So long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, goodbye....

Summer is nearly over, and so too is this season of the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair! We plan to go out in style, and will be jam-packed with your favourite stallholders, and even a few newcomers! So if you’ve been putting off a visit, or just want to visit one more time before it’s over for the season, now is the time to come down to Doolin for the Saturday Market!

One of the things we love about the Market is the great mix, not just of products, but also of people from nearly every continent, music for every taste, and art of every description. Some visitors come for the food, which can be eaten on the spot at our stage-top café, or taken home to savour later. We have a great selection of local and imported fruit and organic veg, bread, baked goods, fresh waffles, cheese, local ice cream, salads, curries, chutneys, jams, and sauces. And besides that, you will see all manner of handmade items such as ceramics, photography, locally made willow baskets and chairs, quilted and crocheted items, handsewn bags and purses, plants, and natural cosmetics, made locally with seaweed and other organic ingredients. Often we have craftspeople working away, spinning yarn, or making ceramic figures, and always available to answer questions about their craft!

We have also introduced a “Local’s Table” where writers and musicians who live in Clare can sell their books and CDs. We have been delighted with the talent of locals who have produced children’s books, books of local interest, a cookbook, and CDs of Irish music. And we have also introduced the Lightning Strike Gallery, a unique art gallery featuring the work of a different Clare-based artist each week. This week we welcome Jennifer Hornsby, fresh from her exhibit at Glor!

The Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair takes place this Saturday, 29th August at the Russell Brothers Community Centre, Doolin, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Russell Community Centre is located on the road between the village and the church.

Everywhere was a song and a celebration!

One of the unlikeliest of the many parties planned around the world this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock will take place at the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair on Saturday!

Always up for a good time, the folks at the Doolin Market can’t resist this opportunity to wax nostalgic for the Peace and Love era. We love the music, we love the clothes, and even the rain seemed warmer and friendlier than the rain we have been seeing lately! To celebrate, we are having a Woodstock theme at the Market this week. Our famed music mix will be given over entirely to music from artists who played there, including Crosby, Stills, and Nash, The Who, Janis Joplin, the Incredible String Band, The Band, and a host of others.

Stallholders will be wearing their finest 60s apparel, and visitors are encouraged to dress up as well. Prizes will be awarded for best dressed, as well as for winners of pop quizzes on Woodstock trivia. So bone up on your Woodstock knowledge before you come!

Special foods, face painting, and other attractions will be ongoing, and all of the usual attractions of the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair will be available as well. The Market is one of the largest in the area, with over 20 stallholders most weeks, and a fantastic mix of products including fruit and vegetables, cheese, plants, baked goods, and local ice cream. Visitors can enjoy snacks and light meals, tea and coffee at our pleasant café overlooking the Market.

We also have local craftspeople who make bags and purses, textiles, natural cosmetics, willow chairs and baskets, jewellery, ceramics, and photography. Often we have craftspeople working away, making baskets, spinning yarn, or making ceramic figures, and always available to answer questions about their craft!

For more information, contact Toby at doolinmarket@gmail.com.

Art and Crafts

The Lightning Strike Gallery is entering its final month, and it has been a fantastic addition to the Market. Visitors and stallholders have been delighted to find a new show each Saturday and the variety and quality of the artworks have been inspiring. We have seen paintings, etchings, pastels, photographs, tapestry, and batik, all from artists who currently live in Clare. The artwork displayed so far include pieces that reflect the artists’ experience and vision of Clare, through landscapes, seascapes, portraits of local people, and images of local wildlife. We have also seen artwork by artists who drew on their travels to places as far away as Thailand, Laos, and Timbuktu, who produced photographic landscapes and portraits from those far-away places. Other artists have displayed surreal and imaginative work evoking a spiritual connection with place, music, and nature.

The Lightning Strike Gallery continues to exhibit a new show every week through the end of August. Some of the artists who will exhibit this month include, Sonja O’Brien, Kaye Maas, and Jennifer Hornsby, as well as an exhibition this Saturday by a group of emerging artists known as the Hopeless Romantics. The gallery hours coincide with the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair from 10 until 4 at the Russell Brothers Community Centre in Doolin. Admission is free.

