About Bernie Leahy
Bernie Leahy, has exhibited in Ireland, and also internationally, in London, China, and Rome. She was selected to represent Ireland in the International Textile Biennial in Venezuela, 2004, where 37 countries were represented. Her work will be shown by the National Craft Gallery of Ireland, in Chicago at SOFA Nov 08.
2010, Leahy will mount a Major Two Person exhibition, with the UK artist Alice Kettle www.alicekettle.com at the National Craft Gallery of Ireland.
The Irish Arts Review Magazine features Leahy in the Autumn 2007 edition. See the gallery page.
An Tanaiste, & Minister for Health, Mary Harney, launched her recent commissioned work,DrinkTalk, a series of panels commissioned by the Waterford Healing Arts Trust, for its permanent collection in Waterford General Hospital. This exhibition will travel around Ireland until the end of 2006, when it will be installed permanently in Waterford Hospital.
Commissions for 2006 included 6 panels for Muckamore Abbey Hospital, Antrim.
Bernie is also working on The Wish Path, a glass & steel outdoor piece, a Percent for Art Scheme for Ballyboughal National School, with Fingal County Council and the Department of Education & Science
She has also been selected by an international panel for Portfolio. Portfolio is an initiative to link art makers with international high-end buyers, to be launched by the Craft Council of Ireland (www.ccoi.ie) in the form of digital catalogue. This launch of Portfolio took place in Collins Barracks, National Museum of Ireland, March 2006.
In 2004 in Dublin, she was awarded the First Prize Medal for Contemporary Embroidery and also the William Smith O'Brien Cup for Excellence at the 2004 International Craft Competition.
Click here for a List of Exhibitions
Artist's Statement
These drawings try to capture a fleeting moment in time, to convey the essence of the subject, and hence often show only essential fragments of the image. I am interested in the stitch as mark making, as undecorative & defined line: The line or mark often delineates the space around the forms, allowing them to emerge out of a tangible ground. The defined line or mark has a hole or point from which it decidedly begins or ends. Currently work is mostly in black and white. Subject matter is often the portrait, used to convey fleeting moods, glances, moments. 2007 will see the development of varied materials in Leahy s work, eg. glass, copper,concrete and bronze and a development of sculptural forms.
- Bernie Leahy (c) 2008
