Associate Artists & Writers

Associate Artists

Carrie Lynam

Carrie Lynam is visual artist and experienced arts educator. Carrie’s art practice spans a variety of disciplines including, textiles, performance, film, and photography where she explores themes of identity and privacy in the digital age. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in collections at The National Museum of Scotland and Kilkenny County Council. She has had artwork commissioned by fashion couture houses as well as filmmakers, dance, and music artists. Carrie spent six years as the National Coordinator of the Design & Crafts Councils of Ireland’s CRAFTed programme and has extensive experience of working with the primary school Visual Arts Curriculum for numerous organisations. She holds a first class honours degree in Fine Art and a Higher Diploma in Community Art Education.

Caroline Schofield

Caroline Schofield is a Visual Artist & Maker who is driven by engagements in participatory and collaborative practice in Arts & Health and Women’s groups. She has developed Open Gallery with WHAT, a project showing artwork to older people and Art at the Kitchen Table, an art making program for people unable to access art out of their own homes.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in public and private collections. Caroline is from Kilkenny and trained in Fashion & Textiles in NCAD. She has a Masters in Art & Process from Crawford College of Art & Design.

Case Study | Podcast | Website | Instagram

Sandra McAllister

Sandra McAllister is a textile and print artist specializing in creating fabrics for upholstery. She studied in Grennan Mill Craft School and Fine Art Sculpture in NCAD. Sandra was Craftsperson in Residence in the National Design and Craft Gallery and is on artists panel in Butler Gallery. She has received Azure Dementia training from IMMA and Age and Opportunity.

Julie Cusack

Julie‘s work combines painting, drawing and collage to make images that sit between the real and the imagined. Her work has always been rooted in drawing and a curiosity about materials and surface. She is represented in the OPW State collection and private collections in Ireland and abroad. She has taken part solo and group shows in Ireland and London. She is currently represented by Solomon Fine Art in Dublin. She has been a tutor with KCAT and Open Circle for many years.

Workshops with Julie include a wide variety of drawing and painting techniques taking both conventional and alternative forms. She is passionate about harnessing both collaborative and individual creativity through supportive and playful processes.

Maeve Coulter

Maeve Coulter trained as a printmaker at the Limerick School of Art and Design, then studied Art Education at LSAD and Art Textiles at Crawford College of Art and Design. She works with textiles, printmaking, and cyanotype photography, transforming paper and cloth by printing, dyeing, rusting, layering, pleating, and stitching. She alludes to the notion of making, un-making and re-making, to themes of family, memory and loss, perception, and distortion. Her approach to making is haptic, the materials and techniques she uses often reflect the ideas she explores. She has won several awards for her work including the RDS Taylor Art Award for Print and curators’ awards at exhibitions in the New York Centre for Photographic Art and Glór Arts Centre in Ennis. Maeve is originally from Cavan and now lives in rural north County Kilkenny.

Paul Bokslag

Paul Bokslag is a visual artist and designer from the Netherlands, based in Callan, Co. Kilkenny. He was a co-founder of KCAT Arts Centre and has worked as a Creative Associate for Helium Arts. He works across a range of media, from drawing, painting, printmaking, papercutting, photography, and type design to sculpture and murals. Paul has completed large scale papercut installations, room filling tape drawings and twine sculptures spanning multiple floors. He was a recipient of the 2011 Healthway International Arts and Health Fellowship with DADAA in Fremantle, Western Australia. He regularly works with Workhouse Union, the Butler Gallery, and the National Design & Craft Gallery.

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Julie Moorhouse

Julie is a highly accomplished artist and bronze sculptor. From the initial concept through to the completed artwork, she sculpts, moulds and casts all her own work in her foundry in Co. Kilkenny. Her works can be found in public and private collections throughout the world.

Saturio Alonso

Saturio Alonso is a sculptor with a background as a painter and graphic designer. Attracted by the puzzling and compelling relationships between technology and biology, Saturio Alonso uses a variety of prefabricated industrial materials, combined with more traditional ones, such as stone and wood, to create his sculptures. Very interested in the political content of religious art, and drawing from his Spanish background, some of his paintings and graphic work aim to recreate a baroque aesthetic involving the idea of power and propaganda. He is a founder member of Artcore, a mentor in KCAT, Callan and KINGSRIVER COMMUNITY, Co. Kilkenny and his work can be found in various public spaces around Ireland and in private and public collections in Europe and America.

Deirdre Harte

Deirdre Harte completed a Diploma in Fashion Design at the Limerick School of Art and Design, and a BA (Hons) Degree in Embroidered Textile Design at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) followed by an MA in Textile Art and Artifact, a course she now works as a full-time lecturer on. Deirdre has many years’ experience working in the community with a wide variety of different groups both formal and informal education settings. She is passionate about facilitating others and imparting her skills. Deirdre has worked with Open Circe Arts and Kilkenny County Council Arts Office on several successful programmes.

Steven Aylin

Steven Aylin draws, paints, prints, and puts images on a variety of surfaces using whatever he can get his hands on. With a background in Arts Education, originally from the UK he now resides in Kilkenny. Having spent many years teaching in a variety of settings including the Ormonde college and KCAT in Callan, he now works as a freelance designer and gallery technician. He has exhibited his paintings widely in group and solo shows here and abroad and continues to try and inflict his doodles and illustrations on others whenever they let him. Steven has worked with Open Circle for the last few years teaching a range of intriguing drawing techniques and printmaking projects.

Associate Writers

Tara Heavey

Tara Heavey is the author of six novels. She is also a certified journal instructor and has many years of experience working as a creative writing teacher. Her latest book, “Nature Writing for Wellbeing” is available now at taraheavey.com or at amazon.co.uk

Nuala Roche

Nuala Roche has been writing poetry and prose for over twenty years. She is a member of the Teaching Council, and holds a PgDip in Adult, Further & Community Education. In 2016, Nuala won Dromineer Literature Festival Poetry Prize and her chapbook of poems (Fish-Speak) was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Competition. Her one-woman play, Bridie, premiered at The Watergate Theatre in 2017. In 2018, she wrote and produced a lunchtime theatre show of women’s monologues at Cleere’s Theatre. Nuala’s writing is published in The Cormorant Anthology, Doghouse Press journal, The Milk House, Pendemic.ie and nine editions of the Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. Her first short story was longlisted in the Cairde Festival 2021 competition. Nuala is (still) pitching her novel, a near-future story set in Ireland. Her poem Lumber has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize by The Milk House journal. The poem can be found here.