Pencils at the ready!!!!

Now that Easter is behind us, time to take up a new pursuit?

Life Drawing with Ian Humphreys

28 April - 27 May

                                            

Life Drawing at West Cork Arts Centre offers participants the opportunity to explore this most essential of drawing disciplines. In a studious and supportive atmosphere the group will be facilitated by artist Ian Humphreys.

Ian Humphreys studied at Exeter College of Art, gaining a BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting in 1979. He moved to Ireland in 1999 and now lives and works on Heir Island, West Cork. Ian has exhibited widely both nationally & internationally, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition & the Hunting Prize, winning 2nd prize in 1998. He has work in countless prestigious private & public collections, including The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, University of Cambridge & Allied Irish Bank.

This is a four week course and participants will have the choice of attending on either Monday evenings from 7.30 to 9.30pm or Tuesday mornings from 11.00am to 1.00pm. Workshops commence on April 28 and 29. They will break for the week of the May bank holiday (May 5 and 6) and conclude on May 26 and 27. The fee for Life Drawing is €45 per person.

A model, easels, drawing boards and refreshments will be provided. For further information, contact 028-22090 or info@westcorkartscentre.com.

This is how you write an artist's statement!

The following is an artists' statement by Senior infants and 1^st class boys from Scoil na mBuachailli in Clonakilty who are exhibiting two excellent felt pieces in our current exhibition, Abecedary

We had lots of ideas after our visit to the Alphabet exhibition in Skibbereen so it took some time to agree on the medium which we chose.

There are 23 boys in our class.  Each boy chose a letter.  The remaining letters were done in groups except for one letter which we left out!  We thought it would be a challenge to spot the missing letter!

Next each child created an image that reminded them of that letter for example; one boy Ethan said “I thought of science and stuff, and then I said what begins with G, in science and that made me think of galaxy!” 

Conor, Ethan and Oliver’s interpretation of E was as follows;  “First of all it started with elephant because we like elephants and then we thought about an egg and what an elephant could do with an egg, he could eat it, and then we thought of Ethan with big eyes eating the egg, then we said we would make the elephant look enormous and excited so we just couldn’t stop thinking of idea’s for E so we kept adding to it! It was fun!”

We took our artwork in stages;

Stage 1- We used paper and 3 crayons to draw our image.

Stage 2- We did cutting and sticking with paper to make the same image,

Stage 3- We used fabric and glue to create our scene and joined all the pieces together.

Stage 4- We used felt and sheep’s wool to create an image, some of us decided we wanted to do a new image using the wool and some of us did the exact same image again but it looked different with the wool!

Stage 5- We sewed them all together to make a felt quilt which we think looks amazing!

Here is another from 2nd class  pupils in Kilgarriffe National School in Clonakilty. Their piece is called Palindromes and is a work in mixed media on cardboard

This is their statement explaining their practice.  

For this art project the topic was the alphabet and we chose to do palindromes. For those of you who don't know what a palindrome is, it is a word or sentence that can be said and spelt forwards and backwards, for example 'race car' is a palindrome, just turn it around in your head and it is still 'race car'. Another example for a sentence is 'A nut for a jar of tuna', turn it around and it is still 'A nut for a jar of tuna'.

For the project we chose to do sentences instead of doing actual words. It took a lot of deliberation but we decided on these sentences: a nut for a jar of tuna, race fast safe car, stack cats, never odd or even, step on no pets, mad at adam, and mr owl ate metal worm. We each chose our favourite sentence. We wrote out our sentence on cardboard and then collaged each letter and the background with two primary and secondary complementary colours. We glued them to the cardboard with this super sticky glue and we then left them to dry overnight. We then sent them off to West Cork Arts Centre to go on the display.

Help Fund Your New Building for the Arts!!!

It's kinda cute, isn't it? That, there, is what will be the future West Cork Arts Centre Building. Below you've got your North view(from the town car park) 

and the South view from the 'Bridge' at Main Street.

It has a little way to go before it is finished. As you can see from it's current state, it is not quite there yet.

It won't be long though. The next stage will see the Corten steel facade applied, giving it its trademark rusted finish, and the windows will be installed. This means the building will be watertight and weather proof. For a few months, the building will look finished and ready to go, but inside a team will be busily fitting out the interior. 

It is really exciting stuff! To think that we are getting this landmark, purpose-built, state-of-the-art centre for art in the middle of a West Cork town!!! It is just what the place need as an attraction, as an economic boost and as a home for all things artistic and cultural!

But, we still need to raise some funds. You may have seen this little pairing in shops, bars and cafes throughout West Cork. 

