Artist in Residence

SHARON KELLY ARTIST IN RESIDENCE HARTSTOWN COMMUNITY SCHOOL 21-25 May 2018

Hartstown Community School is delighted to collaborate with Draíocht in a week-long Artist’s Residency with Sharon Kelly whose solo exhibition is featured in Draíocht’s current exhibition MAKing Art: The DRAWing Exhibition. This residency is a pilot initiative funded by Draíocht. Sharon Kelly, is a distinguished Belfast- based artist, she uses drawing as the main form of her practice.

The residency programme will include structured encounters facilitated by the artist in residence alongside the artists own development of new work. Sharon Kelly will work with the Art Teacher’s, Terence Casey and Anne Moylan to develop the programme supported by Sarah Beirne, Children and Youth Arts Officer Draíocht and Sharon Murphy, Exhibition Curator for Draíocht.

Sharon has proposed to use the residency to explore the idea of moving through the school – that it is a place of transition…

“It is where the students transit through their teenage years; staff spend their working lives; the users of the building move from location to location each day and where dreams, daydreams, challenges, failures, success, mundane and extraordinary things happen. It marks this time in a very particular way. I would like the time spent there to reflect on this, to mark it in some way through drawing.

It will mean that I myself will transit through the spaces, ponder, stop to record, respond to spaces and people moving through space. I would like to see what the views are like looking from inside to outside (different perspectives, different skies and skylines) and find ways of looking into the school. Places of heightened movement – around passage ways in and out of the building and communal areas and also those spaces where not much seems to happen, might be interesting.” We hope to have a staff workshop based around exploring the language of drawing as communication and feeling. On some lunchtimes Sharon is happy to facilitate a sort of walk and sketch session around the playing field/park area for anyone to take part in – responding to the outdoors in a very organic, intuitive way. Sharon Kelly is really looking forward to spending the week with us, we will let you know next Class Act how it went as this years one…. is off to Press………