Blast Artist Residency, Castlgregory National School, Co.Kerry
The mural that Ms. Emma Tarrant, 21 students and I created as part of a Blast Artist Residency, recently featured in the Kerrys Eye newspaper.
The residency was child led and the children choose to focus on stories of local legends and local folklore.
Castlegregory and the Maharees are very popular areas for fishing, and the children wanted to look at fishermen and ocean life.
We looked to the online folklore resource Duchas for inspiration for local stories. It was difficult to find stories from the Castlegregory area.
The story we choose as a subject for the mural , was about a snake that lived in the bottom of a lake in Gougain Barra in Co.Cork. In the folklore story the local people would give the snake all their precious treasures for safe keeping at the bottom of a lake.
Ms Tarrant had a fantastic idea of creating a bottle cap mural that supported creative climate change action.
Ms. Tarrant suggested we paint the mural first, then cover it in bottlecaps that were collected from Lee Strand and from the children’s home.We then glued on the bottle caps with a glue gun.
Thank you to Ms Tarrant and the students for coming up with a resourceful and unique way to bring awareness to climate change through recyclable Art.
Teenagers at Hummingbird Studio
Teens at Hummingbird Studio
I work with teens 1:1 or in groups of max four in Hummingbird Studio. In my classes with teens I spend 20/ 30 minutes of the class teaching meditation and 60 minutes learning visual art, printmaking and working on sketchbooks. Meditation is a really valuable practice for teens to build confidence and release social inhibitions.
Life can be difficult for teens and Art gives them the opportunity to gain confidence in themselves and express themselves in their own way. Art gives them the opportunity to make sense of themselves, emotions and their place in the world. I use alot of printmaking techniques such as linoprinting, resin and cynotype , the process's involved are really suitable to teens.We also learn art history and do sketchbook work and study the colour wheel, and working with different textiles and matierials.
The meditation practices I used are based on loving kindness, self love and releasing stress and worry from the mind. I use visualisation and breathing techniques that teens can use at home and at school.
