A captivating rumination on life and love, the costumes, sound design and props are all under Nilsson Waller's careful direction. Bringing metaphors and turns of phrase to life in hypnotic sequences, this piece not only gives you ample feats of strength and synchronicity, it offers you the space to explore your own past and present as you endeavour to interpret and unwind its narrative.

The exhibition is entitled 'For the Love of Art', but could as easily be called 'For the Art of Love'. Burton's paintings are not only romantic in their aesthetics, but in their stories. The drama of love, or the lack of it, is played out in Burton's most important works: Slavic ballads of loveless marriages, people actually dying of broken hearts and forbidden romances all take prime place in his work.

Recently I visited an exhibition at the Glucksman Gallery, in the beautiful grounds of University College Cork. It was called Now Wakes the Sea.  Irish and international visual artists had taken on the sea as a theme in their work.  Striking, for me, was the highly charged romantic nature of almost all of the work on show, except for the piece by Tacita Dean. 

With St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day and #WearingIrish all happening in March, we wanted to bring Brendan Joseph to you so you can discover and purchase all our work in person.

Beauty doesn't come out of the pen, it travels through it, weaving through the waves of memory and vision, arriving on the page. I'm both proud of these pages and excited to share them in one continuous unannotated flow. Explanations and Expansions are shared in previous posts on my journal, but for the first time, we get to see one layer of everything at this stage of the development of my multi-part woven composition, 'At The Edge of The World' which starts with the beautiful 'Silver Shore'.

As I began the last page in this journal volume, I was walking down the Lisburn Road in Belfast.  I passed a glass & steel 1980s BT telephone box near the City Hospital and like being sucked through a vacuum tube, surged abruptly into surreality. Images, visions, dreams of the past swirled together with the present on this misty Belfast street. I took out my phone and dialled it's number 028 9023 2471, holding my breath waiting for the green amber screen to illuminate and for it to ring

These pages in my notebook are all from early to mid January. It's been a really busy few weeks, between designing & producing the next stage of prototypes for my shawls; preparing for and exhibiting at Showcase 2015; and filming our segment on RTÉ Nationwide, as well as continuing to produce my [award-winning :-)] silk scarves & bow-ties, one each of which were presented to President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins as he opened Showcase, which is Ireland's largest trade-only event.

The Five-Star Westbury Hotel is one of the few institutions whose million euro collection of Irish art can rival that of The Merrion Hotel. 

It's amongst this collection of sublime pieces by Sir John Lavery, Michael Scott, Louis Le Brocquy and other important Irish artists in the Westbury's timelessly elegant open-plan drawing rooms that you can make the best possible first impression on your future mother-in-law by taking her for afternoon tea, looking out over all the goings-ons of Grafton Street. It's somehow both low-key and discretely opulent.

Ireland's reputation for craft extends back for over a thousand years to the days of the Tara Brooch & the Ardagh Chalice, a heritage that we can be immensely proud of, and our incredible light & landscape has provided inspiration to generations of artists, designers & makers, myself included. The explosion of interest in Irish linen & lace in the 19th Century took us once again onto a world stage, a presence renewed in the 1930s with the Arran Sweater, and from the 1950s our unique ceramics were finding homes in Japan & the far east along with our traditional music.

As we prepare for new years - new beginnings and a reflection on the past - there's lots to give thanks for, and yet alongside this, are also the things we cling so tightly to that have already slipped away, leaving husks of hurt, the hope having withered away.  All this - the good and the bad mixed together - sits uncomfortably in our minds' gut. Nonetheless we get put on our party clothes, make-up and a smile, hoping as the clock strikes midnight our sullied pages will be bleached blank. After all the revelry we head to bed, and eight hours later wake up mulling those same thoughts, hopes, joys & fears, realising that once again, a new year does not mean a new you, and we find ourselves at a loss as to how to move past the past.

To make sure you're not late for a very important date, I've put together Christmas order deadlines, and have made standard shipping free worldwide between now and December 20th. Courier shipping is available to all, and if your order totals €450 or more, I'll pay for it, guaranteeing Christmas Delivery.

Today I went to church, and instead of there being a sermon, there were readings by two of the children, contemporary worship songs, and the wrapping of gift hampers for one of the organisations that we support, a womens' shelter in Rathmines. While everyone sang, I sat, sometimes joining in, all the while drawing outlines and swirls, grateful for the space to ask a question I'm not sure of the answer to: Why did creation emerge from the great swirl, why was it formed, if not for love?

Language has limits, which I was reminded of yesterday when I said something along the lines of, "I hate when you do that". When I used the form "you", I meant "one", or more accurately "I/me", as in, "I hate when you stub your toe", meaning, "I hate when I stub my toe", and as I realised I'd caused insult, I suddenly realised I had accidentally been criticising everyone around me when I was trying to show empathy.

Moving further into the question of how we remember the dead, this week's journal has begun to expand on and explore the concept of monuments to our lost loved ones. When a friend, who was a graffiti artist and a tagger passed away, a whole world of people memorialised him on walls. His name is a secret, and although these walls are there for all to see, only those who knew him can truly see the stories they tell and the parts of him they celebrate.

It's been more than two years since 'Drowning in Enough', a vision of the overwhelming sufficiency of grace in the midst of surrender, but it wasn't until after I wove 'Dark Hedges', when I went with some friends to go 'bouldering' in the sea, just a few miles north of that broken tunnel of yew in north County Antrim, that I tasted foamy saltwater, got caught in a current, pulled under, and couldn't catch my breath, that I realised what it really meant to drown.

The Walk: It was my third time there, four miles past the edge of the world...

My First Time
Although I'd visited many times, even taking DART journeys solely for the sensory pleasure of those moments when to one side of the train, the sea opens up to a horizonless sky, I'd never ventured past the shoreline.