Lithography workshop

It is probably becoming fairly obvious that my interest in printmaking techniques has become very pronounced over the past two years. When I heard about a weekend lithography workshop at Blackchurch Print Studio in Dublin, about two months ago, I was quick to sign up for it. Lo and behold, the time flew and the workshop, led by Alison Pilkington, took place last weekend. 

There were only four of us taking the workshop, so it was quite intense. I had brought some sketches of things I had been working on, and spent Saturday morning developing these sketches on a larger scale.

I had another look at my branches images, but decided on beachstones for the litho stone.

Saturday afternoon was spent drawing on the litho stone with a variety of litho crayons and then painting on tucshe in specific areas. For the small stones, I applied the tusche by flicking so that their texture would be totally different from the surrounding linework. Unfortunately I was too busy working, and did not have a camera with me anyhow, to take pictures of the stone in progress. On Sunday morning there were a few applications of nitric acid in gum arabic on the tusche areas and in the afternoon I printed up an edition of four on beautiful Fabriano paper. It was an exhausting but invigorating day!

Eugeen Van Mieghem: Port Life

A week ago I was in Dublin and, among other things, eagerly went to The Dublin City Hugh Lane Gallery to see the Eugeen Van Miegham: Port Life show. I was only familiar with this artist's work through facebook postings from The Hugh Lane and was intrigued. 

This is a close-up of the studio sketch in the upper left of the above photo. Mieghem's drawing is beautifully energetic.

There are a number of large paintings of ships in both wet and dry dock, which are fantastic, but the lighting made it impossible to take photos of them. I loved the gallery's "List of Works" as an alternative to wall labels; the list had colour thumbnails of each picture and as well as the usual details often had a little blurb of extra information.

The work in the show was quite attractive and I could see the comparisons to Edvard Munch, whom Mieghem admired. I have been to the Munch museum in Oslo, so it was easy to understand this comparison in style and subject matter. But the scumbling style of dry brush painting also reminded me of Canadian artist, David Milne, whose work I also love and have seen quite a lot of.

Miegham also did a large number of paintings and drawings of people working in the port, including these two (left in pencil, right in black chalk). The exhibition continues till June 11 2017 and is well worth a visit.

Day in Dublin

I had a few things to do on the north side of Dublin and passed by this drawbridge. Actually, I am not sure exactly what this is (formerly a canal lock?) but it seems to be a bit out of place. It reminded me of old Dutch landscape paintings and I thought this was appropriate as I planned to go to the Eugeen van Meigham show at the Hugh Lane Municipal gallery later in the day (which I will post about next week).

In the meantime I took the opportunity to have a closer look at the giant iris outside the NCI building. I had spotted this on a previous visit to Dublin, but the rain kept me from further investigation then.

This stainless steel piece was created by Vivienne Roche and commissioned by the National College of Ireland (NCI) and entitled NC Iris.

On the way to The LAB to see a couple of exhibitions, I came across this plaque on Foley St  in commemoration of specific women who had fought in various places in Dublin during the 1916 Uprising, and generally to all women who had taken part in the activities of 1916, the War of Independence, and the Civil War, which followed.

Although it was in the smaller gallery at The LAB, Lucy McKenna's exhibition, "Astronomical Mashup", was  definitely the main attraction (and totally perfect in the entrance exhbition space).

McKenna combines sci fi mythology with factual knowledge about Mars to examine the way information is understood about our neighbouring planet in specific and on a wider scale in general.

The exhibition is intriguing: it possesses both beauty and humour. McKenna's small scale painted images are delicate while the large graphics are in-your-face technical wallpaper! The overlaps keep perspective shifting while all the time the viewer is aware of the set-like tentacle streams (a la War of the Worlds) hanging from the scenery, and always in peripheral vision in this small space.

Like a moth, I was drawn to the curiosities of the light bulbs, which had subtle photographic images on their back surfaces: a darkened crescent moon on one and tiny spots (the Pleiades) on the other.

I also enjoyed the other exhibition, IAWATST (Interesting And Weird At The Same Time), which took up the main gallery (including upstairs space). It was a group exhibition of work from the OPW collection curated by students from an inner city primary school. I didn't get any pictures from this exhibition, but they are available online and further information is available on The LAB website.

