This fern sculpture commission was purchased by the OPW and installed at the Botanic Gardens in Dublin.
My understanding is that Patrick Barry relocated to New Zealand in 2014.
Dicksonia antarctica, the soft tree fern or man fern, is a species of evergreen tree fern native to eastern Australia, ranging from south-east Queensland, coastal New South Wales and Victoria to Tasmania.
These ferns can grow to 15 m (49 ft) in height, but more typically grow to about 4.5–5 m (15–16 ft), and consist of an erect rhizome forming a trunk. They are very hairy at the base of the stipe (adjoining the trunk) and on the crown. The large, dark green, roughly-textured fronds spread in a canopy of 2–6 m (6 ft 7 in – 19 ft 8 in) in diameter. The shapes of the stems vary as some grow curved and there are multi-headed ones. The fronds are borne in flushes, with fertile and sterile fronds often in alternating layers.
The “trunk” of this fern is merely the decaying remains of earlier growth of the plant and forms a medium through which the roots grow. The trunk is usually solitary, without runners, but may produce offsets. They can be cut down and, if they are kept moist, the top portions can be replanted and will form new roots. The stump, however, will not regenerate since it is dead organic matter. In nature, the fibrous trunks are hosts for a range of epiphytic plants including other ferns and mosses.
The fern grows at 3.5 to 5 cm per year and produces spores at the age of about 20 years.
Reproduction by this species is primarily from spores, but it can also be grown from plantlets occurring around the base of the rhizome.
In cultivation, it can also be grown as a “cutting”, a method not to be encouraged unless the tree-fern is doomed to die in its present position. This involves sawing the trunk through, usually at ground level, and removing the fronds; the top part will form roots and regrow, but the base will die.
Today I used a 12 year old Sony VG10E camcorder that uses a crop sensor and produces JPEG rather than RAW images which imposes many limitations. To be honest the camera worked better than I had expected.
Ester Barrett was born in Limerick in 1979. Ester, a self-taught artist, started painting full time at the age of 15, studying the techniques of the Old Masters and tuition from artists such as the late Jack Donovan.. Ester attended a bronze casting workshop in Leitrim sculpture centre in November 2010 and then focused on mould making, metal work, etc, She casts her work alongside Tim Morris Seamus Connolly. Her work is both representational and impressionistic in painting and sculpture and includes figurative pieces.
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