Star turn

TAKING the road out of Kinsale, passing on from Belgooly, you might see a flash as you take a small bend.

It’s low-key, with a funny H and says, Joseph Walsh Studio.

And the occasional person may wonder what it’s about and pass on. Those who visit usually do so by appointment — and they usually fly in especially.

Because Joseph Walsh is a furniture maker — the kind of furniture maker who sells a single chair for about the same price as a small saloon car. The kind of furniture sought by Dukes and king-makers, galleries and embassies — the very high end of the international art market.

And that’s only part of the story. He’s just 31 years of age and he works from a potato barn in Riverstick, where he was born and reared.

Self-taught, the tall and impressive Joseph Walsh left formal education at 12 and made himself what he is now — an enigma, a very talented enigma.

The thing about talent is that it’s raw material. Lots of people have it, but only the few rise to the top. Why? Because it takes more than just talent to be first among equals. It also takes determination, focus and skill.

When you meet Joseph Walsh, you understand immediately that there’s a fierce concentration about him — and a charisma that explains his meteoric rise to the top echelons of his chosen milieu.

And maybe meteoric is a bit too cliched and perhaps inaccurate for someone who started at 12 — that’s the best part of 20 years of hard graft for an overnight sensation. His focus borders on the obsessional: when we talk, Walsh speaks of the fret saw he received form his grandfather as a present and which encouraged him into the work. The light went on and he hasn’t stopped since. In fact, considering his age, his best years are yet to come, though he has so many milestones behind him already, with shows in New York, London, Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Germany —the list goes on. This weekend he opens a solo show in the Oliver Sears gallery in Dublin, which will run until the end of January.

But how did he start at 12, I ask?

Because he became ill, he says, but with a finality that doesn’t invite further questioning.

And what about your parents, I say, were they supportive? I mean, who lets their child leave school at 12 — even if they have been ill and even if there’s a farm at home?

He glides over the corners of the story with the skill of a practised interviewer: he’s polite and can hold a narrative, but there’s a certain distance, even a sense of other, about him. The gifted child.

That probably explains why his clever parents went along with their talented son and gave him that inestimable starting point in life: self-belief.

Although his mother did try to get him to see that college in England might be a good idea.

“The was a big push to send me to college in the UK, but I didn’t see the significance, like any 16 to 17-year-old. My mother did a pile of research and really encouraged me, but I didn’t see the point. Following on, three years later, and I encountered John Makepeace, the furniture maker, and was fascinated. He founded one of the colleges.”

Despite refusing a formal education in art, Walsh’s parents backed him up, gave him support and pocket money, which he promptly spent on books. More and more books from which to learn his craft. (During our talk he speaks about his first visit to one of Britain’s foremost design schools and describes walking into a studio lined with books but unremarked by the students there. Every one was known to Walsh however and what each one cost.)

His apprenticeship wasn’t completed out in the world, but in his own internal space, which allowed him to filter his creativity safely, without influence per se, so that the natural remained natural, untouched and unspoilt by received opinion or style. Or even, by negativity.

And to live in a creative bubble like that, while young and utterly focussed, is probably the greatest gift he received, spending his time honing his craft and creating his early works. He had his first exhibition at Cheltenham.

“I went to the UK as an unknown at age 22 and did an exhibition and received a very good response — which was a great change from working in isolation.”

This was followed by Create in 2003 at Fota House.

“At that point, I invited 20 odd makers from all over Ireland and their response was a bit — ‘who are you?’ I was reassured that my work related to others, collectively, and it achieved a lot. It gave me more confidence and helped me understand things a bit more — I had my path and it helped me understand differing people’s expectations. It made me realise what I had not seen.”

One of his early works, the Charlie chair, sits by us as we talk in the studio of his workshop, and it looks very wholemeal, very folksy in comparison to the free-form, sophisticated jazz of his latest work. But the execution is immaculate and even that early piece would leave a lot of today’s makers standing.

The former potato barn in which we sit has metamorphosed into a large workshop at one end, (with eight interns from all over working away), and a rather soignee gallery on the other.

This room is where we sit and the polished limestone floors, gallery lighting and sinuous work on display contrasts with the mown lawn outside. It’s dotted with rolled bales and this alone keeps it real.

The tall, handsome and very serious Walsh also keeps it real. He can trip any number of heavy-hitting mentors off his tongue and he stays in the zone describing his various evolutions and his creative process, driving on, driving closer to elusive perfection. His focus isn’t about madness, or fame or glory, but about his skill, his inner challenger.

So it’s a one-man race, this career so far. And you could say he’s far ahead of his peer group anyway.

Even if you don’t like the work, the quality and the originality is there, manifest. He’s just so brilliant.

Enignum — and other stories is at the Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin 2, November 17 to January 27www.oliversearsgallery.com