Last Summer Graduate students from Notre Dame’s Department of Art, Art History & Design joined the New York Academy of Art and Dublin’s Royal Hibernian Academy graduate students in a month-long art residency in Ireland. The residency began with a week of cultural immersion in the city of Dublin where students visited museums and galleries, saw theater productions, talked to local artists, and generally took in the heritage and culture of that great city. Then they traveled to the storied and breathtakingly, beautiful Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, County Galway. They spent the rest of the month creating their artwork in that splendid setting surrounded by green hills. The residency culminated featuring the paintings, drawings, video, photography, and textile work created by the residents in the exhibition called Immersion.
While at Connemara, students ventured on local excursions that included: hiking, visiting local artists, a trip to the Aran Islands, a sheep farm tour, and eating local cuisine, washed down an incomparable pint of Guinness! The residency featured lectures by numerous scholars and artists as well as performances by Irish dancers, actors and musicians.
Programs at Kylemore Abbey are directed by Lisa Caulfield. This year’s art residency was overseen by painting professor Maria Tomasula. This wonderful residency came about through the vision and support of professor Tomasula’s former student, Jaclyn Dooner. Dooner earned her BFA degree at Notre Dame, and her MFA at the New York Academy of Art. Including the Irish art students from the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin expanded the cross-cultural interactions and made for unparalleled critiques and discussions for the residents.