Images from my installation in the College

Hat

This is my dads hat. He died in 1986. I haven't always had it with me. But in the last ten years I kept it in my press.  Anyway have kept it with me for the last ten years or so as I've moved around. it's a small reminder of him and what I lost.

Smelly Nelly

My meaningful object is my doll called “Smelly Nelly”, ehm, my Mam bought her when we lived up in an apartment down in Tullamore. Eh, down the road from a toy shop because we lived with my aunt Elaine. She had a doll called “Gaga” and I kept playing with it and I thought she was mine. So then my Mam bought me “Smelly Nelly”.

Ehm, we named her “Smelly Nelly” because she has a really nice smell and, ehm, when my Mam was over in Bolivia there was a nun there called Nelly and she was really nice. So my Mam decided to call her Nelly after her.  And I’ve had Nelly since I was two and I keep her on this wooden chair in the corner of my room. 

Easter Photo

My most meaningful object, one which I have carried with me through all the years, is a photograph of my father and myself when I was less than six months old holding my very first Easter egg.

At the time Easter eggs were hand made, they weren’t the usual variety that you can buy in the shop. My name was on it and my father is holding me, holding the egg which is nearly the same size as myself. I’ve always treasured this photograph as this coming sunday, the 22nd of February, my father will be 50 years dead.

He was a very good father and I miss him very, very much and frequently look at this picture just to see him, and even though I was only very, very small I just could feel a bond in the picture between the two of us. I will always treasure this photograph and at the moment I am doing some work on my ancestry and it was one of the first pictures to go up on my website.

Rings

My meaningful object is my claddagh ring. My boyfriend, Paul, bought it for me about 11 years ago in a shop in Athlone. Ehm, he had bought me a Claddagh necklace when we were going out three months and it had a green stone in it. So when we saw the Claddagh ring with the green stone, he bought me that as well. The green stone? He was just attracted to it when he saw the necklace in the jeweller’s. It’s not my birthstone but it’s a colour now that I love. So I had it for 10 years and my daughter used to take it and sleep with it at night if she had night mares and, ehm, or if she’d ask me for my ring so that she could sleep with it and felt closer to me so I let her have it, and because it was too big for her I put it on a necklace, on a chain. So she wore this to school one day and then to crèche and I was in work and I got a phone call from my sister saying the ring had fallen off the chain. It was now a square shape and she, my sister, knew that I would be upset. She didn’t want me to get upset with my daughter because she was very upset as to what had happened to the ring. So I was very upset when I  had heard that it was broken and there was nothing we could do to fix it. But I went back out to the car with a big smile on my face and I didn’t let my daughter see how upset I was because it was an accident that couldn’t have been prevented. She had minded it very, very carefully, it was just the chain had broken. So for our 11th anniversary last August my boyfriend replaced the ring in Galway in the Claddagh Ring in Galway. They only sell Claddagh rings, beautiful shop, so he bought me one of them. It’s a much daintier one to the one that he originally got me. There’s little diamonds now on the side; very, very pretty.

And my daughter really wanted one aswell. And because I didn’t really like to give her my ring, because of what had happened before, I’d only let her wear it at night time. So, ehm, for her 8th birthday last month we decided to get her her own Claddagh ring. So I didn’t tell her I was going to buy her a Claddagh ring but I let her look at Claddagh rings and she chose her favourite colour, which was the ruby ring, again it’s not her birthstone, but it’s a colour that she was attracted to. So we bought her her own Claddagh ring, which is very like the first one I had except her’s is red and mine is green. And she loves it. She wears it on her index figure which is quite unusual, I find, but, eh, the ruby represents, eh, eternal love, which is what her mammy and daddy feel for her. And she loves it and she doesn’t wear it all the time because she’s afraid to lose it, so she takes it off and she puts it on top of our microwave because Mammy and Daddy can keep an eye on it there and she knows where it is so when she comes in from school she’ll take it down from the microwave. And when we go for a swim that’s the only time I take off my ring and I place it on the microwave beside hers. And they are our meaningful objects.

Eva (7)

I have this bag, it’s “Frozen”, ehm, my auntie; she had this friend and she made this bag and she gave it to me as a present, and ehm, I really like “Frozen” because, ehm, my favourite person in it is Elsa. And I like Elsa because she has magical powers.  So ehm, oh, it has my name on it and, ehm, and ehm, my auntie’s friend made it with drawings and stuff like that on the bag and, ehm, I think her name is Anna something...

And I’ll keep it in my room over on my, ehm, shelf and there it will be safe so that I can always go and look at it and it’s really, really, really nice to me and I like that it has a picture of Olaf and Elsa and, and ‘cause I like them and I like that it has my name on it aswell.  I got it yesterday...

Gaga

My meaningful object that I couldn’t be parted with is my doll “Gaga”.  I received “Gaga” on the 27th November 1981, the day I was born.  My dad bought her for me.  She came everywhere with me, we never parted for the first 14 years of my life.  Apart from whenever she had to get her body, eh, “fixed” because she had been hugged so much.

Eh, I keep this doll, since I gotten married I’ve moved up to Derry and I keep this doll in my house. As I’ve said I couldn’t be parted from it.  If I have children of my own in the future of course they’ll be allowed to play with her, but she’ll always be my doll.