Winter Artworks 2014

'Flight', Mixed media on gesso board, Mary Cullen Kelly 2014

Working with print, collage and paint on small gesso boards, wonderful contrast between textured, patterned and smooth areas wiped clean (once a printmaker always a...) Quite an ethereal feel to the images.

Exhibiting at the Truffle Fairy Cáfe Co. Kilkenny

The Truffle Fairy Chocolate Cáfe hosted our exhibition for the Kilkenny Arts Festival at the lovely cáfe and chocolate shop on Chapel Hill in Thomastown Co. Kilkenny.  Oh the temptation! Not a good idea to leave me unsupervised in a chocolate shop while hanging the exhibition!

Carlow Arts Festival Eigse 2014

Antenna, Carborundum and Chine Colle print, V.P., Mary Cullen Kelly 2014

One of the pieces I had on show at the Blueprint Gallery 2014, during a vibrant Eigse week.  Lots of art to see and the excitement of having street events and street art on Dublin St. was a real treat.

Street Art, Eigse Carlow Arts Festival and other stories

It's been a very arty time recently, I've been involved in a Street Art Project, had a piece accepted for the RHA Annual, and also for an exhibition 'Being Here' in the Dungarvan Arts Centre, as well as support from the Carlow Arts Office to learn some new skills at the Blackstack Print Studio in Kilkenny.

The Street Art Project for Carlow, led by the Pure Thinking art group, has been a great chance to work in a different way, experimenting with scale and materials and making artworks with others.  Very exciting to see the work getting put together now - the street art is part of the Eigse Carlow Arts Festival 2014, and hopefully some of it will stay up for longer than the duration of the festival.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Cristina Caratti, Mary Cullen Kelly, 2014

RHA Annual and Being Here Waterford:  The mixed media works going into the two juried exhibitions were made within the past year, it really is a great boost to have this work chosen for showing over the summer.  Being Here Waterford is going to run in the Dungarvan Arts Centre, a lovely arts centre in a very picturesque town, and this show is important to me as artists had to have a link with Waterford, where my Granny was from.
I'm really grateful to have had the time to make new work, and as much as the exhibiting, for me the experience of making artwork is as always the most important.  In my world, this is where I seem to find the strongest link to spirit and God I think!  Each to his own.

Carlow Arts Office Grant:  I'm very much looking forward to linking in with Sylvia in the Blackstack Studio, where I'm going to make some new plates to print from, using a photo etching technique.  This specialist support is made possible by the Carlow Arts Office, I'm very grateful and really looking forward to getting stuck in!  This is a short video of my print exhibition Dreamlands

Art Studio days

Finding all sorts of vintage images to play around with, photgraphed beside a new painting that started out as a photo of the interior of a cafe!  I printed the image on to a gesso board and scraped into the image and used sandpaper. It's part of the process that one image transforms into something quite different during this process. This time I ended up with a 1930s type landscape/imaginary scene.

Photo of current works-in-progress Jan '14, Photograph, Mary Cullen-Kelly

Chine Colle Print Technique

Before Christmas, I went to a printmaking workshop in Visual Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow.  The workshop was delivered by Cora Cummins, who had an exhibition showing in Visual at the same time http://www.visualcarlow.ie/exhibitions/info/the-black-rose-the-green-pound-and-the-blue-sky.  For the workshop, Cora demonstrated chine collé, a technique of applying found or pre-created imagery to a print, and then provided the group with source materials and support around creating a number of prints on the day.  It was such a lovely experience, a real break from the world and great to spend time just 'playing' with collage and print really.

Untitled, Chine colle print with engraving, Mary Cullen, 2013

I vaguely remember this technique from college, but hadn't used it since.  It really opens up a whole world of ideas and possibilities.  It appeals mostly for the moment to me as a way of combining photographic imagery with the textured or abstract surfaces I've made on light steel. Kilkenny based artist Maeve Coulter uses this process in some of her work http://www.maevecoulter.com/print/paper/.

I found this video online that shows the process used differently but very interesting all the same:

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