Louth Life: Etaoin O’Reilly on her love of working with clay

This story appeared in the Louth Life magazine earlier this year

For Etaoin O'Reilly, ceramicist and one of the founders of Bó Studios in Dundalk, her love of working with clay and the possibilities it offers up, means the work never stops.

“I think for an artist, any artist will say this”, she explains, “you start an initial idea for an exhibition, and you never stop thinking about it. Even when the show is done, we've got the work out, the exhibition was great, but then I'd still be like, 'I really want to do this on it...' - the work doesn't stop.”

“My Dad always said to me, 'you should always find your thing in life, where you can just switch off from the world'. That's the one thing he's always instilled in us from when we were younger, find your thing, your switch off thing, and for me that was pottery.”

“That's where I got into clay. You can do so much with it. I've been in ceramics now for over 11 years and I still haven't reach the bottom of the bucket. It's so vast. With the glazing, with the making, you've slip casting, you've slab building, you've hand building, throwing, it just is endless.

“I have only scratched the surface. Even with glaze technology and all the different colours, all the different effects, all the different decals, it's just ongoing.

Read also: Weddings by Dearbháile - Dundalk woman shares how she got started

“I think for me, I'm a touchy feely person, I'm just very tactile or something. I think there's something with the clay, it's just you, the clay and the making. It's so therapeutic, you just switch off.

“There's times here, if I have an order, or its Christmas time, and I've been throwing on the wheel. Colin (her husband) would ring me about 10 o'clock asking, 'are you coming home?' I just totally forget about time.”

In the 11 years since Etaoin first discovered her for ceramics while studying in NCAD, her work has branched out. Between running pottery workshops in Bó Studios, helping run the gallery which runs every Saturday from 1pm to 5pm at Bó Studios, as well as the general running of the studios, her pottery work and her sculptural work, there probably isn't enough hours in the day.”

Etaoin sees Dundalk as being a community that is welcoming to the arts. “There's a fabulous community of musicians, of actors, writers, crafts people in Dundalk, who are really willing to collaborate and get something going. You have that lovely community, its very generous, everyone wants to collaborate.”

On how she sees her place in ceramics, she reveals, “I see myself as a sculptor, I like to make sculptural work. The sculptural work I don't get to do as much because the pottery is what keeps the lights on.

“I really enjoy my workshops, I think its a great thing to be passing on, it's so rewarding as well, and the same with the pottery. But then, you do get to a point where you're just like, 'I wanna go big. I want to do something big'. Which is really nice because, us being under An Táin Art Centre's umbrella, every two years we do an exhibition in An Táin that showcases all the artists' work here in Bó Studios.”

Looking back on the last such exhibition in February, Etaoin explained that its theme was dreams. “It was all based on dreams. For me it was that my teeth were always falling out. So I did a whole sculptural piece about my teeth falling out.

“There was this whole aspect where you could put your hand in and pick out a tooth if you wanted and keep it for good luck.”

Irish history, folklore and mythology are among her main inspirations however and are a driving force behind her next “big” piece. “I really want to make this piece that's based off Síle na Gig, and touching on the revival of the old folklore. I'm trying to make this massive sculpture that I'm hoping to put into Sculpture in Context in 2026, so fingers crossed for funding.”

See more of Etaoin's work at https://ceramicsbyetaoinoreilly.com/