In celebration of Northern Ireland’s rich craft landscape, past and present, five makers were invited to produce new work in response to heritage footage from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive. This film shows one of the makers response alongside the archive footage that inspired him.
Ronan Lowery is a furniture makers who grew up in rural Donegal before moving to Connemara in 2005 to study at the renowned Furniture College at Letterfrack. A fascination for mathematics and geometry is a strong influence in his work; sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle.
“For me, the archive footage inspires themes of storytelling, mark making and identity within the maker’s environment. In this piece I used laser engraving to mark the chair’s surface with distilled images from the footage as a means of telling the story of each maker; their process, tools, product and inspiration. I formed the curves by bent lamination as a response to the traditional method of steam-bending utilised by the bodhrán maker and the Lambeg drum makers.” - Ronan Lowery