Sculptor Martha Cashman: ‘The power of the hammer and fire intrigued me and set me on course’

Martha Cashman has always been hands on. Growing up on a small holding in rural east Cork she was “happiest walking on the open earth” and “feeling the soil” between her fingers. Her uncle Mick Carey, the last blacksmith in Youghal, “our medieval town”, reminded her of “the materials I love to use”.

Cashman loved “the sparks, the twisting of metal, the smell. The power of the hammer and fire intrigued me and set me on course, knowing I too could give voice to something made from this magical material”.

Her grandfather worked in the brick factory in the town so “I suppose the attachment to clay started earlier than I’d thought” and her grandmother “taught me how to plant seeds, appreciate the joy of the seasons and all things growing symbiotically in nature”.

Hospitalised at seven for months, Cashman spent her time drawing and colouring. Her parents, living a distance away, “could only visit once or twice a week and had seven other children to care for”, but visitors brought pencils, crayons, books, art materials. “Even then I knew from that point this was something that would sustain me,” she says.

When she was nine, a beloved aunt died. Cashman was horrified to see her uncle and three brothers, “in delight of smashing everything”, throw her cherished china in a bin. “I nearly fainted, kicked up a fuss, packed our van with her belongings, and I still have a special ceramic vessel of hers. It sits on my bedside locker.”

At secondary school, “a stuffy, conventional convent”, all Cashman was “really interested in was art” but “we were never allowed to work with clay, as much as I begged, and with a brand new kiln locked away. It was painful and pushed me to work with clay in the future.”

After school, Cashman didn’t feel ready for art college, and sought a painting and decorating apprenticeship despite her career guidance teacher telling her it was a man’s job. She later worked in New York and Boston where she set up her own decorating business and where she loved visiting museums. “When I saw The Noguchi Museum in Queens something just clicked. I just thought this is it: spectacular sculptures, and the garden was pure Zen.”

​In 2002, when her father died, Cashman returned to Cork for a short break that has lasted 20 years. She began her art studies, at CSN College of Further Education, Waterford, where her ceramics tutor Stefanie Dinkelbach “really believed in me”.

Later, having graduated from Crawford College of Art & Design, Cashman developed her eco-awareness project, More Clay Less Plastic Ireland, “where I offer creative clay workshops with eco-related themes – wellness and team building in the workplace”.

She has also worked with fashion designers, and developed sculptural jewellery. Large sculptural works also “come naturally to me for some reason”.

Porcelain, especially, “works for me. It’s seductive. I roll it very thin and like how the light can travel through it. I also work with Raku firing. The work is removed from the kiln at 1,280 celsius, placed in a metal container with sawdust and this process determines the outcome of the colourful glazes.”

These open-air, colourful ceramics, ‘Bird Feeders’, based on pollinator flowers, Cashman hopes will “make a difference and help share a positive message to show kindness to ourselves and our environment”.

marthacashman.com

On show: Two to view

Sheila Rennick Bang It Out Rennick’s new work explores couples, one that are “at once engrossed and repelled by each other”. Her colourful canvases capture unsettling and humorous scenes in which her characters struggle with the situation that they are in, and explore “societal hierarchies and the patriarchy”.| Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin 8, until June 17

193rd RHA Annual Exhibition The RHA Annual, one of the most popular art exhibitions, includes emerging and established artists. Following a rigorous open submission process the chosen artists exhibit beside Academicians. This year the catalogue features a work by all of the 455 including Model Making by Zsolt Basti. RHA, Ely Place, Dublin 2, until July 30

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