Joe Hogan has been making baskets at Loch na Fooey, Galway, since 1978 and in that time has earned a reputation for making strong, durable baskets of the highest quality. The colours in these award winning baskets are those of the natural willows which are grown at Loch na Fooey, and also include found materials such as bog wood from around the area.
Joe began making nests in 2012, intending that they were not copies of the nests of various species of birds but rather nest-like objects. Since 2012 he has built a sizeable collection of nexts, to celebrate the lives of birds and explore what it means to be ‘at home in the world.’ His making of nests was prompted by a number of things. Namely his belief that many of us have lost the feeling that we too are part of nature. The lack of this feeling of belonging he believes may explain our failure to properly address the ecological problems we face as a species.
In making the nests Joe wanted, in some vague way, to rekindle our connection with the world of twigs and stones and remind us of the joyful surprise we might feel when we encounter nature’s abundance. In the essay Mossbawn Seamus Heaney remarks. “All children want to crouch into their secret nests….I spent time in the throat of an old willow tree…once you squeezed through it you were at the heart of a different life.” But many of us loose this childlike capacity to see the world with wondrous eyes.
Joe’s ‘Nest’ project also seeks to highlight the shocking collapse in bird numbers over the last 20 years and the general loss of bio-diversity that has helped to cause this decline, especially the loss of habitat and the decline of insect life. Some of his other ideas which prompted this project are explored in short essays.
Hogan’s works have been exhibited in Ireland and internationally and he has authored two books on the craft, ‘Basketmaking in Ireland’ (2001) and’ Bare Branches, Blue Black Sky’ (2011).
