Clúdach: Cover

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New Hibernia Review's four covers of the 2014 volume will once again showcase the vitality and diversity of contemporary Irish printmaking—this time in a series of images created by artists associated with the Cork Printmakers. (Previous volumes have featured works from Dublin's Graphic Studio Gallery and from the Belfast Print Workshop.) Located on Wandesford Quay, Cork Printmakers was founded in 1991. At that time, there were no professional printmaking facilities in the Republic outside of Dublin. Today, the membership-based artists' resource offers facilities in etching, photo-intaglio, screen-printing, lithography, and relief printing. Its studio facilities are complemented by a range of ongoing exhibitions and educational outreach programs.

Each of this year's covers will reflect an artist's response to a harbor scene. The etching and aquatint "Raft" by Ben Reilly (b. 1963) measures 35 x 50 cm., and was created for the recent NOVA show at the Cork Printmakers gallery, which was on exhibit in December 2013 though January of this year. "Raft" is both rendered and abstract at once; the distant space is more clearly recognizable than the structure in the foreground, which is abstracted and flattened—indeed, almost reduced to decorative pattern, like the waves in the waves in the front.

Artist Ben Reilly graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork, in 1987. He went on to receive a degree in archaeology from University College Cork in 1995, and an MA in Fine Art Sculpture from Winchester School of Art in 1999. His work is collected in many collections throughout Ireland. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Crawford College, at the Limerick School of Art and Design, Michigan State University, and elsewhere. Currently, Reilly lectures at the Waterford Institute of Technology. Readers may learn more about Reilly and his work at his website, www.benreilly.ie.