Friday Adventure: Discovering Ireland

Winters in Vermont always seem to be far too long. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow. However, I always find myself looking at the Green Mountains wanting them to be… green.
This is not an issue in Ireland. Spring starts on February 1st. Our group from Champlain College successfully bypassed the winter months! Although we have been seeing yellow tulips pop up throughout St. Stephen’s Green, spring hadn’t officially smiled back at us until we took our Friday art trip with Jacinta. For the hour and a half train ride to Kilkenny, I looked out into fields of green grass being grazed by sheep, and their new-to-the-world lambs.
Champlain College Dublin gave us a huge gift: reserved Fridays. We have two reserved Fridays a month. Some of these reserved Fridays don’t even pertain to all the students. The Fridays the school doesn’t have reserved, the students have reserved for sleep or day trips of their own!
I took my first reserved Friday trip with my Cultural Immersion through the Fine Arts class with Jacinta to a town called Kilkenny.

The Dart took us out of the city and into the country where we took a look into The Butler Gallery. The gallery is presently showing Aideen Barry’s exhibition, "The Morphology of the Other."The exhibit consisted of four rooms. The first room held Barry’s drawings of what she saw humans morphing into as well as sculptures which were half grenades-half squirt bottles.

My fellow student and buddy, Rob, was quite interested in these. He even got to hold one!
The second room held her piece, Minefield. It was four mines made out of aluminium.

They were at one time shown at the Royal Hibernian Gallery where we had seen another contemporary art exhibit, by Nevan Lehart, the week before. And, if and when you find yourself talking with someone from Ireland, write “aluminium” on a piece of paper, hand it to them, and tell them to read it aloud.
The third exhibit consisted of three televisions showing three different movies. Each movie was accompanied by music/sounds. The movie that struck me the most was Barry’s film about how we have become so pretentious about keeping a clean environment, and we move around so much to get everything done, that we never really even touch the ground. The woman, Barry, in the movie is floating above ground while shopping for groceries, taking out the garbage, and cleaning the house.
We have been discussing in Jacinta’s class if some contemporary art is really art; we have been asking if these artists deserve as much credit as Monet, or Degas.

And, Barry’s last exhibit made me decide my answer. The extent to how I felt when I went into the last room of the exhibit was too powerful for the work in the room not to be considered art. Projected on the far wall was a video of a creature, half woman-half vacuum cleaner. The suit she was wearing in the movie was displayed along the wall. It was like a long, disgusting, disturbing worm. Just an interesting fact: To get the full effect of feeling no gravity, Barry was granted money to study with NASA!
The Butler Gallery is located in the bottom of the Kilkenny Castle. After looking through the gallery, we took a tour of the castle. It was built in the first decade of the 13th century for the Duke of Pembroke. It later became the home of the Butler family for around 600 years. In 1967, Arthur Butler, the 3rd Earl of Ormond, sold it to the people of Kilkenny for… £50!!! It has been going through renovations for many years. Jacinta asked when the renovations would be done. Our tour guide responded, “Never probably!”
Out of the many, many opportunities that we receive from Champlain College Abroad, reserved Fridays are one of the best. Whether we are off discovering Ireland with a professor or fellow students, we are bound to be on an adventure. This Friday, we are heading out of the city to ride horses!