Next week, August 15th, the Doolin Market will celebrate the 40th anniversary of
Woodstock! Watch this space for more info next week!

Doo wah diddy, diddy dum, diddy do…..

The Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair has a new look, and a new attitude! We blame it on the weather, but we are smarter and prettier than ever, and anxious to show off!

On fine days some of our stallholders move outside the Russell Community Centre to display their crafts outdoors whilst enjoying the sunshine. And inside we have more stallholders than ever. Many of our favorite stallholders have returned from last year, and we also have attracted a number of food and craftspeople who will attend once or twice over the summer. That means that every time you come to the Doolin Market, you will have a different experience! On any given week you might see handmade organic leather bags, tanned and dyed without chemicals; knitted and crocheted children’s clothes; natural cosmetics, made locally with seaweed and other organic ingredients; willow chairs and baskets; jewellery, ceramics, photography, wood turning, and hand-spun and dyed yarn. The list is ever growing! Often we have craftspeople working away, doing leatherwork or spinning yarn, or making ceramic figures, and always available to answer questions about their craft!

We have also introduced a “Local’s Table” where writers and musicians who live in Clare can sell their books and CDs. So far we have been delighted with the talent of locals who have produced children’s books (Jennifer Hornsby), a Burren walking guide (Tony Kirby), a cookbook (Mary Sheehan), and a CD of Irish songs (Gerry Shannon). More goods from talented local writers and musicians will be displayed in coming weeks.

The Market looks great this season, thanks to Karl Hughes who has provided wall hangings, and also because of the success of the Lightning Strike Gallery, in the café area of the Market. Local artists of all stripes are exhibiting paintings, drawings, photography, tapestries, batik, and mixed media work, with a different artist exhibiting every week. Some of the artists who have exhibited so far include Corrina Schroeder von Frihling, Kathy Sambrook, Vicky Lennie, Ilsa Thielan, and Karl Hughes.

About half the stalls in the Market provide food and plants, including fruit and vegetables, houseplants and bedding plants, soups, salads, curries, local and European cheeses, breads, cakes, cookies, tea and coffee, and fresh cooked waffles. We have local certified organic vegetables that are in season and picked each morning. And we have ice cream, freshly made on a family farm in New Quay from the milk of a traditional breed of Burren cows!

The Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair takes place on Saturdays, through August at the Russell Brothers Community Centre, Doolin, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Russell Community Centre is located on the road between the village and the church.

To join our mailing list, contact Toby at doolinmarket@gmail.com.

Great Balls of Fire!!

Photo by Ilsa Thielan.

The Lightning Strike Gallery has been a blast! The quality and variety of artwork displayed in the café area of the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair this season has made working and visiting the Market even more beautiful. Here are a few notes about the artists whose work will be exhibited this week, as well as those seen over the last few weeks.


This week, the Lightening Strike Gallery features the work of Karl Hughes


Karl was born in Manchester and moved to South Africa at the age of 18. He spent his early twenties torn between study, learning the mechanics of photography while working as a photo-lithographer, and travel, hitching around South Eastern Africa whenever possible. Travel eventually won out and he hit the road, meandering through Africa and Europe, toward the edge of the Atlantic, ending up and settling in Doolin. While distant lands have continued to beckon, leading Karl to almost every continent, over the past 18 years Doolin's warm heart has brought him home every summer. Karl has dabbled in many mediums, but he loves photography best for its honesty in capturing the visual nature of reality.


Travel and a connection with people have been underlying themes in his life and photography. This series of portraits are based on Karl's travels among the tribal peoples of Thailand and Laos. He captures the exotic and marries it to the inherent and shared humanity of his subjects. This is Karl's first exhibit.


Last week, June 20th, the Lightening Strike Gallery featured the work of Ilsa Thielan. Ilsa lived in Fisherstreet, Doolin for nearly 20 years, surrounded by music, stories and history going back far into prehistoric times. She had studied Art, Literature and Photograpy in Germany, and it ws in Doolin and the surrounding Burren where she found her spiritual home and inspiration for her artwork.


