Issue 7 by Art Dogs

ISSUE 7 JUNE 2015

photographer

Bauke Roof

Music,

arts, history and geography were my favorite subjects in school. I remember a lot of homework also included finding photographs of things to illustrate the subject. This was of course, my favorite bit. I always picked the most expressive photos, like sports action or dramatic sweeping landscapes. As a teen I loved extreme music and to keep up with it I had a subscription to ‘Aardschock Metal Magazine’. My dream was to one day, be the photographer to supply the photos to it. By the time I moved to Inishowen, almost 10 years ago I had realised that dream, and then some. Through photography I add an extra dimension to my experiences. When photographing a performance, sports or the Northern Lights the experience itself is exhilarating. But seeing the photographs I took of it afterwards, delivers the extra kick. The expressions on people’s faces, that one big beam of pink over the green aurora, the atmospheric haze in the landscape captured the way I saw it. I started my selfie project two years ago. It is a good way of learning new photography techniques and experimenting. But it is also a way of exploration & discovery, as a photographer and as a human being, and of course for the craic, it can be hilarious looking at your selfies. I have been experimenting a lot with off camera flash lights and the combination with natural light. I use the flash lights to have more control over accents and shadows. And with that I have more creative freedom to make the picture I see in my head. Living in beautiful Inishowen is such a treat and working with a local paper takes me to all corners of it. As a Dutch woman I feel spoilt with the rough, sweeping landscapes and seascapes of Inishowen. So my photography happens all over the place. In the concert hall, the back garden, the beach and not to forget, on my personal computer.

Sculptor

Patrick Conway

I am

originally from Killygordon and came back there a few years ago after spending some time in the army. I have only been creating art for about six or seven years. Before that, when I was younger, I never had any interest in art or anything like that. So a few years ago Jim Rush took me over to Redmond Herrityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio for the first time. Initially I was a bit scared to go. It took me a few weeks to get past that. I am inspired by old books mostly, so when I first went I was more interested in carving words into stone than making sculptures, but I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell Redmond that. I started off at the beginning by doing wee bits of writing. The book of Kells is hugely inspiring to me. Other inspirations come from different cultures like Egypt, which you can see in my work. I find the ancient sculptors to be a particularly big inspiration to me. My work draws inspiration from all of these places and influences. I usually work around three days a week on sculptures at Redmond Herrityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s place on different bits and pieces. I have just started work on a small horse sculpture recently. I do a few bits, small bits, mostly at home too sometimes. Just outside my house, so the weather has to be alright in order for it to happen. On a good day I get stuff done, but on a bad day there is no way you can get anything done. My tools are just hammers, chisels and of course, stone. I just had my first exhibition launch in the Artco Gallery in Letterkenny. I was not expecting it, but I brought in one piece; the alien head, and the curator asked me if I had any more pieces. I said I had loads more, so they asked me to have an exhibition here. I did not know anything about having an exhibition before this, so it is all new to me. I feel good when I am sculpting. I just forget about everything else when I am doing it. I do not have time to think about anything else I suppose, but everything else just goes away and there is no stress. It is just something I enjoy doing, and I have been given the chance to do it.

Visual Artist

Sinead Smyth

A rt and creativity began for me with my Grandad, Pop. Together we would create stone walls, I was only a toddler.

He would show me how to feel the shape of the stones and how to put them together. By trade he was a dry stone waller. My Dad was a woodworker, he taught in Derry from the 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and he always encouraged me to make things. My Dad was also a hunter, so I could skin and gut a rabbit by the age of 8. I studied art at school and wanted to continue to study it. I was accepted to NCAD when I was 16 but my folks could not afford to send me there so I studied Geography instead. I am mildly dyslexic but I read imagery well and have always loved maps. I began to paint after being taught and encouraged by an artist called Marty Kelly, but it was after I came through a mental breakdown that I began painting seriously. Painting feels like a huge release. When I am painting I am in a place where only the brush, cloth, hands and paint matter. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think about anything else. Some of my work is subconscious. I apply the paint in layers, working with colour and texture I wait to see the images that come out from the canvas and work with those images, often faces, boats and birds. I read poetry or listen to music and let the images come out of my emotions in response to these. This can take some time but I feel most free when I paint like this. I paint to keep myself sane mostly. I am just compelled to paint, it is hard to explain. If I do not paint for several days I get anxious. I paint from reference drawings and colour notes taken outdoors, at home in my art room. I use oil or mixed media. I also take small canvases with me in my van around Inishowen, Derry and Limavady and paint on site outside, which I prefer. I am currently converting the cottage beside my home into a workshop-studio where I will be able to work on larger canvases and continue my art classes from there.

