Throwing shapes in Kilkenny: what’s new in ceramics

Flux and reflux, wrote the novelist Thomas Hardy in Tess of the d'Urbervilles,  "alternate and persist in everything under the sky".  He might have been penning a programme note for In Flux, the exhibition at the National Design & Craft Gallery in Kilkenny, in which the 12 graduates from the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland's Centre of Excellence in Ceramics at Thomastown are presenting their project work.

The show explores the idea of flux through the continuous evolution of shapes and design ideas, as well as the ever-changing interplay between practical and sculptural, domestic and decorative. But for a ceramicist the word “flux” also has a more specific meaning: it’s the term given to a material which will cause silica to melt at a lower temperature than its usual 1,700 degrees, thus forming a ceramic glaze.

The Thomastown ceramics course is renowned internationally and attracts applications from across Europe. All 12 places for the 2018-2020 programme, which will begin this autumn, have already been filled.

In conjunction with the Kilkenny Group, the students on this year’s course designed and made four ranges of functional porcelain. This will be displayed and sold in the company’s flagship store on Nassau Street, Dublin during September, when the graduates will also present demonstrations and shop-floor presentations.

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In Kilkenny, meanwhile, there will be a number of opportunities to get close to the ceramics process, including a Meet the Makers event this Thursday at 6pm and a Creative Clay day next Saturday, with workshops for children aged four to 13 at 11am and 12.30pm and for 14 years to adult at 2.30 and 4.30pm.

In Flux, National Design & Craft Gallery, Castle Yard, Kilkenny until August 6th. ndcg.ie

Animation

Across the road at Kilkenny's Butler Gallery, meanwhile, a multimedia exhibition provides a comprehensive introduction to the process behind the making of Cartoon Saloon's latest animated feature film, The Breadwinner.

When we think of art as an investment, animation art doesn't necessarily come to mind: but maybe it should. At last month's animation art auction in Dallas, Texas, original artworks painted by Mary Blair for Disney were in high demand. Her Cinderella Magic Coach concept painting attracted 20 bidders and quadrupled its pre-sale estimate to make a whopping $60,000.

Two further paintings by Blair, a Georgia Forest concept painting for the 1946 Disney movie Song of the South, and a mermaid painting for Peter Pan (1953), tripled and quadrupled their respective estimates to make $19,200 each, while her design for the 1952 animated short Susie the Little Blue Coupe made $18,600.

"Mary Blair is among the most acclaimed of all Disney artists," says Heritage Auctions'  director of animation art, Jim Lentz. "The number of her works that fared so well, and the fact that the Cinderella Magic Coach painting brought the highest price ever paid for one of her paintings shows that she and her artwork are more popular than ever."

It wasn't just Blair's work which was selling well in Texas: The Dream, an oil painting by the Academy award-winning animator and film-maker Chuck Jones, creator of the Wile E Coyote and Road Runner characters, fetched $24,000, while a concept painting for Sleeping Beauty by Eyvind Earle, showing Princess Aurora sitting in the window of her father's castle, realised $19,200.

There were also strong prices for production cels and background illustrations, with a cel setup for Disney's 1940 film Pinocchio making $11,000.

Is this the future for animators based in Ireland? "I've already had a few collectors inquire as to whether there would be original work for sale," says Anna O'Sullivan, director of the Butler Gallery, who curated both the current show and the acclaimed 2015 exhibition based on Cartoon Saloon's Song of the Sea.

"Cartoon Saloon are probably aware of this interest, but what I have recommended is that they not sell it – yet. The Song of the Sea exhibition featured hundreds of hand-drawn panels; The Breadwinner show is based around a series of cutouts made by a French cutout artist, which are really unique and beautiful."

Plans are afoot, she says, to open a new gallery in Kilkenny which will act both as a showcase for Cartoon Saloon’s animation art and also as a retail and merchandising outlet. In the meantime, limited edition prints, signed by the director Nora Twomey, are available through their website, cartoonsaloon.ie, price €455.

The Breadwinner exhibition, The Butler Gallery until July 29th. butlergallery.com