Suan: Hazel Hutton & Barbara Kenneally Oct/Nov 2017

   We were delighted to welcome back to Working Artist Studios, a year after her first exhibition here, the highly talented glass artist, Hazel Hutton, to exhibit with fellow Crawford College glass artist, Barbara Kenneally on Friday  Oct 27th. 

   This beautiful exhibition was opened by artist, Róisín Foley. Erudite, witty, passionate and extremely poetic, her introductory talk was perfectly pitched and an example to all who would open an exhibition.  

Paul Ó Colmáin read some of his poetry.

Suan – an exciting exhibition of glass works & photography by multi-award-winning artists

        Hazel Hutton and Barbara Kenneally

“Glass as a material has compelling natural allure. No other material has such an ability to change colour, texture and shape. Glass interacts with and distorts natural light – emphasising the purity of the material and its wave nature. How light is displaced and reflected constantly questions what it is we are looking into. This in itself is highly experimental and essentially ephemeral.”

Hazel Hutton is a graduate resident at Crawford College of Art and design, Cork, Ireland where she completed her degree in Contemporary Applied Art in ceramics glass and textiles (BA Hons) 2016. In 2015 Hazel Hutton completed an eight week student exchange to Shanghai where she studied glass casting on a large scale. Before coming to the Crawford Hazel Hutton received Potters training underneath traditional potter Ray Maw in West Cork. She has work within private collections in Ireland and the UK.

“I try to capture the beauty in movement within static forms. Inherent ideas within interaction, sexuality and human tension are important within my figurative sculptures. I have a highly personal relationship with my materials and tend to give them their freedom allowing their raw and natural state to be the most important.”

Hazel’s exhibition, Beetles & Beaks, showed in WAS in 2016.

 

Barbara Kenneally has a longstanding passion for the Beara peninsula. The beauty of this area in West Cork with its ever-changing light and topography is a constant source of inspiration. Copper mining took place here in prehistoric times as well as during the Irish industrial revolution. The organic mineral deposition is dramatic but the interaction of Nature on the manmade interventions in the landscape is spectacular.

In her current work, the magnetism of childhood memories comes into play.

She captures the essence of Allihies and its mining heritage by using rocks found at the mines to create the moulds for her glass. The transparency of glass allows for exploration of the surface and the subsurface, a very significant aspect to her work.

She wants viewers to contemplate  this sub-world and in some way hopes to evoke reflection on those individuals who lived, worked and passed on from this place.