Incognito!

A few years ago I participated in a charitable fundraiser The Big Egg Hunt Dublin, which was a great success and also enjoyable. The Jack and Jill Foundation fundraiser for 2017 is called "incognito" and I am looking forward to starting my contribution. Before the holiday I received my incognito package, consisting of 3 small cards and an envelope with which to return them to the Foundation. Artists have been asked to create up to three small works, signed only on the back of the card, thereby being an initially unknown creator. All completed artworks will be displayed at the Solomon Gallery in Dublin in the spring, and will be for sale at a set price. The artists will remain unknown until the works are bought. I already know what I want to create on the three cards, so will get to them soon. I won't be posting finished pictures until the fundraiser is over, but I may post some teasers of work in progress. Happy New Year!

What We Call Love Part 1

The exhibition "What We Call Love" opened recently at IMMA in Dublin. I braved monsoon-like weather and had to leave my house at 4.30 to catch a bus that took two hours to get into the city during rush hour. But it was worth it. The show was huge and encompassed all media with work by modern masters and contemporary international and Irish artists. Certainly love provides a wide topic for interpretation and exposition. In the first room of the exhibition it was love at first sight -- this tiny carving on lime wood, "Couple" is by Picasso.

Also in the first room, it was my pleasure to walk around this bronze construction by Alberto Giacometti. It's a complicated piece with clues to its original molding, but impossible to see welds (could it have been cast in one piece?). There is a lovely painting by Max Ernst on the wall behind the sculpture.

I was surprised by this Dali diptych, as I have never seen images of it before. Other Dali paintings that I've seen live have always surprised me by being a lot smaller than I expect; in this respect I was quite surprised at how comparatively large this piece is!

In one of the rooms there were quite a number of works by Marcel Duchamp with which I was unfamiliar. There were four small-scale bronze and mixed media sculptures in enclosed plinth cases, but there were also a series of etchings on Japanese vellum that were exquisite. The etchings were all "drawings" that referenced old master works. The picture here unfortunately does no justice to the work, but I didn't want to exclude Duchamp from the vicarious experience of the exhibition.

Brancusi's "Kiss" is iconic to me -- I am sure an image of this appears in every art history book I have ever seen, so it was great to see the real sculpture.

I am more familiar with Louise Bourgeois' large scale works so it was lovely to see the intimate pieces that were included in this exhibition. The embracing figures in the middle of this beaded mandala are soft sculptures. I will include more images of her work in another post about this exhibition.

Dublinia - Viking Museum

It seems like a long time ago -- I think because it was such a gorgeous warm day and the weather has been like to a monsoon of late -- but it was only a couple of weekends ago that I went to see Dublinia Viking Museum at Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin. I had never visited this museum before and found the three floors of displays very enjoyable and educational. I had arrived shortly after the museum opened and I was sure glad of this as the place was jammed by time I was leaving at lunchtime!

I did the 96 step climb up St. Michael's Tower where there were great views of Dublin, including the outline of a Viking hut across the road from the museum.

Coming down from the tower I was delighted that one had to exit via the enclosed bridge over the road. It is such an elegant structure with stained glass windows letting lots of coloured light in that day.

Outside and in front of the cathedral is the chancery ruin. I imagine that the ground must have been considerably lower as that broken window structure was at my feet.

I have often walked by this series of pavement sculpture that gives an indication of the items found when the area was undergoing rebuilding. The building of the Dublin City civic offices was quite scandalous at the time as the archaeologists were in a beat-the-clock situation where they were only granted a very limited time to excavate the site.

The artist who created these works is Rachel Joynt, an Irish artist whose public work I have admired for some time.

Visit to the Dead Zoo

My sister Yvonne, who is also an artist and owner of Yumart Gallery in Toronto (link on the sidebar) is visiting from Toronto. The other night, after a fondue meal at my place, we got into a discussion about museums. There was some dismay expressed over the reliance on computers and inter-activity to make museums more appealing to contemporary audiences. The perfect antidote to this was to visit some museums in Dublin the following day, starting with the Dead Zoo -- i.e. the Museum of Natural History.  The visitor is immediately charmed by gamboling shrubbery at the entrance to this museum in the heart of the city.

