14 December 2021

I am absolutely delighted to announce that I am one of the winners of Meath County Council’s Kathleen McKenna Award, 2021, alongside Margaret Fitzgibbon and Leah Hilliard. This award will afford me the time and materials to create a series of prints and artist books to commemorate Kathleen McKenna. As historical accuracy was clearly something which was important to McKenna, the primary aim of this project will be to represent her legacy accurately. Large-scale prints will represent different aspects of her life, such as her career with the Irish Bulletin. These prints will have a green tone, referencing McKenna’s tam o shanter cap. A series of artist books will document my visual and written research, and will combine a variety of printmaking methods which will serve to reference the mimeograph process which. McKenna would have used. Mimeograph printing was a precursor to photocopying, and involved preparing a plate using wax resists. I plan to use a combination of photocopying, letterpress printing, and etching using wax. The work will be done at a small scale to allow me to easily experiment and quickly create multiples. These actions of creating multiples of prints, and rolling plates through presses, will allow me to recreate the physical actions of McKenna.

This award is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries 2012 - 2023 initiative.