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Bann Déanta (performance art)

Bann Déanta is the name of a Gaelic Diva invoked by the fairy women in Away With the Fa*ries (see below).

In our human world, this archetype comes to life on the stage & in the streets as Zaelí ‘draws her down’ through a blend of song, spectacle, and spoken word.

If Bann Déanta were a Catholic thing (which,,, everything kind of is if you give it enough time), she might be the patron saint of “women at the second bridge” — giving what is on the surface simply a playful cabaret moment, while opening reflection on the specifically female terror of journeying from girlhood to Elderdom.

Bann Déanta draws from Zaelí’s experience coming of age under the canopy of Burlington, Vermont’s lush & chaotic late-90’s music scene, interning in the iconic offices of Big Heavy World, Good Citizen Magazine, and 96.7 FM The Pulse. Channeling those local legends encountered there — among them the Austin sisters, James Kochalka Superstar, Andrew Smith — the edgier side of BTV’s Phish&Bernie glory days glows through each set of Bann Déanta’s signature “mantric ceol”.

A performance piece, an improv act, a MIDI-driven karaoke moment; an AI-curious love letter, a neighborhood in-joke, a bachelorette, a layering of literal projections — Bann Déanta booking inquiries can be sent via the Contact page.

The Happy Óinseach (podcast)

Currently only available for Patreon subscribers, The Happy Óinseach celebrates the wisdom of humility & a perverse pleasure in suspecting that no full truth may ever fit inside one human’s head — especially not Zaelí’s, which is already too full of giggly recollections about all her stupidest choices & most hilarious delusions, as shared in a casual storytelling format with both American & far-flung friends.

Listen to these voices of reason talk each other out of writing beautiful memoir pieces, poignant op ed essays, award-winning screenplays & endearing viral vids where they might feel tempted to claim they have Learned Something // that that Something can be transmitted through adequate explanation.

Is there a sprinkling of the Irish language to help dull the shine off some of those notions? Scaití.

Hybrasil House (relational aesthetics, assemblage art, dialogical essay collection)

Art therapy meets eco therapy meets ancestral veneration in this Oldenburgean “third place” — a half-acre residential campus on the edge of Austin, Texas, where Zaelí & her guests swap insights on their desire to cultivate village in a multicultural world, while making beauty out of broken household items & creek-culled trash.

Inspired by Zaelí’s family heritage as the quintessential hosts to scholarly & artistic visitors of the legendary Blasket Islands, Hybrasil House enters questions of community, survival, heritage, and hope through imaginings of that rugged Irish isle and the stories it safeguarded for generations today.

She Shed Hypno (micro essay collection)

Evolved from a working client practice suspended during Covid lockdown, She Shed Hypno has become a popular series of thought-provoking prompts & mnemonic resources for identifying the link between two growing epidemics: body dysmorphia & ecological anxiety.

With the goal of both disseminating & collecting relevant data points, SSH is at once a research project, an interactive memoir, and a poetic playground for the earthbred imagination.

Away With the Fa*ries (performance art)

Away With the Fa*ries is a live, bilingual storytelling experience showcasing a traditional Gaelic perspective on modern mental health, with special attention to body dysmorphic, postpartum, and personality-based disorders.

In offering this harrowing yet humorous tale of abduction by the wise & mischievous beings of the Otherworld (a supernatural dimension of Irish lore), the audience is invited to re-enter their own stories of confusion, torment, and lost time with a renewed sense of acceptance & possibility.

The Incorrigible Nymph at Battle Bend: An Exploration of Unconditional Love (relational aesthetics, performance art)

Roving the Williamson Creek in litter-based ‘couture’, the character of an eternally springing sprite who could love any body of water — however polluted — seduces whomever she comes across into revealing their favorite spots, deepest fears, and unconscious sentiments for the sediments of this most essential element.

Drawing lighthearted, non-preachy attention to the actual condition of Austin’s watershed, famous for its beloved urban springs, this intermittent and ongoing project urges conversation about the effect our rapidly growing waste must have on the wildlife Texans so naturally cherish.

Prayer Hands (living sculpture at Hybrasil House)

Comprised of shattered granite that was once the top of an engraved communion table, Prayer Hands is an invitation to intuitively rearrange the pieces into new formations, as a means of practicing empty-mind, drawing inducing trance, facilitating time outdoors, and routinely dwelling in reflection of Ancestral experience.

The communion table, which had been installed into the granite sub-floor of her kitchen by a previous owner, could only be removed by sledgehammer. 

At the time of these renovations in 2016, Zaelí found the table to be incredibly creepy, and preferred it as raw material for path-making throughout the yard. 

The pieces spent four years dispersed throughout both sides of the half-acre property, until, during the Covid pandemic of 2020+, Zaelí decided to dig around and gradually bring them back together, originally with the hope of reassembling the prayer hands image.

“It took me about eight months to accept that it would never go back together the way it was,” she reflects in her Artist Statement for the work’s inaugural exhibit, Violet Lemonade.

“I use it now as a meditative tool, a way of exercising my revised intention to be grateful for the spiritual traditions of my ancestors — which got them through pain I can barely imagine — while at the same time acting out my right to direct a new relationship with the rituals and icons passed down to me.”

Prayer Hands is currently in transition to become a permanent mosaic for The Keening Corner, another Hybrasil House installation.

We’ll Pray For You (performance art)

Retired since lockdown — this interactive, stand up-driven monthly showcase hosted & produced by Zaelí at Austin’s iconic Coldtowne Theater let seasoned performers & innocent audience members collaborate in moments of deep cathartic reconciliation (and communal pizza consumption), through sermons, confessions, and punchline penance.

Brigid’s Mantle (living sculpture garden at Hybrasil House)

— A daily practice in showing up for the village by first showing up for her own mental grooming and sensual delight, this mini sculpture garden / fairy village is an altar-like externalization of Zaelí’s spiritual intentions, boundaries, and taste.

Using found objects and a steady patch of Earth, Zaelí visits this spot every day — sometimes to embellish it, sometimes to clear it, sometimes simply to “de-leaf” (remove unintentional fallen debris) — as a performative act of self-devotion that contradicts the habit of self-abandonment instilled by the unrooted society in which she (we) were raised.