Two of our former students Jordana Gluckow and Allegra Sussman have been recognized by the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts for their outstanding photography. The photograph above is from Jordana’s series exploring the people and places in our local community.

The NFAA YoungArts program is the signature national organization that recognizes and supports America’s most talented 17-18 year olds in the visual, literary and performing arts. This year’s 174 YoungArts Honorable Mention Winners were selected in a blind adjudication process from a pool of more than 5,000 applicants, representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as all US territories.

You can see the full list of winners here.

This winter Frank will be traveling to the United States visiting schools, meeting families and attending camp fairs for Art on the Farm. If you notice any of the locations below are near you please get in touch and he will be happy to schedule a home visit.

California
Westridge School, Pasadena, CA: Sat, February 4, 10am – 3pm
Marymount High School, Los Angeles, CA: Sun, February 5, 11am – 2pm
Sage Hill School, Newport Beach, CA: Mon, February 6, 6:00pm – 8:30pm

Connecticut
*Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, CT: Sun, February 19, 11am – 1pm

Massachusetts
Philips Academy, Andover: Sun, January 22, 2012, 12:00pm – 3:00pm
*Newton South High School, Newton: Mon, February 6, 2012, 5:30pm – 8:00pm

New Jersey
*Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, NJ: Wed, January 18, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Princeton High School, Princeton, NJ: Wed, January 18, 2012, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Pennsylvania
*The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr, PA: Sun, January 22, 2012, 2:30pm – 5:00pm
Germantown Academy, Fort Washington, PA: Mon, February 13, 2012, 5:30pm – 8:00pm

*Cow House Studios representative

Sunday 20th November, 2pm - 6pm

Please join us this Sunday in viewing recent work by our 2011 residency artists; Antony Clarkson (UK), Sabina Mac Mahon (Ireland), Shiro Masuyama (Japan) and Hilary Wilder (USA).

During their ten week stay, these artists were given the time and space to concentrate on making a new body of work. Cow House Open Studios offers the community a chance to see our facilities, meet the artists, and view the work they have been creating. Please visit anytime between 2pm and 6pm. All are welcome.

3pm - 4:30pm: Artist Talk
4:30pm - 5:30pm: Tea, brown bread and soup.

We would like to announce the arrival of Trigger, the newest addition to our Cow House family. Trigger is a stunning 5 year old retired racehorse, and after his time in competitive racing has made his way down to the farm to spend his time grazing our fields. He’s very friendly, and has settled in quite nicely to his new home just in front of the Cow House. We’re sure our visitors will enjoy having him around, plying him with apples and carrots to get on his soft side, posing for photographs and obliging the odd pet on the nose.

We just recently posted a gallery of artwork made by our students during Art on the Farm this past summer. In their three weeks on the farm students have the opportunity to explore drawing, painting and photography, focusing on their own interests, informed by their time in Ireland. Everyone produced some very strong work, and as you’ll see, represent a variety of media, styles, interests and approaches.

View the gallery here...

Tomorrow, Friday October 14 Monster Truck Gallery opens "The Drover turns the Cattle" a group show featuring our 2010 residency artists Marisol Malatesta, Gail Cunningham, Laurie Lax and Matthew Denniss. The show will run until October 29th.

"In the fall of 2010 four artists with disparate practices, different approaches, different tools, different materials and from different geographies. were brought together with the purpose of creating a new body of work at Cow House Studios in Wexford, Ireland.  The rural location of the Cow House, the ideas shared communally and its informative influence form the content of the exhibition. Formal connections with their practices were replaced, or exchanged, with what the cattle farm had to offer- its landscape, the mountain, its noises, the tractor, the air, the weather, and the intimate community that was created. A year later, the artists have been turned-moved from one field to another, from Cow House to Monster Truck taking their work, their newly found connected experiences and knowledge, and presenting them in a new landscape."

View our online gallery here...
Read more about Monster Truck here...

It has been just one short week since our last session left the farm, and the place seems almost too quiet without all the busy activity in the studio. No more rummaging through the kitchen for a mid day or late night snack, or sounds of Lola barking for just one more stick to be thrown for her in the pond. We miss all the laughing, great conversation and occasional odd outbursts around the dinner table. We had such a wonderful time with all three groups in our busiest summer yet, and we hope to stay in touch with everyone as their work progresses. We saw people make some huge strides over the past nine weeks, and we're sure to see that continue.

We would like to thank both Christin and Zsofia for all their help and great instruction. We hope you've gained as much from being here as our students gained from your patience, guidance and friendship. A special thank you to Mary and Michael for all the work you do over the summer to make the experience special for everyone. We don't know what the experience would be like without your warm welcome, delicious deserts and immaculate home.

You can have a look at all of our photographs from the summer here, and we will be posting a gallery of student work in the coming weeks.

Opening Thursday, June 9

Above left Tunnel Spider Side Chair by Gail Cunningham, above right Phoautograph (detail) by Matthew Denniss.

