Zenon Michalak (76), has been living close to the Hill of Tara since he arrived in Ireland a month ago.
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Zenon Michalak (76), has been living close to the Hill of Tara since he arrived inIreland three weeks ago.
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“I left America with nothing because I wanted knowledge. I didn’t know how the word worked without money so for the last 10 years I have discovering how difficult it is and I became invisible to the world.”
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“Really, if I had my way and the money, I’d love to build a museum that I could hang my windows and reflect the light and healing these windows bring and I think I’d like to do that here in Tara.”
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Some of the stained glass windows Zenon has created from signs and symbols he has ‘received’
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A younger Zenon before he arrived in Ireland with one of his stained glass works.
GAVAN BECTON
The car park at the Hill of Tara was bustling with visitors making the most of an unseasonably chilly and windy August afternoon.
Children in local GAA club tops and shorts hopping footballs and clutching hurls were less bothered about the drizzly rain than the American tourists wrapped in windcheaters and baseball hats making a dash for the shelter of Maguire’s shop and cafe.
Standing still at the gates to the Seat of the High Kings and drawing stares and greetings from the comers and goers, an elderly, serene figure surveyed the scene around him.
His long white linen robe, torn at the back, billowed in the wind, thin hands with bracelets of turquoise stones clasped against his chest keeping an ocean blue scarf in check against the breeze. A flowing mane of white hair and beard framed piercing blue eyes and a distinguished face weathered by age and time spent in hotter, more exotic climbs.
A mystical looking figure, of course he stood out, but conversely this master artist, visionary and philosopher, blended seamlessly with the mystical allure of the Hill behind him.
It was Tara that came to Zenon Merlyn Michalak in a feverish dream when he was thousands of miles away, and after years travelling the world, he set foot in Ireland for the first time a month ago following that dream and made straight for the ancient Meath site. He has lived in a tent close by since, “grounding himself” and engaging with the staff in Maguires and visitors, all of whom he says have been very kind.
Zenon is 76-years-old. He was one of three siblings born to a Polish father who came to England after WWII and fell in love with and married Vera Redfern who was of Welsh origin. The couple had three children and the family lived a “rustic and harmonious early life” in a caravan in Wales.
He speaks in a manner fitting to his looks, his lilting deep English American accent resonates with a hint of that Polish ancestry. “I was born with Asthma and when I was young my parents decided that it would be better to live in a dry climate up in the mountains so we emigrated to America to Reno, Nevada and there I went to school and university and got a BA in Art and English,” he tells me over tea, sheltered from the elements.
“You could supposedly teach after getting a BA but what could I teach at that point? I could have gone into the system but instead, I went housepainting for 10 years, self employed with my own business and home but ended up in Mount Shasta, northern California which was this alternative spiritual vortex and my life began.
“I ended up living in nature, doing all these little water colours and symbols to do with all this visionary information I was receiving from the spiritual world. Mount Shasta was were I really was taken up into high states of consciousness.”
Zenon began making stained glass windows infused with the symbols he was “receiving” and his work began to attract attention from the great and good of California.
His glass artistry conceptualised his fascination with the mythology of Merlyn, King Arthur and the Grail Story. Each stained glass series encapsulated a mythical journey into “sacred realms”.
“It was the perfect medium and I started doing other windows including recreating the works of Russian painter, Nicholas Roerich and I did one of the Madonna which gave off this miraculous energy. Someone came to my house and bought that from me and that really started my stained glass career.
“So I became very established, moved into a studio and worked with stained glass for 25 years.
One of Zenon’s stained glass works, ‘Mother of the World’ inspired by Nicholas Roerich’s paintings
“I was making all these amazing pieces of glass that I sold to collectors, I never had a gallery. People came to my house in Mount Shasta from all over the world to buy my pieces.
Sometimes I would load my van with all these windows and head south to some of the more affluent areas of California like Mill Valley where people would buy my works so I was patronised by some very wealthy people.
“It’s funny because my father was a travelling salesman and here I was doing the same in my van, but I prospered and did really well until I stopped doing commissions then to just doing the best works at the highest prices including goldplating windows. The legacy of that is a unique museum portfolio. There’s nothing like it on the planet, these goldplated gem infused windows.
Not content to settle for critical and commercial success, Zenon, who never married or had children, moved to New Mexico and built a home and studio on some deserted land where he continued to work before eventually calling time on five decades in the US.
Zenon with one of his stained glass creations
“I liquidated everything and left the US 50 years to the day after first arriving. I was on something of a fool’s journey to try and understand how the world works. I left America with nothing and came back to England with nothing. Really, I left America with nothing because I wanted knowledge. I didn’t know how the world worked without money so for the last 10 years I have been discovering how difficult it is and I became invisible to the world.
After leaving a comfortable life in the US to live in a field at Glastonbury in England, Zenon would go on to spend time in the temple-rich Kullu Valley in India and the Himalayan wilderness of Nepal before a dream told him he needed to travel to Ireland.
“I felt I was going to end up dying in Nepal, I had nothing there, but I felt that I still had a lot to give. So one night there I took a backpack and walked up the Himalayas and while sleeping during a lightning storm I was awoken from a dream where this beautiful priestess or goddess had come to me and I heard the voice say ‘go to Ireland’ as clear as day.
“I meditated deeply on this and called a friend I’ve had for over 50 years and told her about the dream. She told me to go to Tara. So I got a one way ticket, came in through Dublin.
“I didn’t really want to do this at my age and get a backpack and live on the edge, but I did it, I suppose, to gain trust in humanity again and many people have helped me in many ways on many levels.
“I really thrive on being able to tell my story but I don’t have the support systems needed to get that story out there. If I’m going to publish a book I need a place to write it and I need an assistant to help as I handwrite everything, if I’m going to create art I need somewhere to work.”
Ideally, Zenon wants to recreate his collection of stained glass windows on prints and silks, fabric art that people can hang as banners and can affordably buy “and be touched accordingly by their messages”.
“Really, if I had my way and the money, I’d love to build a museum that I could hang my windows and reflect the light and healing these windows bring and I think I’d like to do that here in Tara. I’m feeling kind of half-Irish already.
During our hour long conversation it’s fair to say much of what this engaging 76-year-old says is hard to follow, let alone understand, something he astutely acknowledges.
“Although I lose you a little bit, I gain your soul because I have your interest.
“People can hear the message in the resonance of my voice and when I meet people in the parking lot they just warm to it and are instantly curious, ‘are you a druid, who are you?’ They can see I have this unusual radiance.
“The last 10 years I’ve been on the road, on a sort of pilgrimage route, compiling a handwritten book of deep teachings and understandings of mythology and sacred art and it’s time for me to get off the road and find some roots of the tree and coming to Tara, I’ve seen that it belongs to the land this story, that it goes all the way back to the time of Brian Boru and the land of De Dannan. It’s a magical story that I have from the understanding of the Merlyn’s perspective, a living story for these times.
“I was given a prophetic dream in Nepal, to come to Ireland and since that time its been a very interesting time to see people assisting me, and I feel that my soul wants to do something here, so I just put it out to the people that if Tara wants me I’m ready and available.”
Zenon believes that he is from the future walking a path back through the past but it’s the present that is the problem. He has been living in a tent in a makeshift camp not too far away from the Hill of Tara, a situation long term that cannot be a way of life for a man heading for his eighties.
Navan Cllr Alan Lawes has taken an interest in Zenon’s story and provided him with hot food and beverages but is concerned that finding suitable accommodation for this wandering elder may prove difficult. It’s understood Meath Co Council have reached out to the artist.
