The Wishing Hand – a thumb-in-a-million art piece by offbeat artisan Linda Brunker – welcomes the curious to Dublin’s Ministry of Education. Thus, it not only provides Ireland’s youngsters with a heavy-handed message about the potential of the human spirit, it also teaches them about the importance of oversized roadside architecture.
A bronzed meditation on life and love, The Wishing Hand also gives a middle-finger to the establishment. The locals must’ve thought all their wishes had come true when it was installed one salubrious morn in 2001, but it looks pretty heavy, so it must’ve been all hands on deck that day!
Stoic and detached, with an unyielding fetishism for biological hyperrealism, The Wishing Hand can, at first, come across as a little lifeless. The term ‘corporate art’ prances upon the tip of my tongue although this is, perhaps, unfair. One can only truly appreciate this masterpiece after a moment of quiet meditation.
It’s only then, as the light dances across the fingernails, that Linda’s trademark style comes to the fore. The Wishing Hand becomes and ode to nature. It sings songs of water and wind and fire and, dare I say it, hedonistic eroticism.
It mourns, like the rest of us, for a simpler time.
“My work comes from a place where art, science, nature and the human spirit meet,” Linda pointed out. “Our world is fascinating at every level, from microscopic organisms to the galaxy that surrounds us. I am becoming more and more aware of what many traditional cultures knew – that all things are connected. This work is the product of my continual explorations of the natural and spiritual world around me.”
I was struggling to put my finger on it, Linda, but that was just what I was about to say!
The Handmaid’s Tale
Visitors should note that there is no left hand – but that’s all right! The nearby tribute to Luke Kelly is just a head, after all, so maybe the locals are spreading massive dismembered body parts across Dublin to scare off the English or something.
The Wishing Hand does, however, go hand-in-hand with other massive mitts such as Entrust, La Mano, Bird in Hand, Monumento A La Paz and, well The Mitt. I’ve re-used the same jokes in pretty much every one of those entries, so maybe I should put a metacar-pause on visiting Big Hands for a while.
The Wishing Hand was conceived as a hands-on exhibit. Guests are invited to climb atop the piece’s vast palm and sit, cloaked in the unnerving silence of a crisp Dublin forenoon to beg for their greatest desires. With a heart full of hope, I did just that. I wanted to get some firsthand experience, to be sure, to be sure.
Unfortunately, I’d guzzled a carafe of Guinness for breakfast and promptly passed out betwixt the Hand’s formidable fingers. When I awoke, alone and afraid, the only thing I wished for was a couple of Panadols and a good night’s wrist.
Gnarled, quinoa-stained fingers reach towards us from behind an intricately-carved and eminently-Intragrammable mahogany doorway, and then the yoga pants-clad creature claws its way towards us.
Eyes rolling within its peeling skull, tongue flapping in its mouth like a dying fish, the hippy shuffles forth, muttering obscenities about ayahuasca and the patriarchy. The stench – an acrid mixture of blueberry vape smoke and unwashed armpits – is enough make me gag.
All seems lost, until the ghoul pauses momentarily to perform a short TikTok dance to strains of Paint the Town Red by Doja Cat, giving Bigella time to throw a sourdough oregano-and-onion scroll in the opposite direction, providing a brief chance to escape down the twisted, claustrophobic alleyways of San Marco La Laguna.
Bursting, gasping from the cluster of tourist shops and spiritual healing clinics, the Guatemalan jewel of Lake Atitlán opens up before us in all its splendour, the cerulean waters giving way to the towering Volcán San Pedro. A brief moment of contemplation gives way to terror as a bearded freak, rainbow-hued pantaloons flapping in the breeze as he twirls an ornate firestick, attempts to recruit us into his percussion troupe.
“Get in the boat!” I scream to Bigella. “And watch out for the stream of sewage! It would really mess up your handcrafted boots if you stepped in that!”
Fearlessly, I grab the beardy weirdy by the JBL speaker hanging around his neck and flip him off the pier, then plunge into the boat, resurfacing between a bloated middle-aged couple from Wisconsin and a sunburnt German tourist who moistly introduces himself as Günter. The boat sets off across the lake towards a clutch of brightly-painted buildings in the distance.
“Bigs,” gasps Bigella, her billowing breast giving away the fact that she finally sees me as the action hero the world knows me as. “I now understand why you warn people never to visit a place without a Big Thing.”
“Fortunately, Bigella,” I say with a splash of my trademark winning smile, “we’re on our way to San Pedro La Laguna, home of the legendary La Mano Verde.”
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Breathing in the crisp mountain air, I gesture towards the ramshackle concrete village that races up the incline behind me. Colourful flags flap from haphazardly hoisted lines. Mayan women, each four-foot tall and five-foot wide, sashay through the buzzing traffic, baskets perched on heads, their ornate purple-and-gold tunics gleaming in the sunshine. Mercifully, there is nary an unwashed hippy in sight.
