“Spirits of Irish Immigrants”

​This time of year is bringing to mind this framed art I have in storage that is “old” many times over. I had to ask myself, why is this old, “old” piece noteworthy now?  Of course the most timely and obvious reason could be that the celebration of the Irish and St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner. ( Not to mention that in Cincinnati it is 75 degrees on this day in the middle of February. …Am I to think that it is spring already? ) I could add to the reasons my life-long fandom with college basketball and the colleges noted in this blog that are participating in the present buildup to “March Madness” going on now.  All of those reasons make some sense, but for whatever reason I may find, the timing of it does feel connected and I will note that the remembrances of it that made me feel like pulling it out to share here in this collection of artwork came during a beautiful week hiking in Sedona, Arizona with my husband to celebrate our 31st Valentine’s Wedding anniversary. - - The hopeful post hiking part of our Arizona trip to include going to see the Bengals in the LVII Super Bowl in Phoenix was canceled from our Arizona travel arrangements.  Some say we should question the NFL referees about that. …Truly though, that is a happy-go-lucky comment about the NFL Refs because I was soon over the loss, even tough I do find the whole spectacle of the Super Bowl a curious reflection of the times of my life since, as my dad would often remind me, I was baptized on the very first Super Bowl Sunday so many years ago. ( Back then in the winter of 1967 it seems that no one hardly knew about it with tickets being only something like $12 and the stands only partially full; and the halftime show was a school marching band. )  But the real truth be told, whether a team wins or looses really doesn’t make that much of a difference in my life ( other than I wish all those involved well ).   For me the great value of our Arizona vacation this winter was found in the land, in the hiking through the incredibleness of that Sedona landscape.  It is in those kind of places and those kind of activities that I never fail to find some kind of peace or happiness, not just in feeling and seeing the fresh air and beauty of it all, but in uncovering the calm and inspired meditativeness it can bring.  Like so many who appreciate that region and others like it recognize, there is something awe striking about the land that you can especially feel in places like Sedona, a feeling that can make you feel empowered and humbled at the same time knowing that all the earth is filled with the spirits of those who have walked it before.  

In that spirit of reflection, when I got home from our travels, I made a trip to the back corners of our basement storage and was able to dig out this very old piece that I am finding seasonal this year.  That’s how most my creative motives start, I just go will a feeling of things that come to mind.  I go with what pulls my interest, and I do find that naturally it does happen to flow with the seasons and holidays in a personal way.  In this case for this blog, it is an old piece of my art that my dad gave to me in the late 1990’s after he got it freshly framed about 10 years after I made it.  The creation is based on something I made in the 1980’s when I was away at college and started a little business selling t-shirts and posters of the design. Though I wasn’t a student of art ( I would call myself “self-taught” ), as I have mentioned throughout my blogs, the creative drive has followed me as early as I can remember.

The project pictured here in this framed gift was one I did during my years at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The artwork is a quick, freehand illustration that I made-up about the bars surrounding the city campus that were very popular with the students during my days there. When I started college at 18 in 1985, the drinking age was 18 so most all the students could go to them. ( Today I believe that a good many of the bars noted might be torn down by now. )  In the picture I also included a graphic of a bowl of “Real Chili” which was an equally popular joint for the students to go for some late night eats after an evening bar hopping through the mostly very old, worn and torn, old-school bars in a neighborhood that obviously knew better and more prosperous times. In today’s terms they may best be described as “dive-bars”.  The names of the bars in my creation are written on pitchers of beer which are drawn in a series going gradually from full to empty. I created the artwork then had it printed on t-shirts as well as having posters made and for the most part enjoyed great success with it including having some of the bars hang my posters as art for the walls of their establishments.

Aside from being such a meaningful gift, this particular framed poster is singular to me because it is the only thing I have left of that artwork. For awhile I had a little extra inventory of posters, but the boxes I had left of my full color spectrum printed t-shirts I was casually told were stolen from my closet where I lived in Milwaukee with a gang of girls. ( I guess that it is possible that some others may have profited from them after I expended great effort to create & produce them, or maybe they were just distributed or sported for free, or it could be that they just somehow ended up in the trash. )  I do not really know what happened to the remaining inventory of t-shirts I was having success selling as I was never offered anymore information about them; and I never pursued further questioning about them being taken since at the time I discovered that they were gone I had already decided to continue my college education at Xavier University in my hometown.  Though of course the colorful t-shirts do not matter or make any difference to me now, needless to say however, when I received this almost forgotten one random old leftover poster freshly framed a decade after I created it, I found it such a thoughtful surprise.  After spending many years rolled-up in storage there were some wrinkles and a few slightly torn edges on the poster, but when my dad re-gifted it to me he told me that he and the framer he was working with both agreed that it looked good that way, that they both felt that the worn textures of the paper added to the art’s expressiveness and character and charm. I like it that way too.

It was my Dad who, in his characteristic generosity and support of those pursuing their dreams and a chance to use and develop their skills, was the sole investor who provided the production capital for my little business.  In the positive fashion that I knew, his excitement for me and the belief in the value of the creative and business experience to be gained and the lessons to be learned were mutually understood as worthwhile.  Today he is greatly missed after having to leave us due to cancer. It was in March of 2000 that we sadly said goodbye.

