Once upon a time, teenage boys liked to collect stamps. Other people collected coins, postcards, or cards from cigarette packets. Some people pinned dead butterflies on cloth and put them in glass frames. 
Personally I never felt an urge to collect things. I'm not naturally a hoarder. In fact, I often long for a minimalist lifestyle, though life is far too interesting and complex for such simplicity!
About 18 years ago, a nice English man invited me to lunch with his family. I didn't realise at the time that I would marry him... and that these nice people would become my English in-laws. 
The house we had lunch in was full of clocks. When I asked about this it became clear that one couldn't have too many clocks. In fact, everyone seemed to be an avid collector of something: antique pencils, thimbles, fridge magnets, dolls' houses, anything to do with ducks, jelly moulds, wind-up toys... the list was endless. 
Someone turned to me kindly and asked, 'And what do you collect, Madeleine?'
I was tempted to answer, 'Men' – but, since this was not true and they were not yet familiar with my sense of humour – I thought better of it.
I had a lot of books, but since these were a motley crew, and not First Editions, I felt they didn't quite count as collectibles. 
'Nothing,' I replied, a little abashed. Perhaps my life was missing something?
More time with my husband-to-be meant many trips to car boot sales, junk shops, salvage yards and antique shops in England and later in Ireland, while he acquired things and I plotted to get rid of them. (Oh, the high of delivering a bunch of stuff to the Cancer Ireland Charity shop!) 
But one day, I found a few Babycham glasses at Rathcormac Car Boot Sale. Small, delicate, gold-rimmed, each emblazoned with a giddy cartoon deer in mid-leap, the glasses reminded me of my first ever alcoholic drink and I had to have them. 
Babycham was a tiny, ladylike bottle of sugary fizz – an acceptable and indeed glamorous drink for women in 1970's Ireland. The bottle was cutesy and glamorous at the same time, with a pleated silvery-blue foil sockette on the bottle top. 
Now I've got ten Babycham glasses I suppose I have to admit I've joined the ranks of collectors, though I'm a mere spring chicken at this stuff, compared to the greats. It's probably heresy to suggest that ten is enough, but I think it is. 
One of the best birthday presents I ever got was from my friend Colette Sheridan, who gave me the little Babycham deer that's at the front of my photo. I love it.

For Irish Car Boot Sales, check out http://collectireland.wordpress.com/car-boot-sales

I’m an agnostic. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t. I’d like to believe in something beyond the secular, something amazing that would ground me and simultaneously uplift the old psyche... 

Satori.

Enlightenment.

Understanding.

In my youth, religion provided none of these. I respect those who have genuinely-held religious beliefs – but I don’t. The Catholicism I was taught made no sense to me so I rejected it. Don’t get me started on the subject of Limbo…

When I was eight years old I wanted to be a nun. By the time I was 12, I wanted to be a prostitute. My understanding of what either of these vocations entailed was vague, but it was clear I’d made a choice and religion wasn’t it.

The current exhibition at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is called ‘The Sacred Modernist – Josef Albers as a Catholic Artist’.

When I was younger, the religiosity of this title would have made me blench, perhaps even recoil in horror.

But I’ve mellowed somewhat over the years, so, despite the religious label, I tootled in for a look.

I’m glad I did.

Josef Albers was a German artist and educator, born in Germany in 1888. He studied art in Berlin, Essen and Munich before attending the prestigious Weimar Bauhaus School, where he was first a student and then a teacher. When the Bauhaus was closed in 1993 due to Nazi pressure, he was forced to move to America with his wife. He taught in Black Mountain College, Carolina, and later at Yale and kept on working as an artist until he died.

As well as being famous for his art, his work as an educator was hugely influential on the way art is taught today.

The image, above, is a stained glass assemblage (Untitled, 1921, Glass, wire and metal, set within a metal frame).

This is a very early work. Albers made it while a student, using fragments of bottles he found in the local dump since he was initially too poor to buy art supplies. Plus ça change – and hurrah for recycling!

It seems to me that all of the elements Albers would later develop and refine are here. I love this piece. It seems so fresh and modern it could have been made yesterday. My photograph does not do it justice.

Tautonym (B) 1944, Oil on masonite (below) is another work that greatly appealed to me.

(Ok, for some reason I can't bung it in here - I have to learn how to do that...!!)

In his later years Josef Albers devoted his time to hundreds of paintings he called ‘Homages to the Square’. He began these paintings in 1950 when he was 62 and continued until his death at age 88, in 1976. The curator’s notes say:

“He never tired of creating new ‘colour climates’ and did not believe there were right or wrong colour systems so much as endless possibilities for visual excitement.”

And here’s the bit I like most:

‘For twenty-six years, the artist deliberately stayed at a remove from the trends of the art world and focused on what he believed was everlasting. When asked how he chose his colours, Josef would reply, “I work and I work and I work, I try this tube and that, I compare a Mars Yellow made by Windsor & Newton to one made by Grumbacher, and then I look up and I thank God”.’

Persistence, hard work, independent thought, endless possibilities, joy. These are things I can believe in.

'The Sacred Modernist – Josef Albers as a Catholic Artist’.
Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, Ireland.
T+ 353 21 4901844/[email protected]

I'm absolutely delighted to be short-listed again this year in the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen Short Story Competition.


My entry in the Powers/Irish Times Short Story Competition 2012 has reached the long list. It's a very lengthy long list, not surprising as there were 4,200 entries! The winner of the single prize of €10,000 will be announced on 19th May.