And then the visitor can be impressed by the skeletons of the prehistoric Giant Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus).

The jumbly display of stuffed animals and skeletons in the main hall is gorgeous in its variety. The museum is small and the architecture old. There is most definitely a musty odour but it is totally agreeable to the experience of this perfect example of a Victorian "cabinet" museum.

The display of primate skeletons is a clear Darwinian reminder of human development.

Dublin culture!

A few weeks ago I spent the day in Dublin catching up on exhibitions that I wanted to see. At the National Gallery of Ireland, there is a new way of displaying a most beloved and delicate painting of FW Burton's. "Hellelil & Hildebrand, The Meeting on the Turret Stairs" is on view at the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art on Monday & Wednesday morning only, through a free, but timed, ticket (available at the information desk). The last time I had planned to see this painting the viewing box was closed, so armed with my timed ticket I was delighted at the almost private view.

At the NGI I also saw the Sean Scully exhibition in honour of his 70th birthday. It was great to see the large canvases, especially the multiple canvas "window" works. A room full of Scully's b&w photographs was a very pleasant surprise, as I also share his obsession with stone walls in Ireland.

It is always nice to pop into the nearby National Museum of Ireland. There was an exhibition on Brian Boru and the battle for Dublin. You learn something new every day! Also in the vicinity is the National Library of Ireland. On the recommendation of a visitor I went to see the very meaty WB Yeats exhibition. This was my first time in the NLI and I was surprised at the size of the exhibition space. Since the collection and displays were manuscript based, the lights were very dim. However, I don't think conservation was really the top priority as a single spotlight focused in the centre of this painting by Edmund Dulac of WB's wife George! I don't think the spotlight was good for the painting but I was also disappointed that it was displayed on the top shelf of a display case so that it was out of my viewing reach.

In the afternoon I went over to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) specifically to see the Etel Adnan exhibition. I had read about Adnan a few months ago -- she is a 90 year old painter and poet who is only finally getting some recognition lately!

While at IMMA I also took the opportunity to see the Stan Douglas exhibition "Mise en Scene".

Poetry, John Cooper Clarke & Mike Garry

A few months ago I was reading an article in Brainpickings about reading and a discussion of the answer to the query "how is one to develop that discerning taste, especially in determining what is worth reading and what is not?" Maria Popova was mostly discussing and asserting Joseph Brodsky's suggested answer of  "read poetry". The arguments were good ones, and I have noted it well. I used to read (and write) a lot of poetry and am determined to re-form this habit. The timing was good as about the same time tickets went on sale for a night with legendary bard John Cooper Clarke at the wonderful venue of Vicar St. in Dublin. My ticket was acquired immediately and magnetised to the fridge door for several months. The event finally took place last Saturday and left a sold out audience in raptures.

Since JCC had put out several albums that I knew from the early 80s, I wasn't sure until arriving at the venue whether or not a band was going to be playing with him. There was a single mike and speaker set up on stage so I knew it was going to be a solo event and got excited -- I was going to hear things as poetry not as songs!

I once lived in a place in Toronto where my friends refused to visit because it reminded them too much of John Cooper Clarke's song "Beasley St". I have been told that this area has been unrecognisably gentrified. so it was with some amusement that I heard JCC's update "Beasley Blvd".

The support act was another poet, Mancunian Mike Garry. I had not heard of him before but he was fantastic also. Here he is in action, with his tribute to Tony Wilson (founder of Factory Records & La Hacienda nightclub in Manchester):

It was a fabulous evening of poetry and a good reminder to me to keep up that habit that Joseph Brodsky recommended. Very appropriately, the night was started with a long walk into Dublin, stopping along the Grand Canal at John Coll's sculpture of Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh .

Irish Museum of Modern Art Exhibitions

Last Friday I went to Dublin for a morning catching up with the shows at IMMA. I specifically wanted to see the Patrick Scott exhibition before it closed. It has happily been extended to June 22! In the main museum building there were a couple of other exhibitions which were interesting and thought provoking. 

