Clúdach: Cover

We continue our 2016 sampling of works by artists associated with the Limerick Printmakers Studio and Gallery in the summer issue with a bold image created by Mary O’Dea, an artist and board member of the facility located on St. John’s Square in Limerick City. The studio’s website is http://www.limerickprintmakers.com/Home.html.

Mary O’Dea studied electronic production at the University of Limerick before going on to additional studies at the Dun Laoghaire College of Art, and then earning the Higher Diploma in Art and Design for teachers, Limerick School of Art and Design. She has shown her work at a range of venues in Ireland, including the Hunt Museum and at the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork. This year, she was selected to participate in a residency at Factoria Cultural, Aviles, Spain as part of a Creative Europe Project.

Our cover art is a screen print measuring 29 cm x 29 cm, titled “Black and White II.” It is part of a three-piece “Black and White Series,” which can be viewed on the artist’s website at www.maryodea.com. O’Dea says that this work “looks at the contrast in the landscape at the edges of Limerick city, Ireland. It is an in-between space of vacant industrial zoned land, used for grazing horses by the travelling community. This space acts as a buffer between the city and the countryside and vice versa. The visual contrast between urban and rural and the black and white of the horses accentuates and focuses on the difference that exists between the two separate worlds that live side by side.”

We thank Mary O’Dea, and the staff of Limerick Printmakers, especially its manager, Jessica Tobin, for permission to reproduce this image and for kind assistance in composing this note.