Glass artist and jewellery maker awarded £15,000 Rosemary James Memorial Trust Award by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Watch the video below featuring glass artist, Andrea Spencer, and jewellery maker, Anne Earls Boylan.

The bursary was established thanks to the generosity Rosy James who bequeathed £500,000 to support craft in Northern Ireland following her death.

Dr Suzanne Lyle, Head of Visual Arts, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, commented: “Congratulations to Andrea Spencer and Anne Earls Boylan on receiving the Rosemary James Memorial Trust Award. Each one of these artists produce extraordinary work, requiring great skill and each of them has had their work exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. I wish both the artists every success as they embark upon producing new works using the Rosemary James Memorial Trust Award, a bursary which demonstrates the true power of philanthropic giving.”

Glass artist, Andrea Spencer, based in near the Antrim coast and Ballintoy, will use her funding to enable her to take the time to explore new ways of working with glass, and to also start to develop a body of work for installation.

Andrea Spencer said, “I work with a technique called flame-working, which involves using glass rods and tubes over an open flame. It's a technique that's known for its fine small-scale detail. The themes within my work are usually based around the sea and the environment of the coast where I live. I'm very excited about the idea of having time to focus on pulling lots of the themes of my work that I've been dealing with over the past number of years and bringing it all together into something that would be an installation.

Anne Earls Boylan lives and works in the countryside outside Belfast making jewellery that references the rich history of adornment. Drawing on a dynamic and explorative space, the artist’s works plays with the roles material, process and value contribute within her pieces. Her jewellery is a lively collaboration between material, artist, wearer and audience.

Anne Earls Boylan commented, “My work has an otherworldly quality, which is purposeful, and it deals with jewellery on a very human scale, but also looking at the cosmos, the cosmological, so it contradicts both tiny and giant. To be able to make this work come into fruition with the Rosy James Award help is terrific, it would be impossible to achieve this without it. It's quite a resolution of a lot of ideas that I personally have been wanting to do for a long time, and I'm delighted to be able to now carry this out.

Born in Belfast in the mid-1940s, Rosy James attended the Ulster College of Art (1966-1971), now known as the Ulster University Belfast School of Art, where she studied Textile design. Following her studies in Belfast, she took up a teaching post in Birmingham, later settling in Cambridge where she continued as a teacher of Art and Design until 2007. She maintained her close connection with Northern Ireland throughout her life, with regular visits to her father, Dr James Ford Gillies OBE, former principal of the Belfast College of Technology and an important figure in the establishment of Ulster University. Rosy maintained a lifelong commitment to the arts as well as to her birthplace of Northern Ireland.

For information on all funding opportunities for artists and organisations visit www.artscouncil-ni.org/funding