Irish Basketmaker

Since 1978, Joe Hogan has been working from Loch na Fooey with locally sourced natural materials to make indigenous Irish baskets. The nests he began creating over a decade ago add another dimension to his practice, allowing him to contemplate more deeply mankind’s relationship to the natural world. Using his experience with materials such as heather, birch, larch and lichen, “the aim has not been to copy the nests of various bird species, but rather to make nest-like objects which prompt the feeling that we are looking at a bird’s nest, and thus evoke some of the feelings of joy and wonder which might accompany the finding of nests in the wild,” he writes.