If you missed it the first time around, you now have another chance to see our recent exhibition ‘Norah McGuinness: Illustrations to the Stories of Red Hanrahan’. The Model is delighted to present this exhibition, drawn from The Niland Collection, in Roscommon Arts Centre, in collaboration with the lovely people there.
Thanks to a grant from The Heritage Council these works have been conserved and reframed and this is only the second time that they have been exhibited publically in many years.
Norah McGuinness was born in Derry in 1903 and studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, and later in Paris under the renowned Cubist, André Lhote. McGuinness was still a student when she met W. B. Yeats in 1920s Dublin. He was so impressed with her work that he later invited her to illustrate his book ‘The Stories of Red Hanrahan and the Secret Rose’ which he planned to republish in 1927. The drawings are striking for their Byzantine Modernist style although one critic deemed the style “disturbing” on the publication of the book in 1927.
Throughout her career McGuinness utilised her extraordinary creative talents, by branching out into illustration, theatre design and window dressing, to supplement her income. She created fashion illustrations for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The Bystander magazines, and designed windows for Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue New York and Brown Thomas in Dublin.
McGuinness was one of a number of pioneering female Irish artists who brought European modernist influences to Ireland at a time when the arts were predominantly patriarchal and traditional.
This exhibition is on display in the Roscommon Arts Centre from March 16th to April 26th 2012. For more information, please visit Roscommon Arts Centre’s website
This project started two weeks ago on the 20th of September. It involves the children of Cranmore (ages range from 7-10). We introduced the children to different forms of art. I started on the 2nd week of the project where the task was to find as many different textures and materials on the way to the model gallery from Cranmore. We also watched a short film called the Lost Thing which the kids found very amusing.
This week we got them to design their own lost thing, either with collage/sculpting, drawing or painting. They had the choice to move around to which ever table they like. The kids especially enjoyed the collage/sculpting table. Hannah made a lovely 3D sculpture of her lost thing. I asked her questions about it and she told me “it lives where the other lost things live in the movie”
The children show so much enthusiasm with this project, and all the tables were busy.
The two boys out of the group Louis and Kieran loved sculpting; Kieran made a robotic lost thing and told me “the idea was in my head”
Louis made a lost thing he said “had a beard like Santa” Paula and Rebecca decided to make a photo guide of the last week walk from the picture they took themselves.
The kids have been amazing and I love working with them, Naomi and Lara. Their excitement and love for art is so heart warming. I am looking forward to the next few weeks especially the sleepover on the fifth of November where the children in the Cranmore group will get to meet the other group.
Katie Lynch
Transition Year Student
This project is supported by The International Fund for Ireland.
We had some lovely coverage this week in Bizstartup.ie of one of our new Creative Enterprise Office tenants, Eddie Johnston of Beanstalk.ie.
Beanstalk in The Model
A web development business called Beanstalk has set up in the offices available to rent at the recently revamped Sligo arts centre The Model, which aims to be a hub for creative enterprises in the North West.
Eddie Johnston set up the company, which offers a range of services from the design and development of complete websites to front-end design and customisations.
Creative Enterprises Office Spaces
The Model houses six new Creative Enterprises Office Spaces available to rent for innovative start-ups and technology companies. Beanstalk is one of two existing tenants, the other being Sligo Live, a music festival that runs in October.
We still have two Creative Enterprise Offices available for rent. For more info, please contact Emer Marron at emer.marron@modelart.ie or see more info here