Photographer

Maciej Wysocki

I was born 52 years ago in Poland and began taking photographs

from an early age. I took my first photo in 1967 when I was nearly five years old. As a teenager I was a promising photographer and I took part in many exhibitions. Although I had many successful exhibitions I never published anything, I kept them in drawers and on my computer. For me, the real breakthrough in photography came when my family and I immigrated to Ireland. As someone who has depression I did not want to clam up and isolate myself so once again I started sharing my inner world through photography with others. I was asked to participate in solo and group exhibitions and did so gladly. My work does not need explanation, my motto is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Let the silent pictures do the talkingâ&#x20AC;?. My pictures reflect the world as I see it; whether it be through the prism of illness, my personal experiences or the experiences of my family and friends. I consider myself as someone who creates photography from a traditional orthodox ethos - I am devoted to black and white photography, documentary photography and street photography. As with all people who are devoted to an idea, we commit some sins from time to time, sometimes I take pictures of colourful landscapes or family gatherings. My specific guilty pleasure is taking photos of architecture using a fish-eye lens. I do it because I love it, I photograph everywhere, my focus is always drawn towards other humans. I like to explore these moments, whether they be happiness or more often pain and suffering. Sometimes the grey tint of everyday life can be lit up by colourful displays of neons. Humans are amazing, without whom, the world would have no sense.

Visual Artist

Alarnagh Barrett Mc Ginley

Iordomade not know when it started, I have kinda always drawn stuff. I used to draw in the playground at school

during break time; other kids used to give me requests for pictures. It was just another way of playing, making stuff up and imagination. When I was about 12 I started posting my drawings on my bedroom wall and kept doing that until the whole wall and ceiling was filled. I started making dolls when I was about ten, I would sew bits of material, stuff them with cotton wool and draw on faces with marker, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only slightly more complicated now! I make dolls for people on commission, they usually give me photos and I try to make them in likeness but I prefer the ones that I make just out of my head. I love making different personalities and faces. People are really the focus of all my work. People are interesting, they provide an endless amount of inspiration. Creating is like being in a dream world and being able to create anything, sometimes there is a story that goes with it. The story is played out as you are drawing, it progresses as I draw and then it is finished, but I do not always like it. Certain ideas I have I keep coming back to because I enjoy it so much, the ones I do not like, I just forget about them and they get left in a folder or in the back of a cupboard. It is nice to look back at stuff you did not like, as you can see how you have developed since. When I am drawing I usually curl up somewhere. I usually start with people, the faces first and then the scene develops. I like really fine pens, but I like swapping mediums, I used to just use pencil but now I like to use everything. I collect stuff, coloured glass, shells, fabric, anything I can use in a drawing or a creation. I Iove the old crafts, especially crochet and basket weaving. I love learning them and then blurring them as well. Art is a huge release for me, the things I draw depend on how I am feeling. I do it because I love to create worlds, I enjoy the fantasy of them, where anything is possible. One time, I drew one picture of a still life in the room except there was no gravity, that was so much fun.

WRITER

Anthony Caldwell

have always written, just not necessarily in a purely creative space. By nature I am drawn to the academic and I have spent so much of my time studying. I have worked on everything from physics, to human computer interaction, to the meaning of science. Academic writing is very rigorous, and editing and refining what you are trying to convey is a constant part of the process. Through this I have come to an appreciation of the effort and thought that goes into the craft of writing a sentence that really communicates with someone on many levels. Many authors, poets, scientists and artists have understood things that I can not, to this day, articulate. When I write a piece, inspired by an event or image, it is drawn from the heart and soul, not from the head. In that sense it is from an entirely different place to the academic, the craft is the same, but not the process. I am inspired to write because there are so many people around me who are special and they deserve to know about their importance, to know of their impact upon me. Above all, my greatest inspiration is the very concept of love itself. Its immortality, its quiet, gentle power. The greatest works of art, culture and even academia are inspired and driven by this universal force. I feel as if I am actually and directly connected, to not only my emotions, but to the whole world, as if I am linked to something much bigger than me when I write. Trying to translate that from something so abstract to something that can be understood is part of the challenge. I write wherever I can, but since I spend a great deal of my time in work, I often write in the spare moments I can grab here and there. It is very much â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;in the momentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and unforced. Although, there are always those special people who give me what I need to write, even if they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know it. I need to do this because I do not want to be a spectator in life, I want to contribute, I want to be part of something beautiful and I want to make a difference.

Featured Art Form

The Sonnet

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.

Anthony Caldwell has composed a short piece of creative prose inspired by Maciej Wysockiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image from this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s submissions.

The End of Heartache A mad man, a maximum man forged a universe, but for only one night. Its uncoiling energy, knotted in alcoves and corners heralding a fanfare of occluded beginnings. She just seemed to emerge from a space between reality and the subconscious, enveloped, floating, painted within a dream. And he just smiled. This is his one and only truth, the irresistible lightness of her soul. A crack emerged; pencil thin, in the centre of his heart, enough to illuminate the echo of emotions once lost. He could no longer rely on illusions; for in that moment, true love revealed him. Without boundary, age or capacity, the soul is limitless and so too would be his love for her... a timeless ocean of feelings... the end of heartache.