Exhibition of works by Cork couple, who met on Insta, and now live in former church

Over homemade scones and coffee in their unique home – a former 19th-century Protestant church in Coachford – sculptor Michael Quane and his artist wife, Johanna Connor, talk about their art and the dynamic between them.

The couple, who met on Instagram, are exhibiting at the Lavit Gallery.

They both work from the renovated building at their home, which has a gallery space as well as studios.

Michael has done much of the renovation work himself. The building measures 4,000 square feet. He bought it in 1994, and says nobody else wanted it.

He paid £24,000 for it and has made converting it a life project, with ongoing work and plans for the future. Everything is on a vast scale compared to the spaces that most people live in. Both artists say it’s an inspiring space in which to work.

The exhibition space shows Michael’s sculptures on plinths while Johanna’s pencil drawings adorn the white walls.

Michael is best known for his arresting stone sculptures of the human form connecting with quadrupeds, such as ‘Fallen Horse and Rider’ in Midleton, ‘Horses and Riders’ at the Mallow roundabout, and ‘Figure Talking to a Quadruped’ at UCC, as well as his timber sculpture of a life-sized diving figure hanging from the Farmgate Cafe in the English Market,.

He started following Johanna on social media during covid - he was impressed by her posts about her family in Schull.

Johanna, daughter of artist Pat Connor and Edele, who used to run a bakery, described a life involving lots of art and food.

“I was working with horses at the time, and I was really interested in Michael’s work because so much of his carvings involve horses,” Johanna says.

When she asked Michael about his fascination with horses, he said it was a long story and asked for her email address. They started emailing each other.

Three years after first meeting on social media, Michael and Johanna got married in 2023.

“I was in my sixties when we got married,” says Michael, who had been married before and has two grown-up children.

“At my age, I’m no longer a work-in-progress, whereas when you’re younger, you’re still developing.”

The sculptor, originally from Douglas, its to being “emotionally, physically and psychologically exhausted” having been working flat out since covid without a break.

“I need a spell whereby I can go back into the creative cave and see what comes out of it.

“Also, there are things that happened physically such as a sore wrist which comes from over-use.”

Michael can often work ten-hour days. “I’ve come to the end of that road now. I just need to recharge.

“Before I met Johanna, I was on my own, going at my own pace. Now, it’s different. There’s a dynamic between us. We energise each other. That can have its downside as well. One of us might be brimful of energy and the other, not. But it’s better for us to be working together.

“Johanna is absolutely brilliant at organising things. And we’re very encouraging towards each other. I don’t think either of us ever comes away from a conversation together feeling a bit deflated.”

A graduate of the Crawford College of Art and Design, who also studied science for a year at UCC, Michael has an enquiring mind and is fascinated by the sciences.

Johanna studied painting at the Limerick School of Art and Design. She worked in theatre design for a while and was in much demand, deg her first show (At Swim Two Birds) at the Abbey Theatre at the age of 25. She moved to London to check out the theatre design scene there.

When Johanna discovered she was pregnant, she returned to Ireland. She was very sick having been born with a twisted gut. “A twisted gut and pregnancy don’t go hand in hand,” she says, adding she was in terrible pain. She nearly died and had to have two-thirds of her small intestine cut out. She lost the baby. “It was all about the baby, never about the mother.”

Johanna was in a coma for two weeks and was in hospital for six months, recovering.

As she slowly regained her strength, she had an urge to sit on a horse and she went on to work for an American couple, looking after their horses, in Baltimore in West Cork, for 12 years.

When Johanna’s own three beloved horses eventually died, she rang a friend in desperation, asking what would she do. He said she should go back to college and get a Masters in art. “So I did that, at the Crawford.”

Johanna had always loved drawing. 

“But I couldn’t make it a focal point or an end in itself.” 

However, Michael encouraged his wife to draw, saying it is an end in itself. And so, Johanna has a body of work of intricate pencil drawings “of things I see, that are sort of broken or forgotten or unseen by others.” Michael, she says, is a dinger at coming up with catchy titles for her drawings.

The state of the world impinges on Michael. The sculptures he is showing at the Lavit are about the idea of belonging.

“Belonging is one of those gateway words and concepts,” he says. “We begin to belong as soon as we’re born. We belong to a family, a country, a God, and all those things we consider to be identifiers. Those ideas were influenced by the war in Gaza. What goes on in the world influences me greatly through my work.”

For Johanna, art is something that allows her to escape from a world that is often overwhelming.

The exhibition continues until June 14