As I proceeded with this creative and business making work in those days way back then, it was my equally missed Grandma Margaret Mary McDevitt Breslin, my Dad’s mom, who I found even more excited about it all.  ​When I shared my endeavor with my Grandma I was quite taken by the interest she took in the project and of course her interest and encouragement of my efforts and industriousness with it as well.  When she first saw the posters & t-shirts she said multiple times over, “Oh Mary Christina, these are all mostly Irish names on here…” as she read them aloud.  As she was reading them, she expressed a spark of thoughtful enthusiasm as if she was familiar with the names as such and as if they had personal meaning to her because , in the big picture, she knew through her life experiences and the times in which she lived that many of the names on the piece were likely connected to her through a shared Irish heritage and a common journey to America.  Upon seeing the Irish representation in my imagery, it was clear to me that my Grandma, relatively speaking, had a much closer connection to understanding the experience of being an Irish immigrant or a descendant of Irish immigrants in her time than I could ever imagine, and maybe even more so in being a descendant of immigrants who also happened to, through trials and tribulations, became successful Irish American business people in the new land that they all collectively came to to put their dreams on the way that her family did in their founding of McDevitt’s Men’s Department Store ( …a “haberdashery” as their type of department store was called in its day. )  As was always the case with my Grandma for a young me, her intelligence, perspectives, interest & encouragement, and consistent loving support { similar to my Mom’s lovingness } meant the world to me as it remains with me.

​When I look back on this project that I did as a college student and the
value of the lessons learned at that place in time during the 1980's, I see them as complex in carrying a great deal of newfound excitement and fun with the discovery of so many friendly new connections and continuing creative possibilities alongside the repeated realization of a series of various not so friendly, seriously hard, life-changing realities encountered and learned some of which are still hard to process and harder to take.  My young "American Dreamer" little "side hustle" entrepreneurial enterprise most certainly did come to provide eye opening knowledge in those times as well as valuable reflections of history before me including a recognition of Irish families successfully establishing themselves in America and in the field of business; but unquestionably, the real treasure of this piece to me is undoubtedly the ongoing unconditional love and pride and belief in the aspiration of dreams shared with my Grandma and my Dad through the expression of the Spirits of Irish Immigrants.


“Spirits of Irish Immigrants”

I just remembered how I signed the art “Mary Christmas” since my Dad ( the sole investor in this project ) had endearing nick-names for all us kids in my big family and that was mine since I was born Christmas morning and my first name is actually “Mary”. 

​The list of bars noted here are: O’Donoghue’s Irish Pub, The Gym, The Green Tree, Harp n’ Shamrock, The Avalanche, Murphy’s Law, Thoma’s, Conway’s (2127 Wells, Milwaukee, Wis.), O’Paget’s & Speakeasy, MU: The Mug Rack ( which I think was a bar on campus ), Goodtime Charlie’s, Glocca Morra, The State House, Hegarty’s, Ardmore Bar, and then Real Chili which is a single restaurant (not a chain restaurant) that serves chili similar to Skyline Chili in my hometown of Cincinnati and is also similarly full of students in the late ( or early ) hours after a night on the town bar hopping.



As I was writing out this list of bar names this time around I thought to myself, “What is *Glocca Morra* anyway?” so since the internet has come into existence since the 1980’s, I Goggled it:

Q: Who, What, When, Where or Why is Glocca Morra?
A: It’s a fictional name about a fictional land that comes from the musical “Finian’s Rainbow”.

Wikipedia asks: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”
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Answer: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” is a popular song about a fictional village in Ireland, with themes of nostalgia and homesickness. It was introduced by Ella Logan in the original 1947 Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow.

Here is another new discovery for me and a link to the song in the 1968 Francis Ford Coppola movie Finian’s Rainbow with Fred Astaire and Petula Clark that my google search proceeded to direct me to.  I didn’t really know anything about the movie, or the story, until now. …As we all are likely ( or ‘unlike’-ly ) realizing these days, the internet can have a way of pulling one into colorful tales.  In this movie clip the female character is asked just before the closing song begins, “Sharon, where is Glocca Morra?” and she softly then replies, “Oh, well you see, it is always somewhere… Over there.”
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The about three minute You Tube movie clip highlights this spirit of Ireland and America and a charming older Fred Astaire as Finian.  It is all I know of the movie or the story even, and though quite dated, I still found the little video in and of itself quite poignant yet full of hope. It brought a tear to my eye:
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Finian’s Rainbow: “How are things in Glocca Morra”

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Both of my parent’s family trees are fully green with Irishness with extensions of family that came from the Emerald Isle to America to pursue a dream or create and build a life here. The McDevitt branch of my big Irish Family Tree ( my Grandma Margaret Mary McDevitt Breslin’s part of my family ) came from Ireland to America and eventually managed to establish themselves in business with McDevitt Department Store.

Above are a couple historical pictures of the stately McDevitt Department Store standing tall on the street corner in the days when business was up and thriving in the neighborhood of Walnut Hills in Cincinnati, Ohio …A district whose businesses for the most part would not survive past the changing landscapes and changing times of mid 20th century America as more and more populations with extra money to spend moved out to the expanding suburbs.

The iconic old beautiful building pictured that was McDevitt’s and distinguishes that part of town is still standing and after being vacant for decades I believe, has just recently been brought new life with the ongoing urban revival of the grand old neighborhood and its new existence as a craft brewery & bar called Esoteric.

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Another blog from late summer of 2024 that includes continued reflections on my grandmother:

"Hats On for Our Grandmothers, for Our Suffrage Era Ancestors, and for Ancient Columns of the Ionic Order"

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