Munster in 30 Artworks, No 15: Fiona O’Dwyer’s Dreamboat in Ennis, Co Clare
Fiona O’Dwyer, the artist who created Dreamboat in Ennis. Picture: Paddy Dooley
Even now, 25 years after its unveiling, Fiona O’Dwyer insists the full meaning of her Dreamboat sculpture in Ennis, Co Clare should remain a secret. The artwork, a limestone sculpture of a boat with a cross on board, features carvings of a heart, a dress and a map of the stars on a certain date of significance to the artist, which she refuses to reveal.
Nor will she identify the person close to her who inspired the piece. “My husband often quotes the line, ‘Art revealed is art shamed,’” she says. “I feel it’s important that I don’t give everything away, and people are free to interpret the work as they choose.”
Dreamboat is one of the dozen or so artworks that comprise the Sculpture Trail in Ennis, Co Clare. “It was Carmel Doherty, an artist living in Ennis, who asked me to produce a work for the trail,” says O’Dwyer.
“She’d found some funding for materials through Clare Co Council, and we were paid through FÁS; it wasn’t much, but just enough to make me think I could carve a limestone sculpture by hand. I’d done a little bit of carving at art college, but it was still a challenge. I was lucky enough to share a studio with Carmel and another artist named Dermot Twohig, who lent me his tools and showed me how to use them.”
O’Dwyer, a graduate in Fine Art from Limerick School of Art and Design, had it in mind from the start that her sculpture would take the form of a boat. “I grew up in Tipperary, which is about as far inland as you can go in this country. But I used to joke that I must have been born on a boat, as we went back and forth to England so often when I was growing up. My parents emigrated to London to find work, and crossing on the ferry was always part of our lives.
“I think also there must have been boatmen in our family way back or something, because I was always drawn to the sea. I was living near Lahinch at the time I made Dreamboat, and all my family settled in the same area eventually.”
O’Dwyer has always loved to draw, and she was surprised to find how closely linked drawing is to the discipline of stone-carving. “When you get down to chiselling by hand, you’re effectively mark-making on the surface of the limestone,” she says. “And whether you’re drawing or stone-carving, you have to let what happens happen. When you chip off a piece of stone with the chisel, that tells you where to go next. When you work like that, the experience becomes almost trance-like.”
The sculpture is in two parts, the boat and the cross that sits on top of it. “My children were very young when I carved it,” says O’Dwyer. “They were two and three. I couldn’t find anyone to mind them, and I can still remember them sitting in the car, watching me work on the cross. I think there’s definitely something of their point of view in that part of the sculpture at least.”
She remembers the installation of Dreamboat, near Mill House on the Ennis River Walk, going smoothly. “It was very accurately positioned, floating on a concealed concrete base, and facing out the Lahinch road towards to the sea.”
Ten years later, however, she was shocked to find the sculpture had been moved to a new site in the course of a Council works project. “But in fairness, when I approached the engineer, he was very considerate, and arranged for Dreamboat to be returned to its original location. If a sculpture is made for a particular place, that’s a huge part of the consideration for me, and it should be adhered to.”
O’Dwyer is settled in Ennistymon now, and runs Ennistymon Sculpture Works. In 2019, she had a major exhibition of sculpture, drawing and photography at Limerick City Gallery, and she continues to work on public artworks. There are two others in Ennis: Contentment is Wealth, a limestone sculpture of a woman playing a fiddle by an old-fashioned chair in O’Connell Square; and Glass Ribbons, a stained glass window at Ennis County Museum.
“The window is based on St Bridget’s Well in Liscannor. It was a big undertaking; I worked on it for over a year with the artist Nora Duggan. Some of my children’s drawings are sandblasted into the glass.”
But Dreamboat remains O’Dwyer’s favourite of all her public artworks. “I love Dreamboat. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started, it was very much a journey of discovery. But there was a huge joy in making it. It’s wonderful when everything aligns, the ideas and materials. I feel a great affinity with the piece, and I love going back to remind myself of all the hidden meanings in it.”