Ilsa created and ran the Ivy Cottage Resturant in Doolin with a small gallery to exhibit her work until 1999. Then she moved closer to the Burren to devote her life totally to her photography, poetry and the occasional work of tapestry.


Her love for music and having lived for so long right there where the heart of the music beats, in Doolin, inspired her to travel to musical events all over Ireland. Eventually music lured her to travel abroad, further and furhter. Music became the inspiration for her creative work.


In January of this year, Ilsa weny to Timbuktu in Mali, Africa and from there way out into the Sahara to the "Festival in the Desert", which is a music festival of theTourareg Nomads and which had been visited by Irish musicians Paddy Keenan, Liam O'Maonlai, Mary Bergin, Gary O'Briean, and others. A fascinating musical exchange had happened between Irish musicians and Mali musicians. Being out inthe desert with the Touareg, the "Kel Tamashek", the people who speak Tamashek, and their music, was one of the most powerful experiences Ilsa ever had.


This exhibit, entitled "From Doolin to Timbuktu" is the result of that experience.


On June 13th, the Lightening Strike Gallery featured the work of Vicky Lennie. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, and a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, Vicky Lennie has been living and working in West Clare for 13 years. On moving to Ireland in 1996, explorations of her new home led her to a series of land and seascapes, emotional responses to the environment, and the movement of elemental forces. She was soon involved in life-drawing sessions with local artists, which rekindled the fascination she had for the subject and brought the nude to the forefront of her work. The return to the seascape as subject matter came after a break of four years during which time her two children were born.


Many of Vickie’s seascapes were painted on site, through the window of her camper van. “By working in this way, with an ever-changing scene in front of me, I aim to give the viewer a sense of actually being there, over a period of time. The beauty of paint is that it makes visible the actions of the artis as the work was being made.”


Past exhibitions include a three woman show at the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Dublin, 2000; Doolin Artists annual group shows, 2000-2003; solo show, Tides Gallery, Liscannor, 2001; and a three-woman show at the Belltable Arts Centre, 2004.


The Lightening Strike Gallery will continue to bring Clare artists to the Doolin Market each Saturday this summer. Some upcoming shows are from artists including J.J. (Jack) McCormack, Cindy Griffin, Sonya O'Brien, Michelle de Villiers, Kathy Sambrook, Jennifer Hornsby, and others! We hope to see you soon!

......and the living is easy!

It's looking like we might have a real summer here in Doolin! Not at the moment, actually, but our opening weekend, the sun was splitting the stones! We hope it continues, and that you find time to stop by the Market while you are spending time out and about!

Our latest project, the Lightening Strike Gallery, has been a big success! This unique art gallery presents the work of a different local artist on the Saturday of each week on the stage of the Russell Brothers Community Centre. The gallery hours coincide with the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair, giving local residents and visitors an opportunity to view the work of local artists while visiting the Market.

So far the gallery has featured work by Doolin artists Corinna Schroeder-von Frihling and Kathy Sambrook. This Saturday we are delighted to feature the art of Vicky Lennie. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, and a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, Vicky Lennie has been living and working in West Clare for 13 years. On moving to Ireland in 1996, explorations of her new home led her to a series of land and seascapes, emotional responses to the environment, and the movement of elemental forces. She was soon involved in life-drawing sessions with local artists, which rekindled the fascination she had for the subject and brought the nude to the forefront of her work. The return to the seascape as subject matter came after a break of four years during which time her two children were born.

Many of Vickie’s seascapes were painted on site, through the window of her camper van. “By working in this way, with an ever-changing scene in front of me, I aim to give the viewer a sense of actually being there, over a period of time. The beauty of paint is that it makes visible the actions of the artist as the work was being made.”

Past exhibitions include a three woman show at the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Dublin, 2000; Doolin Artists annual group shows, 2000-2003; solo show, Tides Gallery, Liscannor, 2001; and a three-woman show at the Belltable Arts Centre, 2004.

Vicky’s work will be exhibited for one day only this Saturday, June 13th, at the Lightening Strike Gallery at the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair. The gallery hours will coincide with the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair from 10 until 4 at the Russell Brothers Community Centre in Doolin. Admission is free.

