Workshops
Postcards From Venice
Hands on Workshop
Murano Island Venice
September 12-14th
Amy West Design Studio ondamenta Radi 25 30141
"Printing from Glass- Postcards" from Venice is a series of three hands-on workshops, three hours each. International artists Róisín de Buitléar and Amy West demonstrate how to draw, incise and print a glass negative onto paper postcards. Participants will sketch on glass along Murano canal sides, use basic glass engraving skills and learn glass plate printing. These unique postcards can be mailed from Murano to destinations around the world! Addressing the fragility of modern correspondence, these activities open discussions on virtual and physical communication. Róisín de Buitléar and Amy West share the joy of maintaining physical correspondence through hand-engraved and hand printed materials. Workshops demonstrate how making and sending postcards from Venice, captures time and place more intensely and enduringly, than contemporary forms of digital communication.
Beady Pocket Project
The ‘Beady Pocket’ from the Traveller Culture served as a generous bag and useful holder for essential objects needed for a life on the road. They are an important cultural item of clothing for Travelling people.
As Artist in residence at National Museum of Ireland Róisín de Buitléar, in collaboration with NMI and Pavee Point worked in collaboration with city based Travelling communities, and local women to examine the culture associated with ‘Beady Pockets’ and to explore contemporary responses to this intriguing object.
Using the National Museum historical textile collection and material from the Museum’s handling collection as resources, aided by Museum curators and educators, the group worked with Róisín de Buitléar to challenge ideas based on portable safekeeping of objects, cultural clothing, remembrance textiles, pockets, and objects associated with memory.
The Traveller’s ‘Beady Pocket’ served as a generous bag and useful holder for essential objects needed for a life on the road, and are an important cultural item of clothing for Travelling people. Items such as a knife, money, jewellery and a needle and thread, hidden in the seam, were common objects that were kept in the deep pockets. The decorative pocket also served as a memory bag. The pockets were decorated with small buttons medals and beads which were exchanged between women, on leaving a site or moving on to a new location.
In this unique collaboration for the National Museum of Ireland, the artist welcomed Travellers to the museum to share their culture with women from the settled community and wider public. By exploring shared ideologies on culture, domestic craft, and the language of the hand through this hands on workshop, it new relationships developed between the museum and all the participants.
Museum on the Move
A family workshop held in the residency studio at the National Museum of Ireland led by Róisín de Buitléar.
On sunday March 11th as part of the education programme at the museum of Decorative Arts Dublin, 25 attendees from age 3 to over 70 took part in a free 2.5 hour workshop. They designed and made their own small museum pieces in a busy hands on workshop, learning about transparency, translucency, cutting and appliqué of glass, while discussing museum collections and their own preference as potential curators.
