Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! "Stay glad, dream good" : resolutions from this list by Woody Guthrie in 1941.

Life Drawing 2012

Finally got around to doing some well overdue site updates today. I re-arranged the "personal" section of work and amalgamated a few sections that didn't really need to be separated. Here is some of my life drawing and painting from the last year, all done as part of Applied Arts course in CCAD.

You can check out online updates to my drawing portfolio here and the painting portfolio here.

Notions

Yesterday evening I went to the opening of a special art exhibition / event just off Douglas St. in Cork. It's called Notions and it's the work of my good friend, Lauren Baylor. It's so beautiful! It's only open for 3 days and it's in a garden in a convent in the middle of the city, a really serene location. It's based on a story that Lauren has written, the story is so lovely. It's autobiographical, but in Lauren's inimitable fantastical way. I'll ask her if I can reproduce some of it here on the blog.

Here are some pics of the exhibition taken yesterday evening. It's open until tomorrow so i'd recommend popping in. She's selling some really beautiful photographs connected to the work which I hope she'll show on her own blog soon.

UPDATE

I spoke to Lauren today and she gave permission to reproduce some of the (beautiful) story on the blog. Here it is:

Part of it became alive by these characters
whose liveliness could spark up a room
and animate the night
Fiery, warm and fun

Then there was the other part, the art?
The quieter one that was dark
and the sorrow wanted to dominate

...

Have you ever met someone and felt like you knew them before?
They have these powers, you see
They share and can feel what you feel
like sweets...mmm!
or a cut knee

...

She loves to question and inquire
(and hoard up all the answers)
She also loves to journey
With arms outstretched she dances

Also she is usually mostly starving

WOW, it's all so good. These few paragraphs really aren't doing it justice. I'll leave you with this one last bit...

The heat turns,
It bubbles, boils and in a ball-shape it burns
The speed
it travels
Its insides push to the out in a constant race, self-propelling its journey

Is it getting faster?
Could it even get hotter?
The atmosphere, the darkness, the silence have broken
A freak spell like, terror, crackling the air, it fights against itself

Its direction is erratic
Its energy majestic
The space it finds itself in has transformed in so brief a moment
But its impact will last

like the first time you click with someone...time has no meaning any longer,
that familiarity of friendship withstands time

This invasion is fiery, quick
but it leaves a warmth, like the memory of and unexpected embrace.

Lino Printing

A series of lino prints created as part of the curriculum studies module in the H.Dip for Art and Design teachers. I used a photoshop painting I did a few years ago (pictured below) as a starting off point. I hadn't done lino since school and I really enjoyed this process, particularly experimenting with cross-hatching to build up tone and depth and printing on different types of paper for different results.

Wire Sculpture

First ever wire sculpture! This was done as part of the curriculum studies module for the H. Dip in art and design teaching. I focused on retaining the cleanness of the wire line and building this as sparsely as possible. I went on to build another wire sculpture, taking the opposite approach - layering it up with loads of wire to create texture. I'll photograph that and pop that up here too when I get a chance.

We've finished semester one now, it's been great! I've really enjoyed it. We don't have college again now until February so it will be really nice to be able to fully concentrate on teaching at school and put in longer days there.

First Year Animations

One of my first year groups recently completed these animations in our art class. I'm so impressed with how much they learned and how well they applied it, we had very limited time to complete these animations and I thought that we would still be working on them after Christmas, happily, they all got done in time for the Christmas break. So proud of them!

Kristian Hammerstad

I'm doing illustration with one of my first year classes at the moment. I've rediscovered a load of illustrators that I used to follow fairly closely, but kind of lost touch with due to becoming so busy. I love these illustrations from Kristian Hammerstad! Really fun and retro, tapping into an old school b-movie horror vibe.