helenfarrellart

Mountpleasant Mural community project in MISA courtyard, St James Hospital Dublin. May - September 2017 . These paintings on view in the   Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA)    courtyard  in St. James's Hospital, Dublin 8 are from the  Mountpleasant Mural Project, a very successful community outdoor arts endeavor, which was one of the events of the Ranelagh Arts Festival 2013. Members of the public in Ranelagh were invited to add their brushstrokes and signatures, to these paintings, which celebrate local areas and events.  This project was one of many integrative community art events that took place in parks, in schools and on the streets in Ranelagh during the festival.  As an artist with a special interest in    bringing art into everyday communities, I was excited to be approached by Roisin Nevin,Creative Life Co-ordinator at MISA and asked to select and prepare a collection of artpieces for ...

Arts in Healthcare is a little recognised, but expanding and important area in Ireland today, having the potential to transform healthcare experiences and societal health through the Arts. I was fortunate to gain valuable and enjoyable experience in this field while working as a Creativity Facilitator for a year in a Residential Care Hospital in Dublin in 2014.  This post gives a brief overview of a wonderful and innovative summer long Outdoor Art Exhibition which we curated in the hospital courtyard. Some of our residents chose to give a comment on their input into this show -  I have included these in itallics. "Pillowcase project" "Love" - Mosaic on wood. Comment by artist "Wow!"  Our "Outdoor Art Exhibition" was especially popular, so I am uploading some images of this event, which will give a flavour of some of the work we made. "Blue Tree" - Watercolour on weatherproofed paper. Commen...

Post- script: In 2013, Moynalty won the National Tidy Towns award. The following community arts project was mentioned on the adjudicators report, and we like to think that the community energy involved in this outdoor art exhibition contributed in some small way towards that award! http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/moynalty-co-meath-named-ireland-s-tidiest-town-1.1521107 Left to right-  Helen Farrell, John O Brien, Heather Buchanan, Catherine Mc Cormack, Deirdre Gilsenan. Weighed down by the gloom of a long winter in 2012, our thoughts went to dreaming of longer days when leaf buds would form on trees, birds would start to look for materials with which to build their nests and a certain light would appear in our daylight hours. A notion formed of creating outdoor artpieces alongside  nature, as she created the following season. A brave or foolish notion ? I wasn't sure , but it didn't go away. It became stronger, and we began to conside...

This project was a real treat.  The inspiration for it came from "Little People in the City", - a compact book of absorbing  photographs of tiny, painted handmade models of people by the urban artist Slink achu. Slinkachu is a London-based artist whose creations can be found in doorways and cracks in the pavement across the capital . "Mixing sharp humour with a delicious edge of melancholy, Little People in the City brings together the collected photographs of Slinkachu, a street-artist who for several years has been leaving little hand-painted people in the bustling city to fend for themselves, waiting to be discovered… Oddly enough, even when you know they are just hand-painted figurines, you can’t help but feel that their plights convey something of our own fears about being lost and vulnerable in a big, bad city.” The Times. We loved his work, and ran a sculpty/photographic workshop based on this theme as part of Ranelagh Arts Festival 2012...