Welcome to PLACEWAYS, an art podcast series hosted by Dr. Anna King in collaboration with Creative Places Ballaghaderreen. This podcast explores the intricate ways in which places are known, imagined, felt, and remembered. With a conversational and intimate style, the podcast will feature artists, creatives and community stories - both personal and collective.

In this debut episode, we are delighted to be joined by the talented visual artist Maria May. Together, we will uncover how her work reflects deep connections to place, and how her art helped her navigated her way through personal grief.

Photos: Maria’s childhood home on the Swedish Island of Fårö.

Creative Collaborations

Our hope is that this podcast will spark meaningful conversations, creative collaborations, and shared explorations of topics relevant to communities worldwide - grief, loneliness, displacement, how we can find our way back to each other through creative place-based experiences, as well as finding hope during an environmental crisis.

In particular, Anna and Maria hope that their conversation will spark a wider conversation within Ireland and beyond about the powerful way in which art can help people move through experiences of loss and grief.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. We can’t wait to see where these conversations will lead.

Before we begin, we want to acknowledge that, as with many creative projects, our first recording encountered a few technical hiccups with sound and editing. While the audio quality may not be perfect this time, we are committed to improving it in future episodes.

We hope the richness of the conversation and the insights shared will more than make up for it. Thank you for your understanding and for being part of this journey with us.

The music featured in this art podcast, ‘Desert Walker,’ by River Lume, is used with permission. License purchased directly from the artist.

An Online Exhibition of Maria’s Work

Maria holds a First-Class BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art. She has been longlisted for the RDS Visual Arts Award in both 2023 and 2024, and has received the 2024 Ballinglen Arts Foundation Student Artist Award and the Atlantic Technological University Sligo Award for Highest Overall Achievement in BA (Hons) Fine Art. Maria is currently completing an MA in Creative Practice, specialising in Fine Art, at Atlantic Technological University Sligo, as she continues to carve out a fulfilling career in the dynamic visual arts sector in the West of Ireland.

Maria’s earliest memories are from her family home, a windswept Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. This experience instilled in her a deep connection to the land and elements. Since moving to Ireland in 2004, her love for nature has only grown, shaping her artistic vision and practice.

After raising a family and caring for her daughter with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Maria returned to education in 2020. This pivotal decision allowed her diverse interests to merge into a broad art practice encompassing drawing, sculpture, collage, and installation.

An Artist's Mission: Hope and Urgency in Environmental Art 

Maria May’s artistic journey is a compelling blend of inspiration, hope, and urgency, driven by a profound connection to nature and a keen awareness of the environmental crisis. May’s practice investigates the interdependence between humans, the natural world and all the myriad of lifeforms within it.

In her own words:

“Over the years my love of nature has intensified but, along with it, a growing sense of astonishment and sadness has crept in. Witnessing our disintegrating relationship with the land and all its rooted and unrooted inhabitants leaves me bewildered, but also with an urgent, ever-present resolve to heal this shattered connection. Creating ways of regaining this lost kinship, through artistic expression or otherwise, has been at the centre of my being for as long as I can recall…”

Maria’s work ingeniously incorporates recycled materials, particularly plastic, to create impactful art with minimal resources. She reflects upon the pervasive presence of plastic in our environment, citing the alarming observation by palaeontologist Zalasiewicz that if all the plastic made in recent decades were clingfilm, the planet could be completely wrapped in it (ref: 1). Yet, Maria sees plastic as an unlikely ally in her mission to inspire optimism and find creative solutions to global challenges:

"As an artist, I feel an obligation to direct my creative energy into finding solutions and instilling optimism. Plastic has, ironically, become my unlikely ally in this process. To reach a future where catastrophic global conflicts and inequalities, the climate emergency, and biodiversity mass extinction is tackled, we must first imagine that such a scenario is possible.”

Contact Maria at: mariamayvisualart@gmail.com /

Instagram: @mariamayart Facebook: maria.m.flemming

Stay tuned for more episodes - Be part of our art podcast journey!

If you would like to get involved with PLACEWAYS, email Anna: info@annaking.ie

Photo Credits:

Alex Flemming, Paul Cole & Susie Harty.

Snippets from behind the scenes: Meet Maria May at her home.

References:

Ref: 1. Quote cited in: Fowkes, M and R, (2022), World of Art, Art and Climate Change, Thames & Hudson