AN art structure symbolising togetherness has brought residents of an estate in Athy closer.
The seat on the green in Ardrew was designed as part of the Percent For Art project and it was unveiled last week as part of a closing celebration for the project. Resident Delores Grady told the Kildare Nationalist that the idea for the seat came about through workshops facilitated by professional artists.
“Art classes were offered to every resident and from those classes it became apparent that there was a longing and an eagerness on behalf of the residents to feel connected with one another. The artists led us along on the process and we created the piece without realising what we were doing. The seat is on different levels and it’s made from nice rosewood. The different levels symbolise the different profiles and ages of the people in the estate and the seat is based on the idea of the six degrees of separation.”
Delores is a retired secondary school teacher and she said she had no previous art experience. “It wasn’t drawing or sketching, it was more about putting things together. I feel the whole thing brought people together because we had ownership of what was created. It was much better that we came up with an idea of what we wanted rather than artists coming up with an idea for an estate in which they don’t live. Some of the residents who hadn’t been involved in the creation of the art work became involved through the laying of the foundation. The whole process cemented friendships for the future.”
Mark Ryan, one of the artists involved in the project, said that most houses in the estate were represented in the workshops. “There are 50 of the 87 houses in the estate occupied and someone from nearly every house got involved, there were a few who didn’t but you will always have that. The workshops for both adults and children were a way for them to get to know each other and through the workshops people got to know each other. You could see friendships growing as time went on.”
Mark and his wife Maree Henesy worked together on the project. “We have worked together on projects before such as a piece we did for UCD at their new building in Bellfield and we have done work at quite a few of the embassies in Dublin as well. We found that the gender balance was quite important because different people felt they could relate to one or the other of us better, we found that interesting.”
Mark says that the seat isn’t the only permanent creation from the project. “While I was working on the seat Maree worked on a book which showed the 87 different facets of Ardrew representing the 87 houses. The book has a bronze cover which I made and the prints were done by Maree. That book will go to places such as the Riverbank Theatre in Newbridge but it will always come back to Ardrew to the community centre there.”
Percent for Art was introduced as a practical means of funding visual arts in Ireland. Under this scheme, the budgets for all capital construction projects should include a sum to pay for an Irish visual art project.