Mary Beth Meehan & Grace O’Meara, Artists in Residence 2002

Photographer Mary Beth Meehan and painter Grace O’Meara were Artists in Residence with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust in 2002.

Mary Beth Meehan came from Providence, Rhode Island, USA. In 2001 / 2, she spent one year on sabbatical in Waterford, during which time she photographed scenes from the cultural and social life of the area. Mary Beth had been staff photographer with The Providence Journal and also worked as a freelance photographer. Her work has appeared in a range of publications including the New York Times and Time Magazine.

Mary Beth wrote of the year she spent in Waterford: “I was struck by the moments of grace and beauty that presented themselves in everyday life. It seemed that each day, new scenes or gestures or simple glances would rise up out of the ordinary and announce themselves: two sisters walking together along a country road; a new church set up in the echoing emptiness of an old factory; a first communion dress on a dreary day. I began to explore this intersection of the beautiful and the mundane, and the way life in Ireland was asking me to appreciate both.”

Grace O’Meara is a painter and a Masters graduate from the Limerick School of Art. Grace comes from Clonmel. She has exhibited her work widely in group and solo exhibitions. Grace has extensive experience of working in community settings and in theatre. She has participated in the Arts Council’s Artists-in-Schools Scheme and is involved in arts education at all levels.

During her residency, Grace researched the lives and images of the saints, given their association with illness and healing. Some of Grace’s ‘paintings’ were constructed from materials found in the hospital such as blankets, sheets, uniforms and hair as the idea of relics and the notion of ‘divine power being trapped within cloth’ is central to the work. The resulting images featured a number of portraits of saints; the images are simplified and the faces without features.

The work produced by Mary Beth Meehan and Grace O’Meara was presented in 'Twelve Bells', an exhibition of paintings and photographs in Waterford Regional Hospital in October 2003 and Greyfriars Municipal Gallery in January 2003.