“Some left before the famine, others during and after,” she explained. “Our roots are Celtic. I would love to make contact with family members on this and future visits.” Erin indulged in her love of walking in the Boyne Valley, which also gave her artistic inspiration. “I love the land and the people here. I've never met a friendlier culture,” she said. “The land is so alive. The neolithic sites are incredibly magical. I am at home here.” Back in the States, Erin is working on her Masters degree at Naropa University in Oakland, California, where she is studying “the indigenous mind”--working to decolonize the mind and return to the understandings of our indigenous ancestors. Erin painted the lodge during the summer months. Lodge owners Dave Harries and Leonard Kinsella both say they are thrilled with the result.

 

Faraway Places Influence Artist's Unique Vision

by Mary Maraghy
Reprinted from The Clay County Line, October 11, 2006

The Middleburg Native is pursuing studies about her tribal ancestors.

PROFESSIONAL artist Erin Langley, who grew up in Middleburg, moved to Oakland, California to pursue graduate studies at Naropa University. Here, this 1998 graduate of St. Johns Country Day School is working on a Master's Degree in Indigenous Mind. The program is designed to help westerners reconnect with their tribal ancestors' way of life.

“It involves connecting to nature,” she said. “Seeing myself in nature helps me see more clearly in general. Seeing clearly and rendering what I see is the key to good art.”

The title of her thesis is “Reinstating the Role of Community Dreaming Using Traditional Protocol and Open Source Technology.” The work calls society to return to the ancient practice of sharing their dreams and piecing them together to make adjustments for the sustained balance of one's culture.

Her parents reminisce that when she was a toddler, she made three-dimensional pop-up greeting cards, and signed her Noah's ark picture twice to correspond with pairs of animals depicted.

Langley visited her parents' home in Middleburg recently after a three-month ancestral journey to Ireland  to research her Celtic culture. Celtic people, she said, were astronomers who devised amazing calendars. They were great craftsmen and warriors, fierce, brave, and hot-headed.

“I learned that I have a home and it is in Ireland. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I could feel it. It's as though my bones are made of the place.”

While in Ireland, the owners of the hostel she stayed in hired her to paint a mural on a lodge wall. The map of historic places was featured recently in the Drogheda Independent newspaper in County Meath.

Langley works as a commissioned artist in San Francisco, having trained under muralist Lynne Rutter. Langley has also taught indigenous science and nature-based math in California high schools.

At her parents' home recently, paintings and drawings lined her childhood bedroom. Her favorite media are acrylics, oil pastel, and oil paints. She picked up a beach ball sized sculpture. “Sculptures of Platonic solids,” she explains as though it were an everyday household item. Her grandmother, Ellie Waldron, who lives and works in Fleming Island, beams with pride when discussing her granddaughter. “She has a God-given gift in art. She's traveled and studied and researched. If she has an interest in something, she delves in deeply. She's just an absolutely tremendous person, extraordinary in every sense of the word,” Waldron said. “She wants to impact lives and make the world a better place.”

Erin Langley's Platonic solid scuplture