For more information, or if you are an artist who wishes to be considered for an exhibition, contact Toby at doolinmarket@gmail.com.

In other news, the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair has gotten off to a good start this year, as we welcome old friends and some very interesting newcomers! This week we would like to welcome Mark & Margôt of Rathlir Farm! Mark and Margot bought a rundown farmhouse and surrounding land back in spring of 2004. The holding includes a developing wood and a traditional bog. Over the last five years Mark & Margôt have lovingly refurbished the main house, restoring the surrounding homestead from derelict ground to an attractive, productive organic farm including an orchard with a variety of top fruit trees and a kitchen garden. Rathlir® Farm gained full symbol organic status from IOFGA last summer.

Mark & Margôt erected two tunnels this February which, together with a small glass house for germination and an enlarged kitchen garden, are now the centre of a growing horticulture business. They look forward to supplying quality salads and root vegetables grown locally, in season, with full organic certification. They have a stall at the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft over the summer and will be introducing freshly picked, seasonal food to all who visit the Market.

As always, the Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair is a rambling affair, full of a fantastic array of food and crafts, including a wide selection of baked goods, hot and cold snacks, local and European cheeses, baskets, textiles, ceramics, photography, and much much more!

Hope to see you Saturday!

Photo above: Rathlir Farm at sunrise. Courtesy of Mark Pierce.

And at last it is here! The Grand Opening!

We have so much to tell you about our Grand Opening this weekend, May 30th, and we hope you will spread the word to anyone who might be in the neighbourhood! Events that day include an outdoor barbeque, cookery demonstration, face painting, and other family events! We will also unveil our new art gallery, the Lightening Strike Gallery, featuring the work of a local artist each week.

Some of the foods available this year include delicious loaves of fresh bread, fresh croissants and other specialty breads, cookies and cakes, homemade chocolate truffles, fresh cooked waffles, chocolate-dipped strawberries, salads and vegetarian food, locally made Burren ice cream, cheeses from Clare and beyond, hot ethnic foods, local hen and duck eggs, herbs, and a good selection vegetables and fruit. Plants for your home and garden will also be available.

Other home-made and hand-made items include ceramics, jewellery, crocheted and knitted items including baby clothing, colourful felted wool items, home-spun and died yarn, handbags, ethnic clothing and accessories, locally crafted willow baskets, photographs, cards, prints, and natural cosmetics.

This season we are delighted to see the return of Mairead Sharry, from Inisheer. Mairead was an inspiration to all of us last summer as she demonstrated how she spins wool on her wheel and displayed beautiful items she made from wool she carded, spun, and dyed herself. Mairead promises some special items she made just for us, including her new line of items in Clare colours! Learn more about Mairead on her blog, From Sheep to Shawl, at http://maireadsharry.blogspot.com. Mairead will join us for the Grand Opening and from time to time over the summer.

We also welcome back Mary Sheehan, who has spent a productive winter promoting enjoyment of cooking and eating with natural and local ingredients through her involvement with Slow Food Clare, conducting cookery demonstrations around the country, and promoting her book “Coming Home to Cook”. Mary is profiled in the June edition of Food and Wine magazine, Ireland’s food and drink bible, and her activities at the Doolin Market were featured as well! Mary will provide a range of salads and vegetarian food at the Market, as well as her critically acclaimed cookbook. She will also conduct a cookery demonstration at 3 p.m. at the Market. The demonstration is free, but early sign-up is recommended! You can learn more about Mary’s book and recipes on her website at www.marysheehan.com.

The Doolin Saturday Market and Craft Fair takes place on Saturdays, through August at the Russell Brothers Community Centre, Doolin. This year the market will again combine the produce and foods of a traditional Farmers’ Market with the hand-made goods of a Craft Fair. This market uniquely appeals to both local consumers, who benefit from having fresh, locally produced foods on their doorstep on a weekly basis, and the visitor, who is looking for unique and authentic handcrafted items to take home from their visit to North Clare. It also provides a pleasant daytime activity where both locals and visitors can spend some time browsing, having a cup of tea or coffee, and enjoying some homemade cookies or muffins.

Don’t forget to tell your friends and family! We hope to see you soon!