• Éimear O’Connor
  

• Yanny Petters
  

• 
  Spring 2025
  Volume 42. No. 1

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Floating in mid-air, yet anchored to the ground through botanical detail, clear glass provides the see-through ground for Yanny Petters’ work. Glass is a means to elucidate the space between, where air and light sing. Petters’ images are suspended in space, yet connected to the earth, so that her viewers see her world as a butterfly or mayfly might. Yet her creative intention is far more focused than it may at first appear. Petters’ upbringing, amid the wild greenery of her Co Wicklow home, with parents who were sensitive to climate change and deeply committed to teaching her to appreciate nature, led her on a journey towards the art of quiet activism on behalf of the natural world. Her mother, Wilma (née Lapp), an artist, and her father, Guenther, an engineer, both immigrated to Ireland from Germany during World War II. Petters’ childhood was spent amid an organic and abundant fruit, vegetable and flower garden, wherein she and her brother were actively encouraged to appreciate the tiniest details among the flowers and wildlife. ‘Come with me – I’ll show you something beautiful,’ her mother would call – a reaction, perhaps, to the major industrialisation her parents had experienced before arriving in Ireland. Guenther and Wilma established a small factory, G Petters and Co Décor Toys, specialising in wooden toys that were sold through the renowned shop Nimble Fingers in Stillorgan, Co Dublin. Thus, Petters’ journey towards highly detailed visual art was underscored by an innate understanding of engineering and an instinctive appreciation of nature.

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