basin. It had just been installed as a preview for the city's annual arts festival, which we very much enjoyed during out 2023 trip to Galway. 

So who is this big, pensive man?

I have no idea, but if you're wondering, watch this short video about artist Sean Henry and his "Seated Figure." 

As an older white guy with a beard who favours darks colours who also happens to carry a satchel (ha yes, I admit that it's basically a murse), I felt a little too seen next to this dude. But as an art-guy who LOVES how this figure invites curiosity and toys with scale and perspective, I mostly felt giddy. 

This installation reminded me of the artwork of another sculptor: Saskatchewan-Canadian legend Joe Fafard. Renown for sculpting a multitude of multi-sized cows (there's a herd of them in Toronto) he also sculpted his friends and neighbours (farmers, waitresses, artists and teachers). 

Why do artists enjoy playing with scale? Why not? 

In particular, Fafard tells about a dream he once had where he had to confront a fearful figure but instead of escaping he stared the man down and the imposing figure shrunk smaller and smaller and smaller. It seems to me that in a way, artists can subdue, even master ideas by altering their size. 

Plus, similar to Sean Henry's art, I think Fafard invites us to reexamine the extraordinary ordinary and recognize that we average folks (and many other everyday things) might just be works of art too.

Small?

Irish writers? Extraordinary. 

C.S. Lewis...W.B. Yeats... James Joyce... Oscar Wilde...  Bram Stoker... Claire Keegan... Sinead O'Connor... Bono... Dolores O'Riordan... the Irish Rovers... Hozier...

Although Ireland has a relatively small population (about 5.3 million), the country, per capita, apparently produces the second-highest number of poets, writers, and songwriter-musicians (Iceland is number one). 

Why is this?

Clearly, Ireland has established systems for the arts to thrive, but it also speaks to the way the Irish value and elevate storytelling.

So when I saw this whiskey in Ireland, I chuckled, not entirely surprised by the cheeky name. Who hasn't drowned their tears in alcohol once or twice? But I also thought, oh yes, I know the struggle that is writing and communicating as I write and rewrite a lifetime of words like assembling Lego. Does this connect? What's missing? Is this forming something perceptible? Yet despite the struggle, writers gotta write, hoping to bring something into being—an idea, a release, a light in the dark? For creatives, tears (sad and happy) are inevitable. 

Today those tears continue to fall for another Irish singer-songwriter, Glen Hansard. In one of the many tributes occurring in Ireland and elsewhere, someone expressed his admiration for the artist this way: "he operated at the speed of love." Is there a better legacy (or sentence) than that? Tears indeed.