Bridget Murphy Milligan

Fireside Tales

July 1 - September 1, 2011

This work examines and preserves the tradition of Irish storytelling through the language of photography. Together the images recreate popular stories of faith, mystery, myth, humor, history, and legends. One of the oldest art forms, storytelling is both collective and ephemeral. It embraces everything from rumors, jokes, gossip around the kitchen table, to stories once told around the fireside. In oral tradition, the life of a story undergoes multiple adaptations, and with technology constantly changing and reinventing the way we communicate and share with one another, what will become of traditional storytelling?

The digital collages combine photographs taken while traveling in Ireland and scanned drawings, paintings, and pages from antique storybooks. They are divided into two worlds; the factual depictions of ruins, monastic sites, rocks, bogs, fields, fences, and seaside cliffs, places that once inspired these tales. The shadows, simple renderings of animals or figures representing stock characters and common archetypes in Irish folklore, twist reality into a fantasy. They transport the images into a re-imagined existence, transparent silhouettes of the real, fading in and out of being, like ghosts or memories. The digitally infused drawn and painted nighttime skies convey a sense of mystery by emphasizing the low light and looming shadows. With the darkness of night comes the unknown and are when many of these fireside tales are told and the characters in these tales come alive.

Once a story is captured and written down it is locked into context. The stories themselves change with time, audience, and location, but part of the magic lies in the fact that along the way they pick up bits and pieces of the present and record it forever. Milligan writes, ”With this thought in mind, I included the fragmented and diffused texts from vintage children’s books. For me, the texts and pictorial illustrations in the old children’s books illustrate how the characters are frozen in time and space. My hope is to generate contemporary folklore retellings that reveal a convergence of factual places and fictional narratives or daydreams.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Bridget Murphy Milligan studied photography and painting at Miami University, Indiana University, and in Cortona, Italy. Solo exhibitions include those at the Connector Gallery at the Carnegie Galleries, Covington, KY; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh; Kent State University Downtown Gallery, Kent, OH; the University of Missouri Gallery of Art at Kansas City, MO; and the Griffith Gallery at Stephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, TX. Murphy Milligan received the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the United States Department of Education in 1998-2001 and Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships in 2003 and 2007. An Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History, Murphy Milligan currently teaches photography, digital imaging, and drawing at The College of Wooster, Ohio since 2001. https://bridgetmmilligan.com/