Wexford Arts Centre, in collaboration with Cow House Studios will host a two-person exhibition of recent work by 2010 artists-in-residence, Matthew Denniss and Gail Cunningham. In developing their work at Cow House Studios, Denniss and Cunningham examine the various aspects in which energy resides. With Cunningham's work, her highly controlled, precision-cut paper images reveal a hidden energy of powerful proportions, conveying an anxiety as spiders crawl and scramble frantically from deep within the confines of the domestic ritual.  Denniss, on the other hand, is more concerned with the physical elements of energy and his association with the primitive means of harbouring and utilising it. In doing so, he is attempting to explore and reveal the true motives and philosophies of the original inventors, responsible for such machines like the phonautograph and the wind turbine.
 
Gail Cunningham studied at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia and graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the Oregon College of Art & Craft, Portland, Oregon in 2003. Her work has featured in numerous group shows including Side By Side, High Wire Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Pretty, Pretty, Bambi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; and OFF DUTY, MGA Partners, Philadelphia, PA.  Gail lives and works in her native Philadelphia.
 
Matthew Denniss graduated from Goldsmiths College, London with a BA in Fine Art in 2006. Denniss was Artist in Residence at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2009, and has exhibited in Newcastle, Glasgow, London, Norway and the Czech Republic.  He currently lives and works in Manchester.

We are pleased to announce our 2011 residency artists. Hilary Wilder (USA), Sabina Mac Mahon (Ireland), Antony Clarkson (UK) and Shiro Masuyama (Japan) will take up residence at the Cow House from September 18 until November 27. During the autumn of 2012, all four artists will exhibit in a group show that will travel to the Wexford Arts Centre and Monster Truck Gallery in Dublin.

Images above are from left to right An Immodern Proposal #2 by Hilary Wilder, The Transport of the Holy House of Loreto by Sabina Mac Mahon, top right Manchester Profile, The Cathedral and Deansgate by Antony Clarkson, and bottom right Parky Party, by Shiro Masuyama.

You can read more about this years residency artists here.

The O'Gorman family portrait above was taken by photographer A.H. Poole in Waterford circa 1930. This glass plate photograph is part of the archive at the National Library of Ireland.

From top left are Rosie's great aunts Brigid and Eilish, Rosie's grandfather Eugene, and great aunts Stella and Shiela. Bottom left is Rosie's great grandmother Elizabeth, and her great grandfather Michael is to the bottom right. Michael O'Gorman commissioned the construction of the Cow House which was completed in 1915 to serve as a dairy and a place to bed cows during the winter.

You can view more photographs from A.H. Poole's archive here...

We have just added a gallery of images created by our residency artists in the autumn of 2010. You may view the images here. Pictured from left to right Drainage by Gail Cunningham, Phonautograph by Matthew Denniss, The Others were Cowed into Apathy by Marisol Malatesta and Hen House by Laurie Lax.

During the third week in March we hosted a wonderful group of high school art teachers from the United States. During the week we were treated to presentations on making books from recycled materials, weaving, conductor line studies, cyanotypes and one minute sculptures inspired by the artist Erwin Wurm. The mornings were spent presenting these projects, exchanging ideas on how to engage young people in the art making process, and in the afternoons everyone had the opportunity to make their own work and enjoy the farm.

This proved to be a great forum for reflection, rejuvenating interests with new skills, fresh ideas, and an opportunity to meet other dedicated art educators who face similar challenges. We are thrilled with the success of this pilot programme, and will be offering the teacher retreat again next year. You can read more about the retreat here, and can view photographs from this year’s session by clicking here.

Rosie's father Michael recently bought two peacocks at the local fowl market. There were peacocks on the farm in previous generations, and the photo above, taken about 80 years ago, shows one of the last peacocks resident at the O'Gorman farm. Sitting gracefully with the peacock are Rosie's great aunts; Sheila and Brigid O'Gorman. To the right, are the new peacocks. For now, their names are Bonnie and Clyde, but we are open to suggestions. Still to grow their signature tail feathers, they must remain in an enclosed area for a few months until they become acclimated to their new home and their new canine friends. Once they settle in, they will be allowed to roam around the farm, hangout and look fabulous.

For the summer of 2011 we will host artists Christin Boggs and Zsofia Schweger. For nine weeks they will run workshops, give individual tutorials and speak about their own creative process. This gives our students for Art on the Farm a great opportunity to work with and learn from young, dedicated and talented artists. For more examples of their work please click here.

Christin is an artist, photographer, educator, and sustainable food advocate. A native of the Washington Metropolitan Area, she holds a MFA in Imaging Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology [2010] and a BFA in Art and Visual Technology from George Mason University [2007]. Her recent project Slow & Steady has appeared in a number of public venues including a solo exhibition at the Design Gallery at the Rochester Regional Community Design Center.

Originally from Szeged, Hungary, Zsofia is currently studying for her B.A. in Studio Art and Comparative Literature at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She has worked as gallery assistant at the Jewett Gallery of Art and interned at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Explore Ireland’s southeast from the streets of Dublin to the rolling hills of the Wexford countryside.  This one week trip offers an opportunity to photograph the unique urban scenes, landscapes, townscapes, personalities and details Ireland has to offer.  This is a shooting trip, however we will also take the time to visit some of Dublin’s best cultural sites including the Gallery of Photography, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum, as well as some of the monastic Christian and medieval sites dotted throughout the countryside.

You can read more about this trip and register on Project Basho’s website... click here!