February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Using satellite photos to create so-called digital maps, the EVA was
astounded to see how much of the rural landscape of the island had been
swallowed up by sprawl, not just in the cites and large towns, as might be
expected, but around formerly small rural villages that are now becoming
little more than bedroom communities for larger conurbations.
Those that take an interest in the fate of Ireland’s landscape and the
planning, or lack thereof, that goes into the shaping of the its future,
have long accepted the inevitability of change.
The remote and self-contained communities of the “Quiet Man” era were
always pulled along by events beyond their control.
Depopulation due to economic stagnation and emigration came first. Now Ireland is seeing repopulation and sprawl due to a population resurgence coupled with
hitherto unimaginable economic growth.
Somewhere along the way there might have been a stable medium around
which future village and small community life might have been built.
But it was fleeting if it ever occurred at all. Still, there was a form
to village life with which generation of Irish people were familiar with, or
felt they were familiar with. Roughly stated, it was a main street full of
business premises with the owners living over or behind the shop front.
Such places still exist, of course. But the EVA study suggests that they
are either disappearing or being turned into settlements very different in
appearance and purpose.
Others without the advantage of satellite views have noticed this too.
One eyewitness is artist Elise Kaufman, a New Yorker who spends much of her
time in the West of Ireland, most especially in Clare, home county of her
husband, Ennistymon native Seamus Henchy.
Kaufman has been recording in her work the vanishing Irish village and
observing with her socially critical eye what passes for its replacement.
That eye is disturbed by what her hand is finding harder to represent.
Kaufman’s work is currently in display in an exhibition entitled “Seeing
Landscape” at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan.
Working with India ink and graphite on a Mylar surface, Kaufman’s
depictions of Irish village scenes are detailed and fine, but somewhat
stark. These are not happy tourist images. The effect is to highlight
potential and actual decay.
Kaufman, a graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and a former
adjunct professor at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, might do her
work in West Clare and Connemara while on visits. But she thinks of these
places as would a native resident would. Her concern, as such, is not
impersonal or merely technical.
“Some really questionable decisions are being made by county councils
and planning bodies. Ireland is losing the sense of connection to its land
in what is a period of terrific transition,” Kaufman, who lives in Brooklyn
with her husband and two daughters, said in a recent interview at the Arts
Center.
She is not the first person in recent times to wonder aloud if Ireland,
in return for phenomenal material gain, is surrendering a good part of its
soul.
“It is not my intention that these drawings are seen as being nostalgic,” Kaufman said. “It’s not that progress is a bad thing and I don’t want to come across as some Yank claiming to know better.
“But they do serve as a bridge between the past and present.”
The present hints at the future. Kaufman sees an Ireland that hasn’t
quite caught up to the fact of its new wealth.
“There’s nothing wrong with money,” she said. “Nobody wants to deny the right to own property. But it’s worrying to see young kids with a lot of money thinking
they have nothing to do and becoming involved in drugs and alcohol abuse.
Ireland needs to be very careful right now.”
Villages and village life, according to Kaufman, are directly in the
firing line of rapid change.
“Ennistymon is an example,” she said. “It used to be a market town full
of shops and businesses run by local artisans. There would be the shop out
front and the family upstairs.”
But more recently there have been profound changes. Individual homes and
business premises are being bought by developers and property speculators
and are being converted into apartments.
This trend, she said, had made even the likes of Ennistymon unaffordable
for many people.
“Buyers were paying up to