Issue 6 by Art Dogs

ISSUE 6 APRIL 2015

Visual Artist

Heston Kelly

hotography, for me, began in my late teens when I found an old Polaroid camera that belonged to my mother. It was a good starter camera but it had its limitations, so I had to invest in something better. I bought my first 35mm camera in a second hand shop on the Strand Road in Derry. It was a big, old bulky Zinite 3MS and it came with a bunch of lenses. It was cheap as chips, fifty quid and he even let me pay in for it. At the time I was training to be a chef in the Northwest Regional College in Derry so I decided to do a part time course in black and white darkroom printing techniques, just above the bus station. From those beginnings it eventually evolved into digital photography and then into digital art. Now I use a Canon 650D with a variety of lenses and filters, from there I edit and create further images on Lightroom and Photoshop. Creating is exhilarating, when it all works out! It can end in sore feet if it does not. If you are in the right city or landscape you can get lost for a whole day or longer and I have a few times. Photography can fill you with a childlike sense of adventure and bewilderment. Most of the time, while you are running around, you are hoping that your battery does not die and that you have enough light to satisfy your curiosity. I think the main reason I do photography is because of my nature, I am sort of nosy, I want to explore and I am very curious. When I am out and about I enjoy being in different environments. In my photography, art and design I attempt to capture moments in time that have a quiet emotion to them. I tend to avoid human presence, instead focusing on the objects that humans construct, maneuver and discard. Through patterns and shapes, and light and shadow, I hope to kindle in the viewer an empathy for the objects I photograph, or to view them as a personification of a part of themselves.

Textile Artist

Caoimhe Friel

To be honest, I cannot really say when it all started

for me; art has always been a part of my life. I can remember always having the impulse to draw and create. It was not until Art College that I discovered my love for textiles as a medium. Prior to college, I had never really considered it at all. Now my work mainly focuses on traditional domestic textiles. I combine a bold use of colour and creative embroidery for my own take on an age old craft. Although I am inspired by domestic textiles and crafts, my work is often quite expressionist and cathartic. I do it, simply because it feels natural to do it. As much as I love art, deciding to go to Art College was not an easy decision to make. Art is extremely competitive and I did not know if I would have what it takes to venture into this world. In saying that, there is nothing else I would rather be doing. Art is a part of my life and I could not imagine not having this creative outlet. I am a very process led artist so the more I work and experiment, the more ideas I get. For this reason sketchbooks tend to be the basis for most of my projects. I rely on them heavily. After a certain point I start working onto cloth or paper based on whatever ideas I came up with in the sketchbook. In the sketchbooks I scribble ideas, draw, collage, collect things and eventually the ideas start coming together. I always like having a sketchbook near. I am very lucky to have my own studio space in Creeslough, although I can do my work anywhere, I find it very important to have my own space, especially for bigger works. I have a lot of tools including my sewing machine and materials so it is great having a place to keep everything. I love surrounding myself with things that inspire me such as books, art and fabrics. Traditional skills like embroidery and patchwork fascinate me and I enjoy applying them in a way that is unique to my work. I see textiles as a blank canvas to be manipulated, mended and cherished.

Photographer

Dominic Lafferty

earliest memory of photography is from the early nineties; the first time I looked at a 50mm lens. This was a rite of passage for me as a burgeoning young photographer, I realised how and why all of the amazing images I had admired in The National Geographic looked the way they did. Throughout the noughties I developed my skills with a film SLR camera, bought from a second-hand store in Middlesbrough. I moved to the Tees Valley to study Industrial design - subsequently changing to Graphic Design, I did however, continue to hone my skills as a photographer. I was away from home for fifteen years so photographing my native Donegal is something really special for me. I can share these images with the many Donegal Diaspora and know that someone will appreciate seeing a picture of home. Photography feels natural to me. I feel content when I am taking pictures and this calm is juxtaposed with how inspired and elated I feel by some of the sights I have experienced through my lens; the most recent being the ethereal Northern Lights. When I see a possible shot I cannot ‘un-see’ it and I am not satisfied if I do not have a go at capturing it! Artistic creativity has always, from a young age, been an integral part of who I am. I used to spend hours drawing and painting; photography allows me to create the same beauty in a thousandth of a second, and with a sharper more graphic edge than I could paint, in four or five lifetimes. However, after more than twenty years, I am still learning. I like to think I make an image. For completing the final image I use Photoshop, Lightroom, Microsoft ICE and Google’s NIK Collection. My cameras are a Nikon D300 and D5100 and I have a full range of lenses. I always say ‘always carry a camera’. The best camera in the world, is the one in your hand. Photographers sometimes refer to ‘chasing the light’ and ‘seeing the image’ – our Irish light can easily evade, even elude, and it constantly changes what we see! This challenge is thrilling.

