Brigid Teehan, Artist-in-residence, 2003

Brigid Teehan was Artist-in-residence with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust for six months in 2003.

Kilkenny born, Brigid is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design, 1991, and of the Glasgow School of Art, where she obtained a Masters of Fine Degree in 1995. She has exhibited her work widely in group and solo shows including US Live, Guinness Hop Store, Dublin, (2003), Sculpture in Context, Botanic Gardens, Dublin (2003), Munch, Market House, Monaghan (2002), and Play Dead, South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel (2002). In 2003, she curated a group exhibition of artist’s multiplies entitled Bumper as part of the first Phoenix Arts Festival in Waterford. Brigid was also Artist-in-Residence with Monaghan County Council in 2002.

Brigid’s six month residency with the Trust culminated in a solo exhibition entitled At Home in Hospital which featured a number of mixed media collage pieces referring to childhood memories and fairy tales and including materials of every day life in the hospital. Other works played on hospital objects and procedures as well as documented a participatory event, The Wishing Balloon Project, in which Brigid had invited staff, patients and visitors to write a few words expressing their wish for the future, their hopes and dreams or thoughts for a loved one. 500 messages were attached to white balloons and released in the courtyards of Waterford Regional Hospital at 12 noon on World Mental Health Day in October 2003.

In Brigid’s words, “this project recognises that the physical release of feelings is the mind and body’s way of healing, and as such, a central part of everybody’s mental health. By inviting people to express and release their wishes and hopes, the connection between communication and mental health is made”.