Haroon Mirza's "Are Jee Bee?" filled a series of rooms with sound, video and sound-proofing sponges. The installation recalled club dance scene with it's thumping electronic rythm reverberating through the rooms and re-edited videos. The whole installation overlaid the previous Eileen Gray exhibition didactics which provided a historical layering.

In the other West Wing galleries, the large hallway and adjoining rooms provided lots of space for Sheela Gowda's "Open Eye Policy" retrospective exhibition. A lot of her installations use found objects, such as tarpaulins, oil drums, and dried cow patties.

The exhibition was extensive and also included smaller, intimate drawings and paintings, as well as manipulated photographs.

The Garden Galleries, the IMMA name for the coach house beside the main building, was the last stop before going home, but the main reason for making the trip into Dublin. Patrick Scott's "Image Space Light" exhibition is a major survey of his work from the 1940s to 1970s. The exhibition is set up so that the little hallways between the gallery rooms have display cases of archival ephemera, which are great to see in conjunction with the work.

Scott worked a lot on unprimed canvas, using thin tempera layers. He was adept at reconciling hard lines with soft ephemeral colouring.

His work was always elgant. Sadly, he passed away this past Feb, the day before this exhibition opened. He was a Saoi in Aosdana, the highest honour for an artist in Ireland, and has left an amazing legacy of work.

Seamus Heaney, RIP

Along with so many others, I was saddened to hear the news of Seamus Heaney's death a few days ago (Fri Aug 30). Obituaries for this amazing poet and Nobel laureate abound so it is hardly necessary for me to go into detail. I am reading Beowulf again, however. Although I was entertained by the fluffy 3D film a number of years ago, this book is entirely on a different level.

For my first solo show back in the 80s, I was working on a series of sculptural drawings created by erasing graphite from paper. On seeing some of my drawings a friend of mine told me they reminded him of Sweeney. I didn't know the reference and was promptly loaned Heaney's version of "Sweeney Astray", an epic Irish prose/poem. After reading the book, I understood my friend's reference and the co-relation to my work (the flight, the madness, the loneliness). I titled the drawing below "Sweeney Among the Roses" [graphite on Canson paper, approx 101 cm x 150 cm, 1989]. It was exhibited with the other drawings in April 1989 at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin and a few months later, the exhibition in its entirety was also exhibited at the Nun's Island Arts Centre, Galway. Despite the subject, I find it interesting to remember that this was the only drawing of that series where the figure had her eyes open.

Illustration and Books

While in Dublin last week, I couldn't resist this book of Fairy Tales illustrated beautifully by Harry Clarke. It was only when I moved to Ireland 20 years ago that I realised Clarke was an Irish artist, although I was familiar with his illustrations since childhood and had seen the gorgeous stained glass windows at the Hugh Lane Gallery on previous visits to Dublin. 

Reading the introduction to this book, I found out it was a re-print publication with all new photos of the illustrations as one of the original books was now in the possession of the National Gallery of Ireland. The original book can be viewed in the prints & drawings section of the gallery by appointment only, and I plan to do it!

Another colour plate from the book:

Illustration from its Golden Age (i.e., 19th & early 20th century) has been a life-long interest of mine (and I think most of my sisters too). My favourite illustrator is usually Edmund Dulac and The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by Dulac is still one of my prized possessions. Though the image below is not from that book, it gives a sense of Dulac's style. I used to have this picture hanging on my wall when I was growing up.

Speaking of sisters, my sister Yvonne Whelan, recently had an exhibition of her illustrations ("I Saw Wonderland") at Yumart in Toronto. The image  below is Sleeping Beauty.

Aubrey Beardsley was another favourite, though I bemoan the sale of several of his books when I left Canada, including a deluxe copy of Morte d'Arthur. Why oh why?

At least I kept my copy of the Romance of King Arthur illustrated by Arthur Rackham which I had bought on my second visit to New York in 1981. This Rackham illustration was another picture I had on my bedroom wall when I was younger.

Another book which I bemoan selling is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by Gustave Doré. But I still remember the fabulous illustrations!