West Cork is a cliche. Bainin-jumpered Germans paint iffy landscapes and scoff organic turnips, hippy wimmin with ropey plaits throw wobbly pots, crusties with three-legged dogs and Eton accents sit on the sides of mountains and eat more magic mushrooms than is strictly good for them. West Cork is also a virus, a place of infectious light and watery vistas. Once its lovely sickness enters your bones, cures are rare : the condition is usually terminal.
West Cork can prove repressive, a bleak and boring nowhere where the net curtains twitch and the natives speak out of the sides of their mouths about flighty blow-ins with hairy notions and more money than sense. West Cork can also feel uniquely free, a do-what-u-like haven for square pegs dismayed by society's round holes.
The West Cork you'll find depends on what you expect of it and, crucially, what you bring to it. For going on 30 years, it has been a magnet for creative types, some from near, some from far, some rich and some poor. For the well-to-do the, David Puttnams and the Brian Dennehys, it's an atmospheric bolthole where you can happily skull pints with the nattering locals and forget about the nauseous obsequiousness of luvviedom. For the hard-up, freaked-out Europeans and art college kids not cut out for jobs, it's a place where the pound stretches further and when it runs out, you can always eat the scenery.
Mind you, you'd need more than a few spare shekels if you're considering buying property in West Cork these days. Around Baltimore and Schull, two of the most sought-after spots for runaway creative types, house prices are now almost on a par with what you'd pay in leafy Dublin 4. God be with the days when a beardie sculptor could flog his Rotterdam flatlet and still have change left after buying a dreamy cottage on the Beara peninsula.
The prices haven't stopped a sort of creative cluster forming in West Cork, but these day's it's tougher for younger artists to set up permanent bases. Newcomers now are more likely to be bound for flash holiday homes, the type of developments that send environmentalists screaming for their tranquilisers.
West Cork's cultural renown will get a measure of official recognition if the plan to set up an off-campus base for Cork's Regional Technical College goes ahead. The RTC has been an innovative force in the arts in the south and it's seen as a natural progression for the college to offer an arts course based in Skibbereen. The new Minister of Education, Michael Martin, has pledged his support and meetings will take place in September.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been chewing the fat with a motley crew of West Cork people. It's a broad spectrum, the interviewees united only by an involvement with the arts. Here are five lives:
The Native Son
Peadar O Riada, son of Sean, has lived all his life in Coolea. He's a musician, traditional and otherwise, and a maker of TV documentaries and dramas for RTE and T na G. Coolea, he believes, is intrinsically different from other parts of West Cork: "We don't really get tourists here or that many people moving into the area. We're at the side of the MacGillicuddy Reeks and hot air falls as rain, a sort of horizontal rain, so it's damp and dull here most of the year. Twelve months around Coolea would be a fairly stiff test if you weren't from the area!' How do you deal with it? "We're bred to it and we like it. We're a fairly private people and there's a hard-working ethic here. We keep ourselves pretty busy."
Coolea is doing well, thanks to all that hard work, but there are problems. "There's been a lot of depopulation in the hills and because of that, some of the small schools are under threat. But generally, the area is doing well."
Though friendly, Coolea is curiously insular, with peculiar customs all of its own. When Coolea men marry, they sometimes take the wife's surname. "People from outside can be confused by the place. They come and they say `but there's nothing here' and it's true in a way. More than anything, it's a state of mind." Peader is currently completing a major documentary that been five years in the making. It's about "life, nature and people" and is centred around Coolea. It'll premiere on T na G.
The American
Christine Svane O'Hehir is a performance artist, writer and dancer. A native of San Franciso, she moved to Clonakilty just over a year ago with her husband Billy, a musician with Irish-American roots. The couple had been living in Amsterdam: "When we got to Clon, it felt like we'd just started breathing again, it was like getting out of prison. Amsterdam has its liberal reputation - the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll - but the culture there is quite withheld. There's a terrible politeness and Clon was a great change from that." Arriving in the summer was a problem, what with the tourist rental rates, but the couple eventually settled. "The winter here turned out to be kind of wonderful. But I must admit that by the end of it, I felt it was starting to drag on just a little! I had to spend money I didn't have on a computer so I could e-mail my friends." She's now trying to set up a cultural centre in Clon. The O'Hehirs have been amazed at the lack of facilities for artists in a town with such a heady reputation for creativity: "One of the main things we want to do is set up a programme of after-school activities for teenagers. There's absolutely nothing for them to do here bar going and eating a plate of chips. It's terrible: they leave secondary school, they leave town and they never come back." But the reality of arts funding in Ireland is starting to sink in: "It's very difficult and we've also come up against small town politics, which can be very intricate and dense. It's disheartening but at the same time, there are great people here who are offering support."