“See, Bigella,” I croon, “there’s a calmness, a serenity that cloaks any place that houses a Big Thing. It’s as if –”
I’m rudely cut off by half-a-dozen drunken British tourists with matching vomit stains down their shirts, marching past chanting bawdry soccer anthems. Not one to put up with such uncouth behaviour, I pluck off my bright pink sunglasses and give them a really stern look as if to say, ‘wind your necks in’ – enough to quieten them down and hopefully give them something to think about as they nurse their ill-gotten hangovers.
“As I was saying, it’s as if Big Things are the answer to all life’s problems. A few more of them and we’d have world peace, an end to the housing crisis and people could finally appreciate the works of Taylor Swift without looking at them through the lens of her business acumen. Anyway, let’s head up to La Mano Verde. Toodle-pip!”
San Pedro is a swarm of contradictions, where ancient cultures clash with Guatemala’s nascent tourism industry. Asian fusion restaurants in one street, starving children in the next. Motorbikes spew black smoke as they criss-cross the cobblestone streets, whilst street dogs and touts and lunatics meld together.
One can easily become discombobulated amidst the maze of festively-painted streets, but I’m a world traveller so, after a short detour in the wrong direction, I allow Bigella to bundle me into a tuk-tuk, and soon we’re hurtling up the side of the volcano, dodging pot holes and chickens, heading into the heaving bosom of the jungle.
He’s Got the Whole Universe in this Hand
Until recently untouched by the hand of man, the vista from Mirador Nido del Colibrí (The Hummingbird’s Lunch, for those uncultured swine who are bereft of an understanding of Español) is enough to fill one’s soul to the point of bursting.
Volcanoes scratch at the sky. Impenetrable forests wrestle with the brutal concrete of San Pedro. It’s an ancient land, a rugged land, a splendid land rich in treasures that will charm even the most world-weary adventurer. We drink it in, Bigella and I, reflecting upon the twisting, turning journey that brought us here. A journey that would crush the spirits of lesser people.
The majesty is only slightly dampened by the portly chap behind me who keeps poking me with his selfie stick to move further up in the line for a photo with La Mano Verde. Chill out, Francisco!
Forty-five long minutes later – enough time for us to admire the lookout’s other attractions, such as a set of butterfly wings and a cutout of a bird – it is the turn of Bigella and I to step sanctimoniously out onto the massive mitten. A lifetime spent scouring the planet for the most bodacious Bigs has carried me towards this moment and, as I pass the wrist, I am overwhelmed by emotion. It is all too much and, reduced to a blubbering mess, I collapse upon the vast emerald palm, my body shaking with the grandeur of it all.
If Bigella is repulsed by my very public breakdown, she doesn’t show it. She simply trots off to the tuk-tuk and races back to town, probably to tell her girlfriends about how ruggedly masculine I am.
Finally pulling myself together after my existential crisis, I press my ruddy cheeks to La Mano Verde and listen to his spiritual essence. He speaks to me, telling me stories dating back millennia, to the dawn of the Bigs, that open up windows into my soul. The universe changes, morphing into something new and strange and wonderful. The manic words of the hippies, once so vulgar and contrived, find clarity within my bended mind.
I have, after eons in the darkness, achieved Big-lightenment.
And then Francisco goes and pulls me from my metaphysical odyssey, sending me plummeting back to Earth and deep within a pit of despair, by poking me with that dang selfie stick again.
Put your hands together for these funky fingers, which seem to be emerging from Playa Brava’s golden sand. For some reason they really grabbed my attention, but I can’t put my finger on why!
This world-famous work of art is also known as Los Dedos (The Fingers), or Hombre Emergiendo a la vida (Man Emerging into Life). If your Spanish is a bit rusty, you can just call it The Hand.
The dashing digits were installed by Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal during the summer of 1982, and represent a swimmer drowning in Uruguay’s ocean. So, not quite as light-hearted as the Big Fish or Choco Frigideira! They formed part of Punta del Este’s fist-annual International Meeting of Modern Sculpture in the Open Air, and ended up on the beach because there simply wasn’t space elsewhere.
Mario really knuckled down and completed his work in just six days. After thumbing his nose at the competition, I assume he spent the rest of summer guzzling mate and dancing in the town’s many nightclubs.
Made from concrete and plastic (not high fiverglass), the three-metre marvels have been reinforced with steel bars. As you can see, Mario nailed it!
The other exhibits have, sadly, been lost to time. La Mano, however, proved so popular that it was recreated in Madrid, Venice and Chile’s Atacama Desert. Mario didn’t palm the job off to other, either – he did it single-handedly.
You can find more giant hands in Sacramento, USA, and there’s also a similar, unauthorised reproduction in Puerto Natales. Sounds like the Argentinians were giving Uruguay the finger with that one!
I would’ve offered to give La Mano a manicure, but I couldn’t find 15 litres of nail polish ?
