Exhibition of Felt Artists inspired by Evie Hone’s legacy.

Exhibtion currently running (until end Oct) at “The Constant Knitter”- Francis Street, Dublin, organised by Feltmakers Ireland Member Niki Collier:

The exhibition was by invitation and engaged with artists during the lockdown. Over Zoom we looked into Evie Hone’s work and created pieces in stained glass visual narrative. The exhibition is comprised of 10 artists in different stages of their career. It is a combination of stained glass technique and hats made as a homage to front line workers. Most of the work in the exhibition is developed through workshops with Niki over Zoom. Each artist Clodagh O’Connor, Paula Delaney, Deirdre Carey, Claire Tudor & Dorothy Ingram had done something created this year during the pressures of our changing lives. Additionally two established artists supported Niki by submitting two pieces for the exhibition. Niki is really grateful to artists Claire Merry and Helene Dooley for supporting the initiative with their pieces. And Niki put the piece she pushed herself to explore freehand machine embroidery on felt and a few hats.

Here are 4 of the Exhibiting Feltmakers:

Paula Delehny Sunrise

Paula has loved textile for a very long time. She has been doing felting, sewing and knitting for many years now.

She has embraced felting as a centre of her interest for several years and has travelled on Feltmakers Ireland trips to Hungary.

Her work was inspired by sunset and uses a combination of wet and needle felting technique to create the piece.

Helene Dooley

Evie Hone was a deeply religious person who principally created sacred art in
the latter part of her life. It is believed that her conversion to Catholicism in
1937 influenced her decision to work with stained glass. While not exclusively,
much of Evie’s work is associated with church settings.
Light and shadow reflections through stained glass were the inspiration for this
piece. The felted spiral is suspended and is in constant motion creating shadows
as the light hits it. The coloured viscose sections retain an element of mottling
and shine which seeks to mirror light in the style of light reflecting through
stained glass.

Clodagh O’Connor, has been inspired by Evie’s work on stained glass, but used fish images to explore its possibilities in felt.Clodagh has become a full time artist 3 years ago. Her work is multidisciplinary.

Deirdre Carey has used a trip to Spain for her inspiration. She has used a combination of wet felting and needle felting techniques.Deirdre has been taking feltmaking classes for several years and enjoys creating art pieces that are delicate and beautiful.

If you are in Dublin perhaps you can take a trip along- #supportthearts #supportlocal #supportingartists

Tamzen