Will the O'Hehirs stay in Clon? "As of today, yes, we're staying. But who knows? It's touch and go."
The Continental
Outside Bantry, on the road to the Beara Peninsula, an old church has been saved from the foggy ruins of time and magicked into the Rooska Arts Centre. Three artists, Jill Gillknebl, Thomas Kay and Lisa Oeschter, are in residence. They paint and sculpt, dance and make music. Lisa, 50 years old and originally from Switzerland, has been here for 14 years: "I'd spent most of my life living in big cities, mainly Zurich, and I'd had enough. When I found this place, I knew it was ideal. If you're looking for a contemplative environment, you won't get better." She quickly felt at home. "The neighbours are very lovely people. They're friendly to foreigners in a way you don't get elsewhere." Not that it's been Easy Street all the way.
"Art is difficult as a business. It takes a lot of hard work make a living." And there are the natural drawbacks of remote rural living. "What I miss about living in cities is the way you get to meet different artists all the time and the feedback you get from them. It can be quite hard to keep working without that interaction. Founding the Rooska Arts Centre helped: "It's a beautiful old Church of Ireland building but it was in bits and pieces when we took it over back in 1989. It's taken years of work to get where we are now." Lisa is unlikely to leave West Cork: "There are bad days and there are problems but we're in a spot that's perfect for creative work. There's a quality of life here and the light is good."
The Irish immigrant
Jackie Butler worked in the National Sculpture Factory in Cork and the Riverrun Gallery in Limerick before moving to Skibbereen's West Cork Arts Centre three and a half years ago: "If I didn't like it, I don't think I'd still be here. There's always a buzz and noise about the place." The Arts Centre is one of the busiest of its scale in the country. "Most of the top Irish names have shown here. We've had everyone. Tony O'Malley, Bill Crozier, Alice Maher. Maybe they show down here because it gives them a chance to get down to West Cork for a couple of days!' Situated in an old bank, the Centre is busy year-round, with as many locals dropping in as tourists: "It's a pretty even mix between the two and most of the people who buy art here tend to be Irish." The bleak midwinter that other West Corkers sometimes complain about doesn't seem to be a factor in bustling Skibbereen. "I'm always waiting for that fallow period, when I can recharge and gather my thoughts, but it never seems to arrive!" The Centre is kept busy largely due to the input of artists based in West Cork: "There is an impression that West Cork is about crafts and there is a lot of work done in that area. But there's a lot more. Painting is really big out here, it makes up the vast chunk of visual art. Maybe only four or five per cent of it is three-dimensional. Who knows why."
The Englishman
"I arrived in Clonakilty on a Wednesday or a Thursday and by the Saturday I was running around the streets in a loincloth with flames exploding everywhere," says Manny Lange, who has for seven years been working with Craic Na Coillte, the Clon-based street theatre group.
Having grown up in Cambridgeshire, Manny dabbled in theatre around the UK and was getting increasingly cheesed off when a fateful postcard arrived from a friend in West Cork: "It looked like a nice place so I thought I'd give it a go."
When he arrived, Craic Na Coillte had just been formed. They've gone on to win much acclaim. "It's been a long, slow development. The toughest thing, obviously enough, is the money, funding. But we're getting by."
Manny has grown used to the rhythms of life in Clon: "We're usually really busy in the summer. We're kept going right though. But the winter is a lot more relaxed, you notice a change of pace." He enjoys the dark months: "I have a theory that the worst thing about the winter is the way people complain about it all the time. Everyone's moaning that they've got no money and there's nothing to do and all that. But I always seem to like it. We have a samba drumming group that gets together and we sit around and play and dream about tropical climes." Those long January evenings must fly past.
Craic Na Coillte is currently working on a project for next year's St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. Its theme is magic.
