Visual artist Michelle McMahon has hosted environmental awareness workshops with schools and community groups for a number of years and has been a passionate environmental activist for over two decades.
She still marvels at how initiatives such as the Creative Ireland funded Biodiversity on the Block project can ground participants in nature, slow them down and benefit them physically and mentally in the prevailing whirlwind world of ours.
“What would life be without all of the natural biodiversity that surrounds us? Would it be worth it if we lived in a tarmac world?,” the mother, avid print-maker and eco-feminist asked.
“I especially love the art of print-making, the way it can convey a complex idea or tell a story way more effectively than a long piece of text. It’s a powerful medium for telling a story quickly, particularly in a social media age where we are constantly being bombarded with video and imagery and our brains are over-stimulated.
“My background is in environmentalism. I did a Masters in Science some 20 years ago now in Sustainable Development. I used to teach environmental awareness to community groups and with the Green Schools programs at secondary level. I got to know the different Environmental Awareness Officers in Kilkenny County Council over the years, including our now Biodiversity Officer Bernadette Moloney.
“Bernadette came to visit our print studio last year at Workhouse Union in Callan, and I showed her the “We are Nature” banner that I had been working on, and the many biodiversity blocks that I had carved. She invited me to get involved with the Action Plan, by facilitating Biodiversity on the Block print workshops with various community groups around the county through the Creative Ireland funded project titled “Biodiversity on the Block”. Which, I was delighted to do!!!
“My colleague Noortje van Deursen and I facilitated “Biodiversity on the Block” print
workshops around the county, with various community groups, including national schools in Mullinavat, Kilkenny City and Stoneyford as well as a farming community in Graiguenamanagh. We also worked with Ossory Youth and offered the workshop to the general community at our studio – PrintBlock, Callan.
“I used the workshop to highlight some ways that we can help our local biodiversity. I spoke to the groups about the need for nature corridors, such as hedgerows and their protection. I found it odd that some children didn’t even know what a hedgerow was. That they had missed out on the joy of seeing a buzzing hedgerow with hawthorn flowers, tall ash rods, birds, bees and blackberries.”
The children especially loved to engage with the blocks depicting spiders, ants, butterflies and earthworms, to print their t-shirts and art pieces, Michelle said. “This in turn enabled us to talk about the importance of insects and earthworms; the many ways in which they support us, like pollination.
“Much of our biodiversity occurs in repeat patterns around us, like an army of ants, berries in the hedgerows, flowers in the meadows, leaves on the trees. So it makes sense to work with these motifs using a repeat pattern process such as block-printing. When we ran the workshop with teenagers, I noted that they didn’t engage with their phones for a whole hour and a half.
“They were contented, quiet, immersed in the practice, the patterns they were creating, and the colours. I also noted that people became curious about the names of the native wildflowers or tree leaves or butterfly blocks that they were printing with – it engaged them on an intellectual level too.”
