13 Days of Sheela Na Gig: Project Sheela + Croning Collective

Yesterday, I talked a bit about Project Sheela, a street art collaborative started by two Irish feminist artists in 2020. Every year since then, they’ve used the week that begins with International Women’s Day to unveil new work. The second site for 2024 is the National Museum of Ireland’s Museum of Decorative Arts and History. The special subject of this new piece is designer and architect Eileen Gray.

Much of Project Sheela’s work is about marking places where women have suffered. But these artists also leave their mark at places where women have worked to make change. This new piece is both a testament to Gray’s accomplishments and an acknowledgement of what she confronted working in the male-dominated realms of Modernism. I encourage you to check out what Project Sheela has to say on their Instagram post about the new installation. I also invite you to look at these chairs Eileen Gray designed. Did you know about Eileen Gray before today? I did not.

I stumbled across Project Sheela while doing research for the second issue of Croning. What I love about this endeavor is how these artists use a very old symbol to make meaning in the contemporary world. The ceramic sculptures they create are beautiful, but they are also confrontational. Whatever the earliest Sheela Na Gigs might have meant, these Sheelas claim space as much as planting a flag does. They call attention to women’s history and the reality of women today while provoking a visceral response in the viewer—a response that might require some effort to understand.

When I reached out to see if Project Sheela might like to collaborate with the Croning Collective as we started working with Sheela Na Gig, I mentioned that I was thinking about making a Sheela stencil to include with the print zine. Project Sheela suggested that Croning readers could use this stencil to tag locations important to women’s history in their own communities. I loved this idea. I don’t know if this is a testament to my impulsive spending habits or a sure sign that I am down with the cause, but I bought a secondhand Cricut machine to make the mylar stencils that are included with the print edition of Croning’s second issue.

It occurred to me yesterday, as I was making my first foray into street art (pure slapstick, by the way) that crones throwing up Sheelas around town might not want to share what they’ve done on their own social media accounts. Feel free to send your images and stories to the Croning Collective (croningcollective@gmail.com) and let us know how you would like to be attributed—if you would like to be attributed at all.

If you haven’t purchased the Spring 2024 issue of Croning, but you are a paying subscriber, there’s a graphic you can use to create your own Sheela stencil below.