Cynthia O'Hern

To embody the energy of the Cailleach, to create bodily landscape, and mark it. To acknowledge and honor the powerful presence of the Feminine creativity. To make apparent the similitude of sensual body and sensual earth. We are of it, it is of us. The stories of the Cailleach are our guide.

These studies in bodily landscape formation where a response to this potent passage in Gearóid Ó Crualaoich’s The Book of The Cailleach which illuminates the primal relationship of human body and earth, neither escaping the hand of the Cailleach: :

“In other North Connaught texts… we learn that the marks of the cailleach’s fingers can be seen, to this day, on the thighs and waists of adolescents, a permanent reminder of her primal encounter with humankind. The attribution, in this way, to the activities of Cailleach Bhéarra, of the growth/stretch marks that occur as a feature of the ‘landscape’ of the human body, matches, in the individual, corporeal sphere, the attribution to her of the origin of features of the physical landscape, such as huge, scrape-like skrees that are seen on the sides of certain mountains. In each case the features involved are manifestations of an evolutionary or developmental dynamic - the one biological, the other geological- the energy or life-force of which the landscape hag-goddess Cailleach Bhéarra represents” (110).

Sreabhadh Ionam (Flow Within Me), Felted Wool, 2022.

Fuinneamh Bandia na bhFia.

(Fwih-niv ban-deeuh nuh whee-uh)

Has a nice ring to it, nach ea?

Goddess Energy of the Deer.

Intersecting multi-limbed body,

emanation of Cailleach and Kali,

deer skull emblazoned,

antler entwined,

infinite, cyclical energy embodied.

‘Seol do fréabhaca síos,’ whispered she, ‘go dtí lár an domhain.’ (Send your roots down to the center of the world.) ‘Anáil isteach’ (breath in) and send this root energy ‘suas’ (up) through the crown of your head into the cosmos.

‘Oscail do shúile.’ (Open your eyes.)

My eyes were opened to the sensation of being ‘fite fuaite’ (interwoven) within the world. With every exhale, a vision of illuminated threads traveling from the soles of my feet, mycelium-like, into the depths of the earth. With every inhale, a vision of the strands pulsating upwards weaving through soil and flesh, into the air above me, into space and ether. Fite fuaite, indeed.

How to manifest this interwoven sensation in the human form through my medium of woolen felt was my aim - for what is woolen felt but at its structural core intentionally entangled fiber? A most apropos medium for the job.

And so the initial pose came to me: the body in a figure 8. The symbol of infinity. Soft belly prostrate to the earth in reverence and receptivity, infinity incarnate in legs and limbs. The sketch began.

And what appeared in the shading of the back musculature was a skull, a deer skull. Like an archaeologist brushing sand from a buried artifact, the more I put graphite to paper, the more the contours of bone revealed themselves to me. But why? I did not know. So the sketch was stored away. Níl raibh mé réidh. (I was not ready.)

Unbeknownst to me, the following year would take me on a journey that provided an answer. My Irish language studies took me on a deep dive into not only the language, but the culture from which the language emerged. I journeyed to the Celtic Otherworld of the Cailleach. The Cailleach is a female archetype within the Celtic imagination. She is divine hag, crone, wise woman healer, harbinger of Winter, landscape creatrix, conjurer of sea and storm, and protector of wilderness and its wild creatures, to name a few of her aspects. The Celtic psyche perceives time as cyclical, an energetic rotation through the seasons. Within this framework, she is the dark Feminine. She is the wintering within ourselves and nature. The necessary restful death that must occur for rebirth. The Cailleach brings death in service to life to paraphrase Sharon Blackie in her book “Hagitude.”

Deer are her familiars. She keeps and protects wild herds, curses those that take more than their share, rewards those that heed her words to maintain the balance. The antlers of the deer are a potent symbol of sexuality and renewal not unlike the Cailleach. Used by bucks to joust for a mate, they are then shed and regrown every year.

Nine months after the skull sketch emerged (the significance of this length of time is not lost on me), I found myself rewilding my roots with friend and doe in the glens of Derryveagh, County Donegal, Éire. We retreated not to witness, but to fully immerse ourselves in and honor the cycles of life with the Deer as our guide. The Deer showed us how to be quiet and perceptive, how to bellow in our strength, how to gather in community, and how to honor a life that was given through reflection and art so that we could be nourished in spirit and body.

Just as the deer sheds its antlers, I was having a shedding of my own. At the peak of my monthly bleeding cycle during the retreat, my fingertips were anointed in blood of my own and blood of my buck brethren as they maneuvered between emptying the menstrual cup lodged in the warmth of my interior flesh and harvesting the cooled meat within the body of the deer. Blood shed to renew interior fertility. Blood shed to renew spirit and nourish body. With venison coursing through my veins, I made an offering of intertwined blood to the land. Never have I felt the cyclical similitude between the wild and the wilderness of my being so deeply. My body as wild nature.

I emerged with a heightened sense of corporeal connection, and I returned to the sketch. The Cailleach, the Deer, the Cycles had to be manifest. I now viscerally understood. So the infinite energy of body was formed in fiber. The skull of the deer was brought forth not separate from but of the back body. Antlers of renewal woven into the arms. And to hail the Cailleach- goddess of wild deer and cyclical nature-powerful limbs that support and lift the central form were conjured.

The pose is that of the Goddess within the Yogic tradition. The strength of it lies in its activation of quads, groin, buttocks and core- all muscles that support the womb space, the seat of feminine creative power. This pose honors the Hindu goddess Kali. A force of sexuality and destruction in her own right. She is portrayed as a blue skinned, multi-limbed warrior with a blood red tongue dangling from her mouth that laps up the blood of her enemies. The parallels between Kali and Cailleach are numerous. In visage, she resembles the Cailleach of Scottish traditions who is blue skinned, one-eyed, and blood red toothed. Both are representations of female sexuality; the Cailleach wed and bed generations of kings in her day. As such, they both have Mother goddess associations in their creativity, nurturing, and devouring/destruction aspects.

