Artists face unique challenge

A WEST Clare photographer and gallery owner has come up with a novel idea to challenge artists to complete 12 works in 12 hours in six different media.
Katrina Morrison of the Buttermarket Gallery in Kilrush and the Kilkee Marine Gallery is organising the West Clare Art Challenge to take place on Thursday, September 2.
She explained the idea stemmed from a conversation she had with one of the artists who is currently exhibiting in the gallery, James Hally.
“James is a sketch artist and works mainly with graphite pencil. He suggested that we run a challenge getting artists to do 12 works in 12 hours in 12 different mediums.
“We put the idea to Cillian, an art student from the Limerick School of Art and Design who is doing an internship in the gallery and he loved the idea. I then had a chat with my son-in-law, Mark Kelly, who is also an artist, about it and he felt the concept of the challenge was great, but that it was too much. He suggested that it would be better to set the challenge as 12 pieces of work in 12 hours in six mediums,” she said.
The challenge will be run it under three different categories, paint, pencils and an open category.
“With these three categories, artists will be able to work with oils, acrylics, watercolours, wax pastels, graphite, charcoal, coloured pencils and markers, as well as photography, possibly sculpture, painted glass, among other mediums. We will run it as a competition. A number of arts and crafts stores are coming on board as sponsors, who will provide prizes,” Katrina added.
Registration for the challenge will be at 9am on Thursday, September 2 with artists starting their works at 10am. They will work through until 10pm and work has to be brought back to the gallery in Kilrush by 11pm.
Judging will be carried out on Friday, with results announced at 7pm.
“We will display all of the pieces created for the challenge. We will pick one piece from each category as first place and an overall best of show for somebody’s entire project. All works will remain on display in the gallery for one week, and possibly longer depending on demand,” she said.
She added that this is a new challenge for artists to make them think outside the box.
“Creating 12 pieces in 12 hours will be a huge accomplishment, but it is doable I feel. I’m aware of six pieces done in six hours, with two works in three different mediums. It is mainly for fun. Between the two galleries, I currently have 31 artists available for exhibition, so there a wide variety of artists and I’m hoping that many of them will want to be involved in the West Clare Art Challenge”
She is expecting that artists will be out and about to do their work. To make sure that all works are original and produced on the day of the challenge, all artists will work on paper stamped by one of the judges before they head out to start their work.
“It will be really interesting to see what people come up with. I’d imagine it might be an interesting day’s activity for people on holidays or visiting West Clare and we imagine that art students will also get involved,” Katrina concluded.
To find out more about the West Clare Art Challenge contact Katrina on 086 2455900.