SOPHIA POWER
A number of Waterford artists took part in ‘In the Making’ Festival – a one day, participatory and multidisciplinary arts festival designed to spotlight and inspire creative exploration and discovery.
It was held in the iconic Cork Opera House last Wednesday, 2 April and was an exciting multi-event programme which presented a unique opportunity to look inside the imaginations and methods of vibrant artists and creators, connecting audiences with some of the distinctive creative processes, inspirations and ideas driving Ireland’s arts scene today.
In the Making featured three talented Waterford-based artists across the day – Erina Mooney, Tramore, Screen-Printing Workshop; Fionnuala Broughan, Lismore, Tiny Acorns; and Morag Ransley, Dungarvan, Tiny Acorns.
ERINA MOONEY
Erina Mooney’s practice centres around a relationship with food. As both a culinary professional and artist her work strives to challenge concerns about what we’re eating, where our food comes from, the nature of its production and its contributing effects to climate change.
Expanded print practice is the method employed by Ní Mhaonaigh within her most recent body of work, looking at repetition, text, and the printed object as a means of display within installation.
Engagement with the viewers’ experience within this work opens up a conversation focused on the topic of overfishing and its harmful implications for our planet.
CLAIRE PROUVOST
In the Making’s free Multidisciplinary Journal Exhibit, entitled Tiny Acorns, featured the personal sketchbook of French Artist, Claire Prouvost, a former contributing artist to the Waterford Walls Festival.
The visual artist, based in Dublin, is a former contributor to the prestigious Waterford Walls Festival in 2024, in addition to the Ardú Street Art Festival in Cork. Working predominantly in illustration, she specialises in large scale murals and public artworks. The artist studied Applied Arts in Toulouse before moving to Ireland where she held her first solo show Holding Space in Hang Tough Contemporary (2022). Over the past two years, she has concentrated on her studio practice, creating mixed media artworks and paintings that explore themes of interdependence and self-understanding.
For those who may admire the impact of and local pride created during Waterford Walls, In the Making’s exhibition offered a unique opportunity to see the often-unseen, foundational stages of the artistic journey behind one of the esteemed festival’s former artists.
TINY ACORNS
Tiny Acorns is a multi-disciplinary journal exhibition, presenting a curated sample of journals and sketchbooks by artists, creators, and makers from across Ireland in the foyer of Cork Opera House. Shining a light on the generative, exploratory, sometimes messy, and deeply reflective stages of creativity, the exhibition offered a rare glimpse into the personal processes that fuel creative development, revealing the often unseen ‘work behind the work’.
Encouraging everyday creative play and contemplation, this event invited viewers to step into artists’ private worlds, exploring unfinished, tender, and intimate ideas, notes, and experiments at their most vulnerable stages – all collected and bound within the pages of a book.
The title, taken from the familiar proverb ‘mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow’, highlights the dedication behind individual creative practices. It serves as a reminder of the potential for creative growth and development within us all, nurtured through small, persistent acts of making and thinking.
