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| 31 Mar 2008 09:47:25 am |
 Idiosyncratic Seaside Architecture |
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Bundoran, photos by Sarah Browne, last weekend of March, 2008 |
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Category : tourism
| Posted By : Sarah |  Comments[66] |  Trackbacks [0] |
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| 13 Mar 2008 09:28:48 am |
| Niland Art Collection/ Sligo Landscapes |
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The Niland Gallery is called after one of Sligo’s Nora Niland. In the 1950s, Nora was instrumental in establishing the Sligo Municipal Art Collection, which today bears her name. As county librarian Nora spotted the importance of the connection between Sligo and the Yeats family. In the 1950s, Nora was instrumental in establishing the Sligo Municipal Art Collection, which today bears her name.
Niland was appointed Sligo County Librarian in 1945, however her unique zeal and vision far extended beyond her post. She was quick to spot the yet untapped potential of the Yeats connection with Sligo and became instrumental in the formation of the Yeats Society.
In 1958, Niland found herself planning the first International Yeats Summer School. With the event looming, Nora hit upon the idea of borrowing five works by Jack B. Yeats, from the Capuchin Annual in Dublin, to exhibit for the duration of the summer school. These works consisted of three large oil paintings, Communicating with Prisoners, The Funeral of Harry Boland, and The Island Funeral, along with two smaller watercolours, Market Day and The Star Gazer. Over the course of the exhibition, Niland came to believe that these paintings would make a great permanent addition to the cultural hub of Sligo, and set about raising the £3,000 needed to purchase them. Although it took her two years, Niland’s determination ensured that the paintings remained in Sligo and formed the nucleus of what has now become the Niland Collection.
During the course of her fundraising, Niland made some invaluable contacts, not least of whom was James Healy. Healy was the New York born son of Irish immigrants, and had amassed a great fortune on the stock exchange. Both he and his wife, Josephine, had a passion for the west of Ireland and were avid collectors of Irish art. Between 1965-1966, Healy generously gave Nora Niland donations of almost thirty paintings in memory of his parents John and Catherine Healy. Included in these gifts were many important works by both John and Jack Butler Yeats.
In 1975, after the death of his wife, Healy donated her entire collection of modern Irish art, consisting of 35 works, to the Sligo Municipal Collection. This bequest contained works by Maurice McGonigal, Sean Keating, and Paul Henry. By the time Niland retired in 1979, she had acquired 148 paintings, 49 of them by Jack B. Yeats. During her tenure as County Librarian, Niland had purchased the old Congregational Church and Manse on Stephan’s Street. The Church became the new county library, while a permanent exhibition space was established in the Manse. This space did not prove suitable and the collection was frequently moved around until 2001, when purpose-built Niland Gallery was opened on the site of the Model School.
The collection is significant for its sizeable number of works by Jack B. Yeats many of which record experiences and memories of his time living in Sligo and its environs. There are many other works that relate specifically to the Sligo landscape, or have been created by artists who live or were born in Sligo, such as Constance Gore-Booth, Maeve de Marcievicz, Barrie Cooke and Nick Miller.
Paul Henry, Estella Solomons, Sean Keating, among many others are also represented in the collection which is exhibited in purpose-built galleries. The work in the collection includes painting, drawing, 2D work in mixed media, and sculpture. The artworks date from c.1890 to 2003 and are available, by application, for scholarly research. Works continue to be purchased for the collection from living Irish artists, and as such it can offer vital support to their careers and recognition of their work. Exhibitions from the collection are changed several times per year. Recent exhibitions of the Niland Collection have included a selection of female artists from the collection; a selection of work by Yeats; and selections curated by Patti Smith and Irish artist Isabel Nolan.
