Animal magic at craft exhibition

THE STUDIO in rural Louth where Frances Lambe dreams up her serene ceramic sculptures used to be a cowshed. On its whitewashed stone wall the marks of an older living space – the upper room where farm workers would once have slept, immediately above the cattle – are clearly visible.

Lambe, however, has a fascination for much tinier creatures. Starfish, sponges and single-cell organisms regularly make their way into her work – not literally, but in terms of shape, pattern, movement and, above all, inspiration.

Lambe has been diving in nearby Carlingford Lough for well over a decade, and her passion for sea creatures has transformed her art.

“One of the things I love about diving is that it’s a bit like exploring another planet,” she says. “You need an air tank. You need to suit up. You need to prepare yourself to enter this unfamiliar environment and, because you can float weightless, it’s a bit like flying or being on the moon or something. It really is a whole other world, and it’s full of life.”

So vividly does Lambe speak about this watery world that I can almost feel the brush of kelp against my cheek. And she'll be recreating it in an extraordinarily vivid way with her installation for the Crafted Creaturesexhibition, which opens at the Ark Cultural Centre for Children in Dublin on February 19th.

“I’ve been allocated a wall that’s almost five metres high – so you get the sense of being on a vertical cliff face, which works really well,” she says. The installation will suggest the astonishing variety of colour and forms which exists – even in the chilly waters of Carlingford Lough.

Lambe's tranquil sea creatures will be joined at the Ark by textile jellyfish, insects made from recycled materials and foxes crafted – oh, the ironic joy of it – out of chicken wire. But Crafted Creaturesisn't just a random cornucopia of the cute and the cuddly. The aim is to encourage the next generation of Irish artists and craftspeople – so there'll be lots of opportunities to touch, squish and generally roll up your sleeves and have a go yourself.

“It’s about the excellence of craft, and it’s about really good quality work,” explains the exhibition’s curator, Brian Kennedy. “I didn’t say to the artists, ‘Go out and make something which would interest a three-year-old’. It’s not work that’s made for children, but work that’s being made.”

The exhibition will also go a step further by unpicking the creative process involved in the making of these beautiful things.

“The finished objects are very high quality – the best that is around,” Kennedy says. “But we’re trying to show how they originate. So we’ll also be focusing on the stories – the passion and the person – behind the work. One of the biggest problems for anybody making something is how to start. You either have a blank piece of paper or a pile of material: how do you move forward? I wanted to show the different starting-points that people take up.”

Three possible jumping-off areas for artists are through drawing, storytelling and the use of textiles. Bernie Leahy’s intricate, starkly realist embroidered images of horses are made by putting black stitches directly onto canvas.

"People say they look very like drawings, and I say, 'well, they aredrawings'," she says. She begins with pen and ink studies, hanging them around her studio, so that by the time she comes to put needle to canvas she knows roughly what form the finished piece will take.

“I use a plain, ordinary sewing machine – not a computerised one or anything. Hand-stitching takes longer and doesn’t necessarily add anything to the marks,” she explains.

Eventually, these simple straight black lines get built up into tone, muscle, shadow or – in the work on show here – the eloquent eye of a horse. “Each piece of thread will cause some kind of subtle shadow, or have a little wobble in it, or some characteristic that will add to the quality of the line so that, in certain lights, all kinds of things will appear.”

Leahy says she wanted to show the equine interplay of strength and vulnerability.

“I was looking around for something that conveyed that – and the horse is such a beautiful, powerful creature.” The way in which her images have been cropped focuses the viewer’s attention “and hopefully, makes some kind of connection with what’s going on inside the character of the animal”.

Making connections – and enlarging horizons – is what Crafted Creaturesis all about. It will demonstrate that artistic inspiration comes from unlikely places: you don't have to be "arty", or even good at drawing, to make wonderful pieces of sculpture, jewellery or textile art. You can begin with an interest in sustainability and recycling, or soft toys, or poking about in rock pools on summer holidays.

That, says Frances Lambe, is how she first came into contact with sea creatures. Now she pokes around on the internet to find out how sponges live and how seeds germinate. She visits museums and takes photographs in car washes.

She collects stones, placing them with infinite care on a low curved wall in her garden, matching and contrasting sizes, shapes and colours.

For Lambe, making beautiful objects is as much about cultivating a relationship with the world around us as it is about developing an expertise with materials and techniques.

“Sponges may seem like strange animals for an artist to work with,” she says. “They don’t go anywhere – they’ve got no arms or legs. All they do is suck in water, then spit it out again.”

It’s very little. And yet it’s everything. Even perhaps a metaphor for how creatures are – at least sometimes – crafted.

Craft for kids

Crafted Creaturesis the first big public event of the Year of Craft 2011, a celebration of craft on the island of Ireland organised by the Craft Council of Ireland and Craft Northern Ireland. The exhibition is open to everyone, with self-guided "treasure trails"for families who want to explore under their own steam. A series of guided workshops, meanwhile, will give children the chance to try out a range of materials, from clay and wire to rubber and plastic– and to leave the Ark with their very own crafted creature.

On the opening weekend, there'll also be a rare opportunity to touch some stuffed animalsfrom the Natural History Museum. This event (Saturday 19th, 2pm – 3.30pm) is free, but entry is on a first-come, first-served basis. There'll also be a free talk by curator Brian Kennedy (Sunday 20th, 2.30pm) for which you need to register in advance.

Workshopsare available for toddlers (Saturdays, 10am–11am), four to seven-year-olds (Saturdays, Sundays and mid-term break 12.30pm–2.30pm) and eight to 12-year-olds (Saturdays, Sundays and mid-term break, 3pm–5pm). The price is €10, concessions €8.

A variety of artists will be conducting workshops including ceramic artists Terry O’Farrell and Clare Turley, weaver Lian Callaghan, textile artists Gina Faustino and Liadain Butler and jeweller Angela O’Kelly. For details on individual workshops or to book, see ark.ie or call 01-6707788.