STRADIVARIUS DRAPED across a piano, the immortal “Bridie” and other puppet siblings form the nucleus of an exhibition of work by the late artist Pat Bracken which has opened in Galway City Museum.
The extensive body of work, ranging from sketches and paintings to puppets, stonework and ceramics, has been curated by close friend and fellow artist Mattie Hynes to mark Bracken’s 60th birthday.
The trained stone carver, artist and performer, who gained a national profile for his puppet creations on RTÉ children’s television several decades ago, died last August at the age of 59, and would have been 60 last Saturday, March 12th.
Fellow artists formed a tribute procession for his funeral back then, and hundreds turned up again for Saturday’s opening by Sabina Higgins of the retrospective exhibition in the Galway City Museum.
Recalling her friendship with Bracken during their time in the Focus Theatre’s Stanislavski studio in Dublin, Ms Higgins said that there was always a “sense of theatricality”to his work.
His paintings were resonant of the colour and hue applied by the late Jack B Yeats, and his puppets and ceramics reflected an elfishness, a benevolence and a love of humanity, she said.
The ceramics were created by Bracken latterly while studying at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. Ms Higgins said she had been particularly taken by one of his ceramic “Shakespearean characters”, which he had cleverly fitted with metal coils of hair and labelled “Something springs to mind”.
The artist’s brother, Jack Bracken, prompted laughter when he described how, if his brother were alive, he would have been “ringing me for the last couple of weeks to remind me that his birthday was imminent”.
The Brackens are seventh-generation Dublin stonemasons, and the brothers were trained by their father, Stephen, who passed away last Christmas.
There were inevitable challenges involved in working in a family business, Jack Bracken noted. He recalled how when Pat wanted to travel, “he told my parents he was going to the US for the weekend for a wedding”. His brother never came back to the business thereafter.
Mr Bracken said that when he did come back, it was to Galway, and he wished to thank everyone in the city for looking after him over the subsequent years.
Among those attending the opening, hosted by museum deputy director Breandán Ó hEaghra, were close family and friends, including Bracken’s son Seán, artists Joe Boske and Rob d’Eath and Labour Party president Michael D Higgins.