This article is from page 31 of the 2008-01-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 31 JPG
VISITORS to Tulla next week will be able to go away with a piece of the past as well as having a look at the future of art in east Clare.
In conjunction with a ‘Percent for Art’ project commissioned by the Clare Arts Office, resident artist, Kathleen Moroney will open her stu- dio at The Stables to the public on select Saturdays during January and February.
Kathleen was given the opportunity by the arts office to create a project that would reflect her local surround- ings at the studios.
The themes that have inspired Kath- leen’s work to date reflect on gradual change and the passage of time. This
current project, entitled ‘2nd Gen- eration’ 1s in direct response to the transition of the stables into artist’s studios.
The facility was lovingly restored under the eagle eye of award-win- ning local architect, Siobhan Mul- cachy and has been running for two years now.
The building was originally the stables for the local great house and now rising artists are awarded leas- es of studio space to help them get SIDE Kslee
“In recent time a number of public buildings in Tulla have been success- fully renovated and continue to func- tion in a new capacity. These build- ings serve as a visual timeline that unites the past with the present,” said
Kathleen.
For her project, Kathleen is using the old cobblestones from the site, ‘as a metaphor to reflect change”’.
She is currently making plaster moulds of a number of the stones and in the coming weeks will re-create them in porcelain clay and fire them in the kiln to create a bone-like ce- ramic cobblestone, that will resemble the original — “the ‘2nd Generation of the stone”, she explained.
Kathleen is particularly interested in the cobblestones as they were part of the original structure, dating from 1817, containing tangible traces of the past.
While this project is ongoing, Kath- leen will welcome visitors to view the process and participate. Her stu-
dio will be open to the public from 11.00am to 4.00pm on seven con- secutive Saturdays: January 12, 19, 26 and February 2, 9, 16, 26.
The project will culminate with an exhibition of the porcelain cobble- stones in the Studio Gallery on the last weekend in March.
“Visitors to The Stables on this weekend and throughout the event, will be invited to take away one of the porcelain cobblestones, a symbol of the past and present,” Kathleen told