Lough Boora Sculpture Park

Sculpture in the Parklands is a huge area (50 acres I believe) of cut away bog that they've invited artists to come create large scale, tangible art pieces in. They call it the place where Art and Nature meet. This is a landscape that was stripped down to nothing, which is flat for miles around in every direction under the ever changing canvases the sky and all it's heavenly bodies in that moment create.   Visitors pull up and park by Lough Boora, which on a calm day or peaceful evening reminds those not used to looking up just what they are missing.   The sky is something midlanders come to truly appreciate, probably why we have that rather large telescope in Birr (a story for another day).   It's a lovely area, and they've gone to extra effort to make it wheelchair accessible, which must be pretty unique.  You can also hire bikes if the walk doesn't appeal to you.  (This is part of Bog Track by Johan Sietzema)

Sculptures started appearing there in 2002, and life has continued to grow and change around them all, which I like enormously.  This is one of the best places to bring kids when everyone is a bit frazzled; I get to chill out walking and experimenting with the camera and the kids get to run, find small frogs and bugs, and, as was mentioned before, water and the presence of stones are nature's cure for infanticide.  I'm going to mix a couple of different days photos in this entry, just to give a flavour of the park, because now I go through today's shots I realise I didn't take many of the sculptures themselves, I got carried away with stuff C2 and I found.   (Today's trip guest feature the boys' friend and their cousin)

We kicked off the trip with a visit to the tadpole pond, some rescuing of tadpoles had to take place - where there was once a rapidly flowing stream there's now a scribble of boggy muck, edged with shallow pools of furiously wriggling masses of tadpoles.  The pond we found first is still deep, so the lads ferried pots of tadpoles from the drying patches to the pool.  Some of the tadpoles are noticeably fatter with shorter tails.  Very hard to photograph properly, I'll have to do some research into techniques before my next tadpole update. 

On to Boora, where water lilies are establishing themselves nicely close by to the car park.  The lakes have an impressive bird colony too, and I should mention that bird enthusiasts have been provided with a hide in Boora too.  

In the water we noticed this jelly like stuff,  green in distinct shapes and, again, difficult to photograph properly.  I have absolutely no idea what these are.  I'll be googling some more, but preliminary searches make me think they might be Ophrydium jelly balls (since colonies of Ophyrdium are found 3-10 feet deep in the photic zone of slightly acidic bogs and ponds.  - sounds right for here I think?)   When I noticed them first I thought they might have been eggs, but they are a bit big, I think. 

Along the way we encountered a much more accommodating orange tip butterfly, which allowed me to photograph it

And mystery number 2 - this is a casing, dried out and attached to the blades of grass.  I have the casing home with me, I must take a photo.  This is the underside, the other side clearly shows where something burst out and started the next phase of it's life.  I thought it might be a dragonfly nymph?  There is certainly a healthy population of dragonflies, we saw one monster one in the same area as this.

When I was a kid I used to joke about having a pet dragonfly on a lead to bring with me on lake walks to protect me from midges, which seem to find me especially tasty.

C2's favourite piece in the park is Ruaille Buaille by environmental artist Patrick Dougherty - C2 calls it a maze, it's a coiling tumble of walls and chambers made from ten ton of willow.  It's like the den I always wanted as a kid.

 

I was surprised by the sheer number of wild strawberry plants we came across.   I've noticed in the past that people seem reluctant to eat wild berries like these tiny strawberries or fraocháns (bilberries) which I love, so it'll be interesting to see if we get to pick them here or not.  

This is the Boora pyramid, by Eileen MacDonagh, "a stepped pyramid of unmortered glacial stone which has resonance with previous times and cultures."  Another favourite with my kids.
It suffers a little from other people's lapse to temptation to scratch their current love story into it, but nothing too serious.  I love that there's a couple of strawberry plants currently calling it home. 

This is what we as kids called Cuckoo Spit.  I didn't realise as I was taking the photo that I had actually caught the small insect that creates these "spits" around itself (I think that's what that is anyway) - The insect is the young of the froghopper.  It sits and pierces the plant on which it has created the spit, sucking sap until it matures.   This is the first time I remember seeing it with that clear drop on the end, it's usually just froth. 




This being a reclaimed bog, it's natural to find lumps of bog timber around the place, I liked this piece, nature decided to show off some of it's own sculpting techniques. 

We found loads of these, I couldn't help thinking that a massively scaled one of these shells in the park would be an interesting addition.  

Damselflies were out in hordes, partying on every available leaf, but the water boatmen didn't need the leaves. 

And I like this caterpillar's style..  I've not identified him yet though.  It's getting a bit late and he hasn't come up in preliminary searches.  Any ideas? 

This is Sky Train "An old motionless Rustin train & Creel type wagons celebrating the machinery and people who once worked on them over the years." by Mike Bulfin.  This is not a good photograph because there is nothing dramatic about the sky and it's too far away, but this one has the potential to be days of fun for a photographer I think.  I've seen spectacular sunset photographs of this, and I can imagine it with it's cage carraiges full of starry sky too.

I personally love sitting in the Lough Boora Triangle (this photo is taken from inside) It's a small triangular, open roofed hut(?) "Built around an iron frame, three black, bog oak trunks form the corners, shaped irregular pieces of bog wood form the somewhat transparent walls. The narrow entrance is marked by a triangular serpent stepping plate. Inside is a seat where visitors will be able to sit looking out of the narrow entrance toward the horizon".

It's by Jørn Rønna, whose work I like.   This is at a remote edge of the park and it tends to be quiet, I like the peaceful feeling of sitting in here, looking out. 


There's lots more sculptures, but I'll get to them another day, it's way past my bedtime already :)