Eamonn O’Doherty

Eamonn at the relocation of Anna Livia to the "Croppy Acre" a mass grave of fighters executed in the 1798 Rebellion

I was sad to hear of the passing of Eamonn O’Doherty at the age of 72 from throat cancer. Whilst remembered for his art and public sculptures he was an Architect by profession and was my Studio master when I was studying at Bolton Street.

Eamonn, who was born in Derry in 1939, was responsible for some of the best-known and loved works of public art around the country, including the Quincentennial Sculpture in Galway's Eyre Square, the James Connolly Memorial across from Dublin's Liberty Hall, the Great Hunger memorial in Westchester, New York, - and, of course, the Anna Livia fountain (aka, The Floozy In The Jacuzzi), which was relocated to Croppy Acre Memorial Park near Heuston Station last December.

His friend and fellow artist Robert Ballagh is quoted in the Irish Independent paying tribute to Eamonn;

"People who ramble around our streets will be very familiar with Eamonn O'Doherty's work as the creator of extraordinary public sculptures. But those of us in the arts business also know of his talents as a painter and a graphic artist.”


'The Tree of Gold' on the Central Bank plaza on Dame Street, Dublin

"Eamonn will be remembered for his work. His piece 'The Tree of Gold' on the Central Bank plaza on Dame Street is a great example and is important in the context of the city as all sorts of people, from political protesters to punks, gather under the shade of Eamonn's tree.”


The Anna Livia monument is a personification of the River Liffey (Abhainn na Life in Irish) which runs through the city. Anna Livia Plurabelle is the name of a character in James Joyce's Finnegan’s Wake who also embodies the river. The river is represented as a young woman sitting on a slope with water flowing past her. She is familiarly known by the people of Dublin as the Floozy in the Jacuzzi, or the Whore in the Sewer (pronounced hoo-er to rhyme with sewer) among other names. Both nicknames were encouraged by Eamonn who was no respecter of formality.


At the casting of Anna Livia in 1988

Like myself, Bobby Ballagh didn’t qualify as an architect and lived near to Dublin’s Bolton Street College (now the DIT) in Broadstone. I have a fond memory of Bobby regaling me in a local hostelry with the tale of how he didn’t become an architect. He was playing in the Chessmen Showband and kept missing lectures and project deadlines. Things came to a head when his Studio master Pearse Mc Kenna (brother of the actress Siobhan McKenna and also one of my lecturers) confronted him and ended up breaking a T-Square over his head! That was the very moment when Bobby decided he was going to be an artist, not an architect!


The Great Hunger memorial in Westchester, New York. It depicts an Irish family walking away from their home in the 1840's to make the dangerous voyage to America in the "coffin ships."

For many years a senior lecturer in architecture at Dublin Institute of Technology, O’Doherty also lectured at the University of Jordan, University of Nebraska and École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. He retired to make art full time in 2002, and his work was most recently exhibited at the Graphic Studio Gallery in Dublin.

O’Doherty was also an accomplished photographer, and had an abiding interest in traditional music. In the 1970s he collaborated with Allen Feldman to produce The Northern Fiddler (1979), for which he wrote the introduction and contributed photographs and drawings. Indeed I remember hearing Allen play and introducing many in Ireland to the folk music traditions of the Appalachian Mountains which has its origins in the musical traditions of Irish and Scottish immigrants. This was the musical nursery which gave birth to Bluegrass and Country and Western. A musician himself Eamonn played the flute and also briefly managed the folk group Sweeney’s Men.


Eamonn O’Doherty's marquette for a Famine Memorial featured at “An Gorta Mór – Ireland’s Great Hunger” Exhibition in New York last year

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/gorta-mor-irelands-great-hunger.html

Eamonn is survived by his wife Barbara Ní Brolocháin, son Eoin and daughters Aisling and Megan.


Eamonn with his wife Barbara Ní Brolocháin and artist Charles Harper at an opening of Charles's exhibition in Wexford earlier this year

As for Eamonn, a talented artist, sculptor, photographer, musician, architect and a sociable individual, with his sculpture ubiquitous in Ireland it could be said of him as it was of another architect;

"Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice"

For more on Bolton Street see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bob-geldof-and-me.html

The James Connolly Memorial across from Dublin's Liberty Hall