Their late mother’s wish was that they follow her historical fiction manuscript through the colliding records of pagan and Christian worldviews in Ireland. The Burren College of Art, situated in County Clare – was the epicentre of her tale. The greatest colliding force within her writings were Sheela-na-gigs: relief sculptures in the form of a nude woman who is both ancient and youthful: a figure paradoxically near death, birth, pregnancy and fertility. A figure often found above portals into churches, castles, monasteries, and springs. The stone Sheela-na-gigs documented had areas worn away from human touch – mostly her vulva – from everyday people eliciting her blessings and fertility throughout centuries – possibly millennia. The sensual act of touching Sheelas to acknowledge the responsive aliveness within art, stone and places informed ee portal’s methods of making.

The subsequent body of work, mnemonic for the commons, was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. mnemonic for the commons was premised on the ethic that all entities, whether human, nonhuman, animate, or inanimate, were inherently and innately valuable. Objects/sounds/concepts that were seen as detritus (in all its various meanings, including the often erased or stolen relief sculptures of Sheela na gigs, remnants from pre-Christian goddess culture) were offered space through visuals and sound.

mnemonic for the commons was exhibited at the Burren College of Art’s Newtown Castle with intuitive, improvised performances of field recordings from Burren rocks, streams, and sites transformed into haunting rhythmic melodies.