Intricate wood work

Sculptor Casey makes ancient material come alive
By Martin Hintz


Michael Casey stood outside his Baileyharbour studio, at what seems to be the end of the known world.  Near his home-- reached by winding, narrow roads from the crossing at Newcashel, Co. Westmeath -- flat, mucky bogland spread forever. Moist black peat blended into gray skies tagging the horizon which seemed an infinity away. 

Anything manmade there was inconsequential,  cosmic specks under an arch of damp heaven. The rough waters of Lough Ree were nearby, with the faint sound of lapping waves providing an ethereal background music.

Sculptor Casey seemed birthed in this landscape, becoming as gnarled and creased as the ancient trees he recovers from the living earth around him. He then works his carving magic on these trunks, some of which are 4,000 years old.  And by now, after a professional career devoted to fine art wood-working, Casey had taken on the look of his matériel.

Just when does man become like his art or the art like the man?

Casey's fingers caressed his woods when he talked, as a lover does along the body of his beloved. They played across the dark, rich surfaces, feeling, stretching, bringing to life a subject from deep within the solid texture of what once graced an ancient above- ground Ireland. 

Showboks in his small display area are bursting with photos of intricate pieces that had been commissioned by hospitals, government offices and universities and for private collections in countries as far away as Japan.

More than 10,000 years ago, the last glaciers retreated from Ireland and the country has been loath to serve ice in drinks since then.  Then, after about 1,000 years, the landscape was covered with oak, yew and pine which replaced the first birch and willow. The thick forests lasted several thousand more years before being displaced by peat-forming vegetation. This was the beginning of Ireland's bogs, preserving the great trees which topped into the muck over the ensuing generations and which were covered for eons in the protective mud. Peasants used such wood they found for fuel and for making buckets, beds and a host of other household objects.

Artists like Casey have long known that the woods brought to the surface of the bogs are especially wonderful to work on a lathe or under a carving knife -- the oak finishing down to a satiny black, the pine becoming almost golden and the yew a thick auburn.
However, Casey, born in 1932 in Lanesboro, was one of the first to concentrate on these woods as an artist. He began dealing with the oak and yew in 1970. But before devoting his life to art, he spent after several years on the road as a carpenter, including a stint in San Francisco. 

He returned to Ireland in the 1960s to set up a workshop.  "I purchased this plot for £25," he chuckled, looking over at his snug cottage with its colorful doors and window frames.  He  lives there with his Dutch wife, Elly Undscheid, whom he married in 1968. Their electrician-trained/artist son, Kevin, who was born in 1969, often helps out his father -- especially with the technical details involved in fashioning a fountain out a tree trunk. Kevin now lives north of Longford with his family and drops by regularly.

Casey's cluttered, open-sided storage shed shop with its large saws for initial cuttings is discovered by walking down a narrow, moss-coated path, where taking a stroll was step into a fairy garden.  Pomba, his Jack Russell-dachshund mix, scurried on ahead, ready to chase a soccer ball like one of Jackie Charltan's champion forwards. A smaller workshop was used for close, finishing work where cranes, leaping salmon and other pieces awaited completion.

"The Midlands is like a saucer, a hollow, where once vast woods flourished," Casey explained.  "It's rare to discover good woods and people who find it are very lucky indeed. They bring me pieces or I go secure my own," he said, reluctant to tell the locales of his secret caches. "Nature does speak to me, wood talks to me" he asserted with an open smile. 

In the old days, according to folk tales,  bogwood could only be found on misty mornings when the ground was damp. The best wood would be located only where the dew did not settle and it needed to be extracted by an iron tong.

"We work from week to week, not knowing where the next pound is coming from," Casey claimed, adding the caveat that "it was lovely to be able to do what you want to do." Of course, the extent of his current workload belied that sly hint that he was a merely a simple, struggling artist.  However, he admitted that it was a difficult road that he had chosen when he first started out on his journey.

Other young artists are now following his example, with Casey being instrumental in helping establish the Celtic Roots Studio near Athlone. The co-operative was organized by Bord na Mona in 1991, providing a place for woodwork training, where commissions could be collected and art displayed. 

While he was always attracted to wood, studying woodworking as a youth at Longford Vocational School, he gave a try at playwriting during his California stint. "It was a talented group," he said of his companions in a class he took in San Francisco. "I suppose they've all made the big time but I turned to wood."

Toward wood or...turned to wood? Not quite the latter -- but close enough to ask again, "When does the artist become his piece?"

Michael Casey was the answer.