Well, next time you do, take a leaflet, which will tell you all about the building, and make sure to leave some coinage (note-age is welcome too!). A project like this doesn't happen without the support of the people who want it to.

We are always open to your thoughts so if you have any ingenious ideas for fundraising, just let us know. Otherwise, you can check out our Fund The Building page here

We are very nearly there, so any contribution will make all the difference. Come on! Be a part of it! :-)

Practice

Have you been to our gallery lately? Well, currently exhibiting is Practice. Practice asks the question 'What happens when artists and children work together?' Well, here are a few examples...

UpSideDownWorld

The Cornerfield

Emily's Granda

Listening to John Kelly

Layers

These are some examples of what children from early years groups and primary schools created with artists Helen Barry, Ann Donnelly, Naomi Draper, Ann Henderson, Maree Hensey, Fiona Kelleher and Christine Mackey. There are many more pieces to be enjoyed in the gallery.

In the hours before the opening, the exhibiting artists facilitated an Artists' Day for artists and art students who have an interest in working with children. It was a long and intensive workshop, lasting from the morning until 5pm when the exhibition was being launched. Lots of ideas were exchanged and practices explored. Here's a peek at what they got up to...

The opening itself was a huge success. 

Orla Kenny, Director of KidsOwn Publishing

As an exhibition of work by artists in collaboration with children, and vice versa, it was great to see so many children there from as young as nine months and up.

Chalk was handed out to everyone present and, although there were initial plans for the creation of a live collaborative piece to include all who attended, the lead was taken by the children present who very much had their own idea of what they wanted to do. 

So, what happens when artists and children work together? Well, a bit of this...

Some of this...

and a little of this...

There is a programme of events that accompanies this exhibition. For further details contact 028 22090.

Practice continues at West Cork Arts Centre until February 22, but don't leave it until then as you'll want to see this exhibition more than once.

Alphabet

Thanks to Sara Baume for her review of our previous exhibition, Alphabet - featuring Ireland: Alphabet Series by Cork Printmakers and other work, which ran from 20th September until 9th November here at West Cork Arts Centre.

Sylvia Taylor, E For Evening Echo, 2013

 Check it out here...  

Paul Le Roque, F for Forde, 2013

A different perspective

Sometimes, all it takes is to look at something from a different perspective...

From across the river

Yes, that towering structure in the middle of the frame, that's our building!

The view from Bridge Street

Magnhild Opdøl - Three Days Later

The Silence After, pencil on paper, 65 x 130cm, 2013

Three Days Later, an exhibition of new work by Norwegian artist, Magnhild Opdøl opens tonight at 7.00pm at West Cork Arts Centre. Featuring film, sculpture, drawing and photographic work, this dark, yet thought-provoking exhibition invites the viewer to contemplate our relationship with the natural world. 

Opdøl's beautifully made and understated pieces contain a common feeling of silence, of having missed the 'happening' and being caught in the moment after. Three Days Later picks up on themes explored in Opdøl’s previous exhibition, Point of No Return. Continuing with open-ended visual narratives, Opdøl allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions on what it is that has been interrupted, disturbed or altered. She explores our relationship with nature and the ongoing damage being done by human hand. She gently focuses our attention on the unnoticed passing of things we regard as unchanging, and so which are taken for granted.

Just before midnight, lambda print on dibond, 2013

Of this Opdøl remarks, ‘I am fascinated with things not being reversible, such as the depletion of our earth's natural resources, the extinction of species, and the strangeness of a human race that keeps on ravaging the planet, while knowing we are the authors of our own destruction.’

Her work is laden with stillness to the extent of creating unease. She is influenced in part by the work of filmmaker David Lynch, specifically Twin Peaks. Her work shares Lynch's dark yet beautiful sensibility, and suggests multiple interpretations of what may already have taken place.  

Her observation of wildlife and nature is not from a reverential or idyllic perspective, but instead succeeds in communicating the complexity of relationships and perception, and that things are not always as they seem. The Silence After, a drawing, depicts a snowscape. It replicates that feeling of snow blindness but begs the question - what is covered by the pure white blanket of snow?

Magnhild Opdøl was born in Sunndalsøra, Norway in 1980. She lives and works in Dublin and Ålvundeid, Norway. Opdøl received a B.A. in Fine Art in 2004 and an MA in Fine Art Painting in 2007 from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She has exhibited widely both in Ireland and internationally and has been the recipient of many awards and residencies, including being the first recipient of the Tony O'Malley Residency in Callan, Kilkenny in 2011. Solo exhibitions to follow at The Painting Society, Oslo, Buskerud Arts Centre and Agder Art Centre, Norway in 2014

Three Day Later continues until Saturday 11 January 2014.