Some Sligo-related artworks in the collection:
Veronica Bolay ( b.1941) Lighthouse, Sligo Bay 1972 watercolour
Henk Breedveld (1918-1999) Glencar undated Oil on canvas
Henk Breedveld (1918-1999) Sligo Races undated Oil on canvas
John Brennan View of Sligo Abbey undated Pen and ink
Barrie Cooke (b.1931) Knocknarea I 2001 oil on canvas
Barrie Cooke (b.1931) Tench Fishing 1974 Oil on board+mixed media
Barrie Cooke (b.1931) Slow Dance on the Forest Floor II 1976 Oil on Board and Mixed media
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) The Steps 1958 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Knocknarea from Lissadell 1961 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Lissadell Hse. and Benbulben 1961 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Dutch Barn 1959 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Blackcurrent Harvest 1958 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Sunday at Kenwood Iveagh Bequest) 1960 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Autumn Evening, Devon 1960 oil on board
Maeve De Markievicz (1901-1962) Avenue at Crushmore no date unknown
Casimir Dunin Markievicz Landscape with Cattle oil on canvas
Percy French (1854-1920) A view of Sligo Quay 1911 Watercolours
Constance Gore-Booth (1868-1927) Landscape 1905 oil on board
Constance Gore-Booth (1868-1927) Landscape 1905 oil on board
Constance Gore-Booth (1868-1927) View of a Lodge near Lissadell House undated Oil
Constance Gore-Booth 1868-1927 ) Untitled undated oil on board
Louis le Brocquy ( b. 1916 ) The Tain - 15 prints lithographic prints
Nick Miller (b. 1962) Portrait of Barrie Cooke 1997 oil on linen
Elizabeth Yeats (1868-1940 ) Rosses Point 1899 Watercolour
Elizabeth Yeats (1868-1940) Rosses Point, taking in Deadman's Point watercolour
Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957) A Sunday Morning in Sligo 1898 Watercolour |
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Category : Representations
| Posted By : Sarah | Comments[63] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 16 Mar 2008 08:54:29 am |
| Three Ballrooms |
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The Ballroom of Romance is located in Glenfarne. There is some historical information posted on the Breifne website about it:
http://www.breifne.ie/content.asp?ID=1969
The Rainbow in Glenfarne was built by the late John McGivern in early 1934. John was a native of Brockagh, Glenfarne, Co Leitrim and in his late teens he, like so many other people from the area, emigrated to the USA. While there he was involved in the radio and entertainment business. However, it was always his ambition to set up his own entertainment business and he returned to his native Glenfarne in the early thirties. He then purchased a plot of land at a cross roads in the town land of Brockagh Lower along the N16 Enniskillen to Sligo road, where he built the hall, locally known as the Nissan Hut.
The Glenfarne town blog: http://www.glenfarne.com/general/the-ballroom-of-romance-comes-home/
In addition to this Ballroom, there are two other ballrooms of romance that together form a trilogy of sorts, a bit like Joseph Kosuth’s Three Chairs.
The first of these representations is a short story written by William Trevor, also called The Ballroom of Romance. The story goes that Trevor was inspired to write the story while passing by the structure on the road one day – there is something uniquely striking about a glorified barn adorned with a colourful rainbow and the legend The Ballroom of Romance.
The third ballroom is the film adaptation of Trevor’s short story. It's directed by Pat O'Connor and made in 1982, starring Brenda Fricker, Mick Lally, Colm Toibin and Cyril Cusack. It was filmed in Ballycroy, Co. Mayo: http://www.mayo-ireland.ie/Mayo/Towns/Ballycroy/Ballycroy.htm
I am as interested in Trevor’s idea of the Ballroom, and the fiction that sprang from it, as the site itself.
Photograph by Gareth Kennedy, taken on the Buseireann bus from Enniskillen to Manorhamilton, 2006. |
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Category : Representations
| Posted By : Sarah | Comments[46] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 31 Mar 2008 09:05:11 am |
| Memoirs |
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Category : General
| Posted By : anna | Comments[55] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 31 Mar 2008 08:58:32 am |
| Geological Survey Mapping in Ireland. |
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Geological Survey Mapping in Ireland.
