Maireadholohan's Blog

i have been busy even faffing around

I did four days of Kiddies Summer Camp. We explored materials, they were very small people so it was a process driven process. We did try to keep to a theme of ‘Our own imaginings’ here are some of the outcomes.

I think this may be a weekly thing come the Winter. A project to work on, maybe get them to work towards an exhibition?

   Some of the work by the children I just love the instant simplicity, the immediacy and confidence of the images. Child art is beautiful. I can see what Picasso meant in his famous comment ‘wanting to paint like a child’ or something like that. To look again at the world with the simple understanding of a child………

Lots of pretending to school Stella, took her to the little stallion down the road, not a pleasant affair for me though she seemed to enjoy it  and i do not think it worked as she seems to be calling out for more!!!!

Been making jam and soup and bread!!

I put work into 3 places recently….

St Lukes hospital Kilkenny

Kilgrainey House…….sold!!!!

Lenehans Pub inistiogue

Wow even though I am almost unemployed I am so busy. I have two shows coming up.

The Blueprint Group in Carlow for Eigse. In this show I am hanging the work that I do for myself completely, no rhyme or reason just love! We hang that this weekend, open next Friday 11th June, I will be in Paris bringing my daughter to Disneyland!!!! O lucky me…. such bad timing, but Nick will just have to stand in for me!!

Then when we get back I have to hang a show in Kilkenny, a selection of older more academic work done since I moved to Carlow. I am nervous about that as I have not shown in kilkenny for years and it is a vey varied selection of work. I really just want to get it out there. and move on. Not sure but there we go I am committed now!

Second last day. We had to  do some more  work on the Wall hanging and I was keen to get some work from the children that they had worked on with as little adult intervention as possible.

After doing more on the Dove with the childrens hands piece we discussed what the children enjoyed and we went for a beach scene. We brainstormed things we might see or find on a beach or in the sea. So ‘A day at the seaside’ was what we did. initially we were going to divide i in half but now  am not so sure. The children were very specific about what they wanted in and how much they wanted to do themselves.

Well it seems we may be in for a long hot summer, dare I say it!

Well I was kinda worried about today as the logistics off screen printing with such  a large group and only 4 screens could be tricky!

But it seemed to work well and the work turned out lovely.  We just worked with simple geometric shapes to get the principle across.

Then of course we worked on the hanging piece. Last week  we waxed the dove from the school logo onto 2 metres of cotton and I took it home to dye it, I scrunched it too much so it did not look white with subtle blue veins through it but more blue.

We decided to stencil the hands onto this piece as if it did not work we would do another one. We also decided to take my daughters advice and just paint the dove. We gave him a white outline and this actually works well, so phew!! Problem solved everyone seems happy. Note to self……. don’t worry so much!

We have more hands to add. Each Child in the senior classes had a stencil made from their own hand. We may also stencil in the name of the school.

Wow have I been busy. Last weekend I went to Carlow to help paint the lock up shops that we are showing in for Eigse!

Sunday I painted(half) the downstairs windows on the house, then in the afternoon I painted 3 pictures for the seven day plain eire cahllenge!

Monday went to School of  Holy Spirit, we went outside and did rubbings and messed around in that dome shaped tent that they have.

                              Some of the work done so far

We have decided to do a large wall hanging for the senior entrance hall. I showed the children how to do screen printing and we will incorporate this into our finished piece. We got 2m of cotton which I soaked in Soda Ash at home and then I with the help off the students worked a dove from their logo in wax on the middle of this and

My computer crashed so I have had to redo this blog again as I had saved it to upload later!!!! The perils of slow broadband. It only works at 7 in the morning.

Monday with the School of the holy spirit was good again. We went outside to explore the beautiful garden. We did rubbings and took photographs of the dome.

More later

     A Tshirt                             Messing around with the dome                      

Children doing the Batik Bags