The pose of the Goddess activates the connective energy between earth, body, and cosmos. Feet rooted in the earth, the energy rises through the strength of thighs, weaving in and out through the infinite creation cycles of life and death within the Deer skulled torso, finally rising out through fingertips into the Otherworld of the cosmos- the realm of imaginative spirit of the Cailleach.

We are not separate nor above the world around us. We are intrinsically entwined with it. This feltwork, for me, is a map of my journey. A fibrous articulation of the quest to understand the inklings of my feminine intuition.

It was a journey into my ancestral roots to not only find, but to feel the ‘Sreabhadh Ionam’(Flow Within Me) with ‘Fuinneamh Bandia na bhFia’ (Goddess Energy of the Deer) as my guide.

-Cynthia O’Hern, 2023.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

Inviting the masculine into my work albeit with his head chopped off. As summer wanes, I thought I’d tap into the residual masculine powers that be in this piece. Literally, my first work with a male subject and figuratively I set myself a strict time limit on this piece to harness the masculine season of productivity. The subject, himself, is a man whose curiosity knows no bounds and is incessant in his creative capabilities. He also shares my taste for the fleshy macabre to a degree unmatched by many as he is the mind behind the fantastic haunt, The Slaughterhouse. He was charmed to be my beheaded masculine, to say the least. I am tickled by the piece as an entry point for the masculine into my work… Is it brutal in appearance? Sure. But so is our hyper masculine society. Hyper production, consumption, and exploitation that go-go-go mentality all lead to the same end: a slaughtering: physical, emotional, energetic, and planetary. So there’s where my headspace is at for this one.

And on a lighter note, this was a gift for a friend who offered his talents to me in a pinch. A creative barter. But truly a joy to create for another likeminded human. Thank you for the assist and the noggin, Ian.

Falling, floating, flying. Neither forwards nor backwards. Languish is the internalized state of contemporary experience made external. The acquiescence to the uncertainty, to the unease that characterizes a world in the pandemic limbo. The reluctant acceptance offered with the body’s soft side up.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

Sensing the Flux, an expression to epitomize a year. This year, not just in the US but globally, has bore witness to massive social, climate, and political upheaval. This piece is about all the questioning, un/learning, re/acting, responding, and listening that has taken place on the individual level this year. The world is in a constant state of change, this much has always been true. I think our awareness of it has been amplified as of late. Sensing the Flux is about addressing the injustices that have created this year of tumultuous change. It’s about the personal growth that can, hopefully, affect positive societal change.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

The fibrous ribcage billows out as imagined lungs inhale air, opening a space within its soft folds to sit, to turn inward, to calm the mind with the inhalation and exhalation of the breath.

Clochán is the Irish Gaelic word for the little conical stone huts built by an order of ascetic monks on the rocky precipice of Skellig Michael, 18 miles off the southwest coast of Ireland. Snáithínech is the Irish Gaelic adjective for fiber. Clochán Snáithíneach: Little Fiber Hut.

During our current global pandemic, I’ve been musing heavily on interiority and the intentional self isolation of these monks. Isolationist tendencies, whilst seemingly foreign to many in our current era, seem to be part of and of benefit to human nature. It was my intention to echo in form these monastic conical huts and the ribcage; the former, a reminder of the extremes humans have gone to to seek out a place for solitary devotion and the latter, a reminder that one need not go to the ends of the earth to find a place for the practice of devotion, but rather right inside one’s own chest, in the breath...

IMAGE 1: Clochán Snáithíneach.

IMAGE 2: Sternum View Clochán Snáithíneach

IMAGE 3: Spinal View Clochán Snáithíneach

IMAGE 4: Finding breath inside the ribs.

IMAGES 5-7: Beehive stone huts, na clocháin, of Skellig Michael.

The (F)emanate is a conjurer, an embodiment of those mysterious forces of creative impulse. Her body is as severe, fibrous, and palpable in its anatomy as our worldly environs and from her gnarled fingertips emanate the threads of creation. The (F)emanate is a meditation on the words of the great artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, "I see fiber as the basic element constructing the organic world on our planet, as the greatest mystery of our environment. It is from fiber that all living organisms are built- the tissues of plants, and ourselves, our nerves, our genetic code, the canals of our veins, our muscles. We are fibrous structures."

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

Like hands of the clock, a pose of time spent in contemplation.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

Hunched, muscle bound, flat assed. A portrait of the artist in her working state. The beauty is in the pose, the hunch of creation.

Pencil, paint, and pixels, be damned. I’m treading those murky waters of craft and art; form and function; throwing my tufts of wool, one handful at a time in the pool of tradition. Give me the dead fiber of life, I’ll matte you an animate object d’arte that is as much a contemplation as it is a cloak.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

My profane Venus. A fiber study/exploration of the beauty residing in a most earthly form. Visually, she is a musing for the mind on the strength of the matured female form; Tactically, the fibers are amusing for the fingertip with textured hair of the pit and pubis.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

It began with an eye, then the eyes: the gaze. An anatomical study in fiber neglecting the signifiers of identity, it becomes a canvas upon which to reflect one’s self. What or whom do you see?

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow

My nascent experimentation with figurative feltwork. An expression of the the tools necessary for its completion: the hands. Knuckles chap, veins pulse, tendons ache in the cold season of creation on a cotton gauze backing; a residual influence from my garment making practice.

Photo Credit: Brittany Brooke Crow