The Ordinance Survey’s coverage of Ireland on the scale of one inch to one statute mile ( 1:63,360) was planned during the Napoleonic wars to form part of a single military map of the United Kingdom. By the time the Irish branch was set up in 1824, the priority was no longer military and county maps were drawn up at the larger scale of six inches to a mile. Only when the last of these large scale maps were completed in 1846 did work commence on the drawing and engraving of the of the Irish one inch map.
In terms of Geological mapping, Ireland nurtured some notable pioneers of geological cartography and produced an official geological survey some ten years before the establishment of a similar survey in England. It was to Ireland that British geologists came to learn the art of six -inch field mapping. The maps of Leitrim gathered here courtesy of the Geological Survey of Ireland ( copyright free) are both the six inch field maps drawn by geological teams during the 1840’s /50’s and the later one inch maps published in 1878.
The one inch maps depict hill shading as closely spaced fine lines known as hachures, the engraving of hachures was a slow and difficult process, in later editions the hachures were lightened by printing them in brown and in the black and white versions of the early twentieth century were replaced by contour lines.
Of the six inch maps the geological field notes are drawn or painted on watercolour directly onto ordinance survey maps and include direct observations; Leitrim map 12.3; near Ballaghnabehy Lough, ‘ a very fine quarry of flaggy white quartzite grits and sandstone flags can be raised here to almost any size. They are much used in Sligo and Enniskillen for paving streets. It is a much softer rock than the same grits on the Glenfarne Mountain, the latter being so hard as to turn the workmans tools’. Another exampleLeitrim 12.4 Ardvarney. ‘ massive white quartzite grits and fine conglomerates, ice moulded? Direction of movement running E to W.’
Memoirs to the 1’’ maps.
To accompany the 1878 1’’ geological maps of Ireland, the Geological Survey of Ireland produced explanatory memoirs to give a detailed breakdown of the topography of the areas covered on each map sheet. For example the principal places described in the memoir for sheets 66 & 67 are Ballymote in Co Sligo, Ballyfarnon in Roscommon, Drumshambo, Ballinamore and a small part of Carrick on Shannon in Leitrim.
In the forward by the Director General of the survey, Andrew C Ramsey notes that…
‘there is exhibited a very interesting and complete series of all the Carboniferous Strata of Ireland, from the sandstones that underlie the Lower Sandstone, up to an including the Lower Coal-measures. The Old Red Sandstone also forms a long tract of country; and, indeed, on either side of Lough Allen, and near its southern end, the Geologist may examine all the formations of the district from the Lower Silurian up to the outlier of the Coal measures that crown Slieve-an-Ierin, 1,922 feet above the sea. It is a rare thing in most countries to find so much comprised in so small a space.’
There follows 37 pages of minute detail of the findings of the survey teams. The contents cover: physical geography, geological formations, palaeontological notes ( including a description of what fossils were discovered in which townland and where, eg:
Liscreaghan, at railway cutting, three quarters of a mile west of Woodbrook, three miles and a quarter west of Carrick on Shannon: Lower Limestone. Actinozoa;Corals, Lithodendron affinis; Junceum; Mullusca; Polyzoa, Feirestella membranacea; Brachiopoda; Terebratula hastate.)
Accounts of mines, minerals and principal faults, this section includes accounts of landowners and their various attempts to sink shafts and capitalize on the coal seams on their land sometimes the author permits himself the odd wry remark:
‘ I may here remark that Hugh O’Berine, esq., of Jamestown House spent several thousand pounds in sinking a shaft in seach of coals about half a mile east of Lough Allen, through the base of the Yoredale beds into the upper limestones. It seems that he acted on the advice of some practical men, which only shows how capital can be wasted when its outlay is not directed by a knowledge of the simplest principles of geology’. |
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Category : General
| Posted By : anna | Comments[53] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 31 Mar 2008 08:51:12 am |
| Maps |
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Category : General
| Posted By : anna | Comments[57] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 16 Mar 2008 08:50:52 am |
| Technology of its Time: the Claude Glass |
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While most of my research here, and in general, has focussed on viewing technologies from the recent past (1960s – 1980s), I wanted to make a post on some older things, specifically the Claude glass as a way of looking at landscape.