Painter

Liz Doyle

I have been painting for about seventeen years. It started

sometime in 1998, my daughter was doing an A level in Art and I just thought to myself, I want some of that! So I decided to go back to university. I did a foundation year, by distant learning, through Aberystwyth University in Wales. I was born in Germany but grew up in England. Now I live in Cruit Island and I paint in my studio which is an old stone byre. Art feels like an energy, a connection, a buzz, it has its own flow. When I am in that space, all of me is in it. I like to work fast, without thinking too much and I like to work across a large area, sometimes I am working on several pieces at once. They can be taped together, or simply on one large canvas. The more I think about it I prefer to work in pairs most of the time, swapping from one to the other as I paint. I build up layers in a mix of oil and wax, with a squeegee sort of thing to start with, covering the whole surface thinly with two or three layers, usually in contrasting colours. I then add more layers with a roller and a palette knife. Then I will scratch and scrape through to reveal the colours from below. I also use a sort of printing effect, where I spread the colour onto grease proof paper, then print that onto the surface. It is a bit like a craving, but a good one for me. It is a way of converting my feelings and emotions into something new. It is a way of interpreting the wildness of this place, the ruggedness of the rocks, and the great surge of the sea. Sometimes a particular place will give me a fresh burst of work, most recently this happened at Ceide Fields in North Mayo, I painted about twenty five new paintings after visiting there. They will be exhibited at Teach Ban in Drumcliffe at Easter. Art for me is elemental and a necessity.

Sculptor

Kevin Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neill

I have always been making or planning something, there

is always a project on the go, on paper, in my head or in the shed. Beaches, skips, other peoples yards, scrap yards are all a great source of materials and inspiration. The inspiration for the sculptures almost always start with something I find or some materials I have lying around. The process is primarily about playing with materials - it is about taking things apart and seeing how to put them back together in different ways to create something new. Sometimes there is a story that develops in them, and eventually the piece will change and evolve until it has an identity of its own. I moved to Inishowen from Bangor in 2002 and have been living and working there ever since. In particular, I have been working on and off with the Inishowen Carnival Group for twelve years now designing and making carnival props and costumes for events. We recently moved into a new warehouse space near Malin Town. I finally have access to a decent work space in which I can spend time working on my projects. I make sculptures to hang on walls and also some free standing ones. The last workshop space we used was an old, dark, damp, cold chicken shed which we shared with some smelly cats, it was not such a nice place to work. The new shed is still cold in winter but it is dry, spacious and bright and a much nicer place to work. Since we moved there in summer 2013. I have spent a lot more time making stuff both for carnival and for myself. I like collecting junk, anything interesting, colourful, rusty, random bits of wood, metal and plastic - it all gets carried home. I am also a hoarder, I reckon if I hold on to something long enough I will find a use for it.

WRITER

Celine McGlynn

Writing for me started with Great Expectations by Charles

Dickens, the English novel on our Intercert year at St Columba’s College, Stranorlar, in 1973. It is the part where Pip’s nightmare dinner unfolds: The corner of the table is digging into his chest and he is served the scraps of food no one wants. The adults around the table constantly lecture him about being grateful. Dear kind Joe offers his support by giving Pip more gravy after each verbal attack. After one particularly vicious assault Pip says: “At this point Joe poured on my plate about a half pint”. The moment I read that sentence I knew that someday I wanted to write something that would make someone else feel the way that sentence made me feel - just that incredible power of words to soothe, to heal, to bring comfort. My beginnings were small, almost negligible, little comments on the shape of a hand holding a dishcloth, the set of a back, is there anything more expressive than someone’s back? A lone bird sitting always on the same branch on a tree beside our house. It feels strange and beautiful to work with these little lines, little shapes and use them to create meaning, to remember, to inform and to celebrate. Poetry is probably my favourite mode of expression. I love the richness it brings to my life, both writing it and reading other poets. As well as writing my own poetry, I have a particular interest in reviving interest in the work of prominent local writers from the past such as William Allingham, Sarah Leech and Frances Browne. I believe the written word in all its forms is vital if we are to develop our true potential first as readers and then as writers. My work with the Finn Valley Voice newspaper is based mostly on writing news stories but I am also passionate about the arts page and over the past twenty years I have had the pleasure of introducing a wealth of new talent. I write to satisfy a basic need in me; like the need for food or shelter and to encourage others to write. Writing, poetry and art have always been central to my life. Ultimately it is to attempt to say what is unsayable, what our minds are unable to grasp – the miracle of being in the world.

Featured Art Form

The Poem

Creativity is an energy. It is not born, it does not die, it only transforms. The sixth artist featured in each issue will be a writer. Writers craft images, words which inspire images within us. The visual form is deeply connected with all other forms of creativity, it grows from the same tree, is rooted in the same terra and gains energy from the same earth. It reminds us how everything we create is inspired from the art that we adulate, the art that we revile, the art that is imprinted and the art that we forget.

Celine McGlynn has composed a poem inspired by Heston Kellyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image from this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s submissions. This picture is featured on the front cover.

Hearth The song of fire, innocent, calls to heaven our wild longings, our crushed hopes consumed. We come from a burning heart, sing to the Gods in a world born in violence. This fleeting temple in the city holds the deep secret of fire come to life. Suddenly, it makes sense, the endless longing for peace, for the father who brings his sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photograph, his son who hanged himself, the mother with the poem for her child, the girl reaching out to her lover. Here at this hearth, form is sacrificed, becomes nothing again. In that nothingness lies freedom from the bone-deep loss always beside us, covering grace-filled days. If torment, grief, distress or guilt travel the road with us, if we are exiled from family, let the hunger of fire bring us home. If the burn of the bullet coloured our days and our nights, take heart, because even if the old remember, the not-yet-born will look to us for sanctuary share what normally divides the burning of fires in this land, the taking of sides in this red-hot rage. Will we take our bodies into the flame, heal every hurt, every lost day? Not fear our certain death but become transfigured in the light, kindle a new dream.