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Sculpture Centres
Visual Artists' News Sheet | Special Issue: March – April 2020
Paddy Bloomer, Personal Deployable Crannog, LSC Residency, Glenade Lake, 2017; all images courtesy of Leitrim Sculpture Centre
Material Processes SEÁN O’REILLY PROVIDES AN OVERVIEW OF THE FACILITIES AND PROGRAMME AT LEITRIM SCULPTURE CENTRE.
LEITRIM SCULPTURE CENTRE (LSC) is located in Manorhamilton, a rural market town in County Leitrim, at the confluence of five glacial valleys near the Northern Irish border. Established in 1997 as a charity supporting the practice and understanding of the fine arts in Ireland, LSC initially functioned for a few years as a FÁS training centre. Since 2005, it has achieved significant developments, both in the expansion of its spatial and technical infrastructure and in the diversity and vision of its artistic programme. Through my own leadership as director of LSC since 2005, and with the collaboration, support and advice of local artists and communities, I have sought to establish LSC as one of the country’s foremost resources for the advancement of contemporary visual arts, attracting both local, national and international practitioners. One of the key markers in moving towards this vision was a major capital development programme (2007 – 2009) that enabled us to completely renovate and redesign LSC around nine new workshop areas dedicated to stone, ceramics, woodwork, metalwork, foundry, hot glass, mould-making, traditional print and photography. These material-based technical resources were further complimented by 21 studios for individual practitioners; three project spaces; a superb gallery; a community ‘pop-up’ on Main Street; as well as three residency studio-apartments and five private rooms for artists visiting the centre. These technical resources were conceived as ‘open access’, in the sense that any creative practitioner within Ireland or abroad can easily obtain affordable resources for a day and up-to a month to develop their work. In the context of the increasing vulnerability of infrastructural supports to artists, both in Ireland and internationally, LSC has become strategically important in maintaining a comprehensive range of material-based technologies for visual arts practices in Ireland and especially in the North West.