[img]
http://newsitesnewfields.com/blogs/blog/files/Claude%20Glass,%20Manufactured%20in%20England,%2018th%20century,%20at%20the%20V&A%20copy.gif[/img]
The Claude glass is named after renowned French landscape painter, Claude Lorrain.The Claude glass is a contraption small enough to be held in the hand, similar in size and appearance to a lady’s makeup compact. This is important as it was made to be a portable technology and its popularity grew in line with the emerging tourist culture in the 1800s… It was an important early device for consuming landscape views and turning sights into sites.
They were used by picturesque artists in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a frame for drawing sketches of picturesque landscapes. The user would turn his back on the scene to observe the framed view through the tinted mirror—in a sort of pre-photographic lens—which added the picturesque aesthetic of a subtle gradation of tones. Father Thomas West in his A Guide to the Lakes, 1778, explained "The person using it ought always to turn his back to the object that he views. It should be suspended by the upper part of the case…holding it a little to the right or the left (as the position of the parts to be viewed require) and the face screened from the sun."
The device itself is a handheld, slightly tinted, convex mirror. As such it has a slight ‘fisheye’ effect so that the edges of the view tend to warp slightly. This is a compositional technique seen in Claude’s paintings, typically the tall trees that tend to frame his compositions, known as coulisses (named after the side wings in theatre).
Reverend William Gilpin, the inventor of the picturesque ideal, advocated the use of a Claude glass saying, "they give the object of nature a soft, mellow tinge like the colouring of that Master".
Also known as 'Black Mirrors', they were widely used by tourists and amateur artists, who quickly became the targets of satire. Hugh Sykes Davies observed their facing away from the object they wished to paint, commenting: "It is very typical of their attitude to Nature that such a position should be desirable". ( James Buzard (2002). "The Grand Tour and after 1660-1840", in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing)
Links:
Claude Glass at the V & A: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/features/cheating/claude/index.html
Article in Art Times Journal by Raymond J. Steiner:
http://www.arttimesjournal.com/peeks/Dec04p&p.htm
The Claude Glass and the Picturesque:
http://web2.uwindsor.ca/hrg/amckay/Claudemirror.com/Home.html
Link to the book, 'The Claude Glass - Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art', MIT Press:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10247 |
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Category : Representations
| Posted By : Sarah | Comments[57] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 31 Mar 2008 08:42:59 am |
| Environmental Quarterly |
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Issue No, 44 , Environmental Quarterly of Sherkin Island Marine Station, 2007
This issue of the magazine has some interesting articles pertinent to some of our research interests;
Prof. Barrie Dale in Looking Back into the Future of Climate Change talks about the hysteria surrounding the debate on climate change and advocates a more informed approach by politicians and the media. Dr John Akeroyd, botanist writes about the threat to Irelands precious wetland flowers from pollution and invasion by alien species and Dr Sarah Varian outlines the new marine environmental outreach project seeking input from the Irish beach going public to report sightings of Mermaids Purses in a national survey of shark, Skate and Ray breading grounds.
For more information check out www.sherkinmarine.ie.
Dr Sarah Varian, Zoologist. Marine dimensions. www.marinedimensions.ie.
Dr John Akeroyd, editor of ‘The Wild Plants of Sherkin, Cape Clear and adjacent islands of West Cork’ 1996.
Prof. Barrie Dale, Dept. of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo Norway.
I have a couple of copies if anyone is interested. Cheers Anna. |
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Category : General
| Posted By : anna | Comments[51] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 12 Mar 2008 04:10:26 am |
| Nostalgic Technology |
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Category : Representations
| Posted By : Sarah | Comments[37] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 10 Mar 2008 03:55:52 pm |
| Saehan Media/ The Worldwide Collapse in Videotape |
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Category : Land Use
| Posted By : Sarah | Comments[39] | Trackbacks [0] |
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