IT ALL began in the most unexpected fashion - an artistic career formed by paperclips and enduring long business meetings in the USA.
For Glenn Gibson this unlikely start would lead to a career as a sculptor and the founding of the artists collective, gallery, and studio space in Galway city - Art In Mind.
Originally from the Claddagh, Glenn’s first foray into the art world was in the late 1980s, when he along, with a couple of friends, rented out the Fisheries Tower for an exhibition. “We were about 18,” Glenn tells me during our Monday morning interview. “We got some money from Digital to make it happen, but I think we were more there for the cheese and wine to be honest.”
Glenn’s artistic inclinations took a back seat after he emigrated and began work in corporate America. “I went to the States in my mid-twenties and worked in that world for a long time,” he says.
An idea takes hold
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A key feature of Art in Mind is the therapeutic benefit of artistic practice and creation. A key feature of Glenn’s sculpture is working with narrow, thin, metallic based materials. The seeds of this were planted in the US during “long and very boring conference calls”.
“Partly as a means of stress relief, partly as a way to cope with the boredom of those calls, I began to assemble little sculptures out of paperclips,” says Glenn. “It passed the time.”
Later, when Glenn had “an argument with addiction”, creation was a way to battle and defeat it. “The creative side had a benefit on my mental health, for two hours a day, three to four days a week, I would work on artistic projects, and they started to sell, and it started to become serious. I’m an accidental artist.”
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Glenn moved back to Ireland in 2008 just as the economy collapsed and working full time as an artist was too precarious. He spent the next five years working in his family’s business , but kept the sculpture going as a side project, but this time with an emphasis on education.
“I’m not qualified to speak with people about their mental health,” he says, “but I can teach them about my experience, how art has helped me, and that translates well.”
Sculpting with wire
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Glenn’s work is sculpted via wire, a material he has worked with for 20 years. It came from a suggestion from a friend, who told him it could be bought in reels at hardware shops.
“My passion is that material,” he says. “It spoke to me and gave me a way to express what I couldn’t before.”
Glenn is also very clear about the therapeutic benefits of creating a work. “It gives you the freedom to focus,” he says, “to focus on the present moment and set aside the problems of the day. In wire sculpture you form, pinch, and twist the material into the shapes you need, and you have to do that over and over again - form, pinch, and twist, form, pinch, and twist - it becomes like a mantra, you have no time to focus on the negative, you’re focussed on the job at hand.”
Art in Mind
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The first steps in what would become Art in Mind came in a flash of inspiration for an interactive sculpture installation. “It was about four or five years ago,” says Glenn. “I saw it completely. I remember being at a memorial service with a friend. I didn’t know anyone there, although I was elbow to elbow with people - remember those days? - and yet I still felt so alone and so isolated in this room full of people. That gave me the idea for life sized sculptures and you would walk through them, and come to a veil with seven sculptures looking to the side, and then you would look back at the sculptures you had walked through and see that they all form one image. It was to be called ‘One’ and expresses the idea found across ancient cultures, that we are all interconnected.”
The idea was for Glenn to create this ambitious work with community groups and other organisations as a collaboration - an expression in practice of the idea behind the work - to be ready for display in July 2020. Then Covid-19 arrived.
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Photo by Julia Dunin.
Instead of giving up on the idea, Glenn changed focus: “A long term goal I had was to set up a space where people could practice their creative process through workshops.”
He already had a gallery at the Liosbán Industrial estate when the power of the lot beside him asked Glenn if he would have “any use for it”.
“I thought it would be a perfect space for artists,” he says. “So, during lockdown, we decided to become the Art in Mind space, a space to develop multiple projects, and we received support from City Hall.”
‘Artists supporting artists’
Art in Mind is an artist led, non-profit organisation, spanning several buildings in the Liosban Industrial Estate, and is "dedicated to promoting wellbeing and mental health through creative practice". In March 2020 it expanded its gallery space to +400m2. Among those involved in the gallery community are Julia Dunin Photography, designer Niamh Daniels, and visual artist and curator Ronan Fahey.
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“Our USP is that when you sign up with us, you have a workbench, and receive marketing advice, guidance, and information on how to get your work to market. There is a lot of experience in the people here. It’s a community of artists supporting artists.”
While Art in Mind has space for 20 artists, social distancing and public health guidelines means only five people are working in the space at the moment, with 2m distancing applying between all.
“Eventually we want to get more people in, but for now, they have to come from within a 5km radius, but we are confident. We were born in lockdown, we’ve had a brilliant response from everyone involved, and we will come out of it the other side.”
For more information see www.glenngibsonsculpture.com and www.artinmind.ie.
