This weekend saw me cruising down to Ocean Shores, WA with the band to play a few gigs at a little pub called the Galway Bay. Nice place. Amazing food, actually. I'm not generally a big soup eater, but fucking amazing beef and Guinness stew. And potato soup. And white Irish stew. If you know me, know this; they had mushrooms in them, and I still loved them. That's how good it was.

I also headed down there with all the glass I'd managed to bring up with me on the plane. Not much, really: An Bradán Feasa, Connla's Well and a simple knot (both can be found near the bottom of this page). My new roommates have two good friends who own an art gallery down there, and who wanted to see what kind of work I did. Well, they liked it. Within half an hour, they'd talked me into leaving my glass hanging in their front window, and I'd been handed a consignment contract. Then, I went back over to Galway Bay for breakfast. Before I'd even finished my plate, I got a call from one of the owners: Connla's Well had just been bought. I was a fucking thrilled. Realize that I've been holding onto that piece, unsold, for over two years. In fact, I made two...and ended just giving one of them away as a birthday gift. So, I finish the meal, go through the rest of the contract, and head back over to the gallery (which is all of 500 yds. down the road). Seems in that 10-minute interlude, the second piece had sold -- leaving only the Salmon. The now $2,500 Salmon (the gallery owner insisted that I raise the price).

Which sold this morning. I sold all of my glass in less than 24 hours. Holy hell. Not only that, but I'm now almost $2,000 dollars richer. I'd just given up on going to Áras Mháirtín Uí Chadhain this summer. That's more than the ticket price, folks. I'm shaking just typing this.

Off to make more glass!

[EDIT]: I also forgot to mention one more thing -- one of the gallery owners is an amazing Scottish photographer by the name of Stuart May. Last year while he was at (I believe) Yellowstone National Park, he happened upon the corpse of a stag that had been brought down by wolves. As he was walking past, a red fox popped out of its ribcage, and proceeded over the next hour to give an amazing photoshoot. But, at one point, a single raven flew down to join in the feast.

Gruesome sounding, I know. However, very important to my next large project. For the past couple years, I've been trying to combine the imagery from Derdriu's visions (from Irish mythology) with the Pacific Northwest myth of Raven stealing the Sun, Moon, and stars. Actually, I'd wanted to do his piece long before Salmon's -- but just like Salmon, inspiration hit me overnight. Derdiru's life both began and ended when she looked out the window to see her nursemaid slitting a calf's throat, as a raven (most likely, An Mórrigán in her prophetic form) landed on the snow to drink up the fresh blood. From that point on, those three colors rule Derdriu's life, and fill her visions. Stuart shot three amazing photos of this raven landing to join the fox in his feast -- and were exactly what I was looking for to finish this piece. In fact, I ended up sitting down on the floor with the photo in my lap, as these photos were exactly what I've seen in my mind since I was a child reading the stories. And I now have a beautiful print of Raven, wings spread above the snow, with blood on her beak.

And I think I've found away to honor both Raven and the Raven, as I tried to do with the Salmon. I hope the fact that they are devouring my totem in those photos means what I think it does.

And wow, right as I finish that sentence, my mp3 of the Celtic horns they pulled from a bog in Armagh start to play. Armagh. That's the Mórrigán herself.

-Oisín Mac Suibhne
www.suibhne.com