TUAM BABIES NEED AN ENDURING REMINDER
Sculptor Connolly is raising funds to complete memorial to victims of scandal
ON the cold concrete floor of his studio, Jim Connolly is on his knees painstakingly sculpting, in clay, the creases in the shoes on the feet of his latest life-size statue.
At 83, the renowned sculptor should be sitting with his feet up by the hearth of his cosy Loop Head cottage.
With his sculptures dotting the land from east to west, his life’s work will stand forever.
Many, for example, will be familiar with his memorial to Éamon de Valera which stands in bronze near the Court House in Ennis, Co Clare – one of many publicly-commissioned works he has completed.
The clay statue from which the bronze de Valera work was forged now stands imposingly in the corner of Mr Connolly’s studio, watching him as he toils over his latest project. The surrounding walls are lined with the clay busts of the many figures Mr Connolly has sculpted over the years –the late broadcaster Gay Byrne prominent among them.
He need never work again, never mind for free. But sometimes Mr Connolly just can’t help it.
It was like that the day he heard Emma Mhic Mhathúna on the radio speaking of her devastation at the delayed cervical cancer diagnosis that took the life of the mother of five.
Emma, voice breaking in raw sorrow, told of her fear her youngest might not even remember what their mother looked like when they grew up. There and then Mr Connolly knew what to do.
Now, though their mother has tragically passed, the five Mhic Mhathúna children each have a bronze bust of their mother.
‘Now they’ll always know what their mother looked like,’ Mr Connolly says resolutely nodding towards the clay model of Emma he carved before forging the busts from it in bronze for her children.
It was the same when the Tuam babies scandal broke. Mr Connolly just couldn’t help it.
So he reached out to historian Catherine Corless – whose work uncovered that appalling chapter of Ireland’s hidden history – and now he’s halfway through a haunting life-size work depicting a nun tearing away a baby from a distraught mother.
Together they hope to install the work near the sewage tanks where the Tuam babies were interred. ‘We need now more than ever to keep the pressure on a new Government to ensure that justice is served to the Tuam Home babies, and all the survivors who were incarcerated in that institution,’ Ms Corless told the MoS.
So far Mr Connolly has raised about half of the cost of the bronze required from donations and half of the striking work is now cast in bronze.
The other half – the figure of the anguished mother pleading for her baby through the barred gates of the institution – is sculpted in clay and ready for casting once enough is raised to pay for the bronze.
It’s not cheap – about €50,000 more is needed and Mr Connolly has set up a gofundme appeal.
‘What happened in Tuam was monstrous and I am determined to have it marked permanently in everlasting bronze sculpture in a suitable public location,’ he said.
Jim’s funding appeal can be accessed at: