How to Flatten A Mountain Exhibition Wed 8 November

This November, photographic artist Alisha Doody launches her latest collection ‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ in Backstage Theatre’s Atrium Gallery.

Alisha’s practice is centred on issues relating to contemporary society and is focused on understanding how this relates to person, space and home. Her working methods are fluid and concerned with the interplay of medium and subject.

Her latest exhibition, ‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ is a reflection of human interaction with the landscape. Through movement in nature and space, the impact of this relationship is explored and made visible in the details. ‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ was first created during a residency of the same name in Cow House Studios, Wexford.

‘How to Flatten a Mountain’ opens in the Atrium Gallery, Backstage Theatre Longford on Wednesday 8 November at 8pm. Open to all.

Eve’s Garden – Stories from the Wild

Eibhilin Crossan’s latest exhibition ‘Eve’s Garden – Stories from the Wild’ was a huge hit with local art-lovers when it was on display in the Atrium Gallery in Backstage Theatre Longford in September. The exhibition represents a body of work she has created over the last year inspired by nature and in response to her environment.

The title of this exhibition – ‘Eve’s Garden: Stories from the Wild’, brings together the themes of the garden and the goddess.

The Longford-based contemporary artist has rediscovered her passion to create over the last number of years. Working predominantly with acrylic paint and inks, both on canvas and paper, she explores a range of subjects from abstracted botanicals and soft landscapes, to portraits and abstracts. The natural world that surrounds the garden and woodlands behind her home provide a rich source of inspiration for her work.

The Goddess series celebrates the sacred feminine as symbolic of mother-nature. Just as woman gives birth, so too does the earth give birth to the flowers and plants. The personification of this energy that gives birth to and nourishes form is properly female. The Celts honoured goddesses of nature and natural forces, with diverse qualities such as abundance, creation and beauty, as well as harshness and vengeance.

In the Garden series, she has explored both Canopy and Wildflower themes. Abstracting her experience of being immersed in nature, of walking through the woods, or sitting in the garden, under the trees, beneath the canopy of leaves. She has borrowed from shapes and shadows of the flowers and leaves and use the negative spaces to create composition. The soft lines and layers of rich colours create a sense of reflected light and evoke the sensuality and beauty of the organic world.

Three Thoughts One Breath

‘Three Thoughts, One Breath’ is a very unique exhibition which graced the walls of the Atrium Gallery in early September, showcasing work by three local portrait artists – Shelley Corcoran, Phil Atkinson and Angelika Florkiewicz.

“The exhibition originally came about with the idea of three artists using three different mediums depicting one subject, hence the name ‘Three Thoughts, One Breath’,” Shelley explained.

“Our admiration for each other’s work drove us to combine our individual skills and, because we are all portrait artists, we wanted to choose the portrait of where we live, Longford, and its people.”

The three styles used in the exhibition are unique to the artist. Shelley herself uses photography to express her psychoanalytical concept of the subject. Phil looks at life after humans, and how the earth claims back what humans have destroyed.

And Angelika aims to bring happiness to those who look upon her work, so she has created art in a comic book style, “because all comics that I read have a happy ending”, she says.

The three artists differ greatly, both in the media through which they choose to express themselves, and in the concepts the use in that expression. They didn’t physically work together for this exhibition, but selected the singular theme of the people of Longford to bind the exhibition.

The results were beautiful, with images depicting the people of Longford in very unique and interesting ways. And, with the success of ‘Three Thoughts, One Breath’, this autumn, the artists are bound to work together again.

“With the response we received from everyone in attendance, we feel it was a huge success and would love to collaborate again,” Shelley concluded.

See www.backstage.ie for more information on the Atrium Gallery.

There’s plenty of woodland in Longford as it is, but next summer, some of the county’s creatives will be turning Longford town into an urban forest using recycled materials to build beautiful, artistic trees.

The trees will bring a burst of colour to the town during next year’s Cruthú Arts Festival and there will be a prize of €1,000 and two runner-up prizes of €250 for the community groups that create the most original, imaginative and environmentally friendly trees.

The beautifully creative trees located throughout the town will greatly add to the festival atmosphere for the duration of Cruthú Arts Festival. It will create a talking point for people and will help to bring art out into the street and closer to people.

It will also be a tremendous advertising exercise for the participating groups and is sure to be an enjoyable bonding experience for the teams of volunteers participating.

The trees will be located a prominent strategic locations throughout the town for the week of the festival, such as the Cathedral, in front of the Temperance Hall, Centenary Square, the Market Square, on the site of the old swimming pool, at the top and bottom of Battery Road, in front of the Army Barracks and around the railway station, thus guaranteeing maximum visibility.

Longford Arts Office are looking for local groups to get involved in the making of these trees, whether it be a school or a community group. The Arts Office will then engage an artist experienced in these projects to work with the groups on a regular basis, so if you’ve never made a tree from recyclable material before, you’ll learn all you need to know.

The artists will initially visit each participating group to discuss and flesh out a basic concept. Then, once the group has the basic drawings and dimensions of their piece, they will begin to source discarded, recyclable object and begin to build their tree, with regular visits from the artist to offer guidance.

Each participating group will receive visits for representatives of the Tree Council of Ireland and other environmental agencies to talk to them about trees and related environmental issues, adding educational value to the project.

There will also be a Longford Urban Forest writing challenge, inviting local poets and prose writers to submit a piece of literature inspired by an individual tree, which will be matched to the writer via a lottery draw.

All of the trees will be then be gathered together to create a forest at the 1916 Commemorative Garden on Great Water Street for an afternoon of literature and music. Participating groups and writers will be photographed beside their respective trees and a book will be published with photographs and literature, to be launched in Autumn 2018.

So next summer, if you feel like taking a stroll through the woods, be sure to take a trip to Longford’s own Urban Forest and see the creativity the town has to offer.

As part of this year’s Cruthu visual arts programme Longford County Arts Office in Partnership with the Longford Public Participation Network commissioned the design and creation of temporary public art pieces made from found and disposable materials. The pieces were only intended to last for the duration of the festival and the plan was then to dispose of them in an environmentally responsible manner.

Street Artist Phil Atkinson worked with five local voluntary groups to design and create five imaginative objects that were used to decorate the streets of Longford and add to the festive atmosphere in the town during the arts festival.

The Edgeworthstown Development Association identified a large fallen oak tree in the grounds of Edgeworthstown Rectory. Given the age of the huge tree they speculated that it may have been there in the time of Maria Edgeworth the great 19^th century writer. They therefore fashioned a beautiful bend which appeared to rest upon books and the back of which was designed as a salmon, symbolising the salmon of knowledge.

Lus na Greinne from Granard designed a very clever piece representing a spider in a web waiting to pounce upon an unsuspecting fly. This piece was very popular with children.

The Longford EDI Training Centre utilised their skills in upholstery and furniture repair to make two giant hands about to shake. One hand is primarily made of disused plastic drinks bottles the other made of upholstery off-cuts.

Cuan Mhuire and Granard Men’s Club made a scaled model of a traditional Irish cottage replete with cottage garden and pecking hens which was very popular with older viewers.

Finally the Longford Acorn Project created a beautiful Fairy figure standing upon a hill out of recycled soft drinks bottles.

Despite the initial intention to dispose of the pieces after the festival each group become so attached that they either kept the pieces of found an appreciative home for them.

Street Theatre or ‘Spectacle’ as it’s called in the business is one of the most exciting, colourful and an exuberant form of public creative expression and it is about time that Longford had some.

Street Theatre is so exciting because it embodies the best of music, dance, drama, painting, costume design, visual crafts and manual skills; it has something for every participant.

The establishment of – Mide – a Longford-based street theatre group was long overdue and when fully up and running will add a magical and dynamic element to our public events such as: St. Patrick’s Day Parades, Easter Parades, Dead of Night Festival, Ardagh Fright Fest, the Lanesborough Monster Festival, sporting occasions and many other civic events in the county.

Who should get involved? Anyone interested in; dance, drama any performing arts, people who are interested in costume and prop making, in fact anyone who has an interest in the arts or is good with their hands will be especially welcome. Do not discount yourself –everyone has something to offer.

The core of our Street Theatre Group is a group of adults with experience in some art-form or who has useful manual skills and this will be augmented with students from primary and secondary schools in Longford who will provide the dance, music and performance elements. The impressive ensemble his will be topped off by local musicians in costume providing the musical score to wonderfully imaginative pageants on our streets.

Longford County Arts Office has commissioned the internationally famous street theatre company ‘Artastic’ to come to Longford and work with the fledgling group imparting skills in prop-making street performance, fantastic costume design and making and all of the skills of the Mardi Gras.

The work with Artistic was followed by workshops in the Granard Enterprise Centre with tom Meskill from Macnas and will continue with workshops in puppet making and costume making by Catherine McGowan from Bui Bolg in Wexford in the Granard Creativity Centre in September.

If you would like to get n touch with Mide please contact:

Shane Crossan 087 6103003

Fergus Kennedy 086 8517595

An exhibition by Shelley Corcoran, Angelika Florkiewicz and Phil Atkinson

This is an intriguing exhibition of work in which three artists explore similar themes through their own unique art forms, Shelley Corcoran through photography, Angelika Sowul through line drawings/caricature and Phil Atkinson through paint.

The exhibition is indicative of the broad diversity of modes of expression among the visual arts community in Longford and of the growing maturity and sophistication of Longford visual artists.

Atrium Gallery, Backstage Theatre, Longford
4th September 2017 8pm

LAR MAGUIRE, JOSEPHINE GUILFOYLE + MARY REILLY

An evocative exhibition of work by three local artists, all using a variety of media, including oil and watercolour, to share with us their passionate response to the landscape around us.

Wednesday 7th June, 2017 at 8pm, in the Atrium Gallery at Backstage

‘Vitamin D for the Winter Battered Soul’

These dark dreary nights are soon to be brightened considerably by the opening of an exhibition of beautiful, vivid, luminescent art by two Longford artists Angela Tuite and Mary Gray in the Atrium Gallery Backstage Theatre on Wednesday evening March 15^th at 8.00pm.

Spring Equinox is the appropriately seasonal title of an exhibition of work by two artists whose styles and techniques may vary considerably but their work when exhibited together displays a visual harmony and expresses in unison the diverse and colourful beauty of nature, its landscapes and it s flora and fauna.

Angela Tuite is an artist who has been working on the Longford arts scene for some time and has developed her own faithful audience. She is also known to many for her tireless work for her community – Edgeworthstown – where she is actively involved in the local heritage group and she is a founder member of the Maria Edgeworthstown Literary Festival.

Angela works in the relatively unusual and technically demanding medium of silk painting. A technique which can produce delicate almost ethereal images on a silk background but alternatively in hands less skilled than Angela’s can also result in a muddy blob in the middle of a silk screen. To gain fascinating insight into the demanding technique of silk painting, take a look at this Angela’s silkscreening video.

Mary Gray is a North Longford based artist who works in the more familiar media of water colours and oils. Mary, a graduate of Sligo Institute of Technology Arts School, is primarily influenced by the unique drumlin landscape of North Longford and by the delicate beauty of flowers butterflies and the surrounding unspoiled environment.

Come along to the exhibition on Wednesday 15^th March at 8.00 to hear Councillor Gerry Warnock open the exhibition. Feast your eyes on the beautifully warm colours and picturesque scenes before you, give yourself a break from March dreariness and provide some vitamin D for your winter battered soul.

Creative Connections is a regional developmental programme for the creative sector which has been established by the Local Enterprise Offices in Counties Longford, Roscommon, Leitrim and Cavan precisely to assist creative people in the region in their effort to increase the profitability of their practice.

The Creative Connections Programme will help you to assess what your professional development needs are? It will offer training in product development, branding & marketing. It will look at the online and offline marketplace. It will explore collaborative marketing/selling opportunities and possibilities.

To kick start the programme, we would like to invite you to a creative sector meeting in Longford Community Enterprise Centre, Longford Business & Technology Park, Ballinalee Road, Longford on Wed 22nd 10:30am to 1:00pm. This will be an opportunity to meet others working in the creative sector, to share challenges and successes and to identify necessary supports to grow both your business and the creative sector itself.

Attendance is free however participants must register.

To register for the programme please go to http://leitrimdesignhouse.ie/shop/workshops/creative-connections-ticket/ Or email info@leitrimdesignhouse.ie to confirm your interest.

“I have attended previous meetings of this Programme and I have found them very practical, informative, accessible and brief”
Fergus Kennedy Longford County Arts Officer.

If you wish to explore ways to make your art more profitable and you are free for two hours next Wednesday morning I would strongly recommend that you not miss this opportunity.

Artists are invited to submit their work in any medium for selection. The 2017 exhibition will be presented entirely in VISUAL Carlow from 7 June – 3 September. All artists will receive an artists fee.

There will be two awards for outstanding work presented:

The ART WORKS Hotron Award of €3000 will be presented for the most outstanding work in any medium.

The Éigse Hotron Award of €1000 will be presented for work by a recent graduate (2015/2016/2017) selected for the most outstanding work in any medium.

• Submission deadline 10 March 2017 @ 5 pm
• All work submitted must have been completed between 2015 and 2017.
• Submitted work must be available for sale.
• Film-based work may be submitted as part of the online process (YouTube or Vimeo link).

Work is accepted for exhibition on merit. Copyright of all work is the property of the artist. Carlow Arts Festival and VISUAL, Carlow reserves the right to photograph work for publicity purposes.

For more information and to enter visit http://carlowartsfestival.com/art-works/

A new radio documentary featuring the tradition of storytelling developed by Longford Visual Artist Amanda Jane Graham – traditional musician Martin Donohoe with Zoran Donohoe on harp, Bobby Walsh on guitar and technician Paul Farnan.

Produced for radio by Fintan Mc Manus.

The Pram That Helped the Rising is a recognition of the substantial, valuable and vital efforts made by our global Irish communities to their homeland.

It pays tribute to Cavan man Marcus Daly, whose foresight paved the way for Butte Montana becoming known as the Richest Hill on Earth.

The Pram That Helped the Rising acknowledges and honours the art, custom and history of storytelling within our culture and explores private and collective memory. Through the tradition of oral history, a displaced community is brought back into focus, within the contemporary frame of 2016.

The Pram That Helped the Rising was funded by Cavan Arts Office, Cavan County Council, the Arts Council and commissioned by Cavan Curators in Residence Annette Maloney and Maeve Mulrennan. It was performed in March 2016 at the Townhall Art Space Cavan as part of the Cavan 2016 Centenary Celebrations

The documentary launches on both Shannonside and Northern Sound FM on the 27th of December 2016 at 8pm.