Niall Bruton, an artist working from Donegal Craft Village in Donegal Town for over 30 years, was recently awarded the commission to design and make a permanent sculpture along the new N56 road at Drumconnor for Donegal County Council. Part of the commission asked Niall to carry out some art workshops in two nearby local schools and we were lucky enough to be asked to participate. Niall came to the school and talked to the 5th & 6th Class pupils and showed them a slide show of other sculptures he has made. He also showed them a model of the proposed sculpture for the new road.
After this, Niall held a clay workshop, getting the pupils to impress different objects into a prepared clay tablet. As the sculpture in this case is themed on the heritage of the area such as the local quarries, the mills, the creamery etc., Niall chose a heritage theme for the pupils to work on asking them in advance to bring in a hard object or two that perhapy represented their grandparents livelihoods such as old keys, farm or other old small tools, old small kitchen utensils etc. that could be pushed into the soft clay.
The finished clay tablets were then taken away and cast into decorative concrete kerbstones to surround the finished big sculpture that Niall is making Drumkeelan Quarry. The pupils put their initials on their individual tablets so that if they visit the sculpture in years to come they can look for their artwork and feel a part of it.
The finished sculpture will be on display hopefully in Autumn 2023 and the children will be able to see their artwork for many years to come! Our thanks to Niall for involving us in this project.
