the artist
sally mckenna

Sally McKenna pictured with Terry McDonagh, author of Cill Aodáin & Nowhere Else, a book of original poems illustrated by Sally.

sally mckenna

The 100-year-old Glore Mill in Kiltimagh was renovated into the Glore Mill Follain Art Centre to provide a working sculpture studio and display gardens for Sally to investigate new design and materials. She is a university trained, international artist with commissioned mixed media sculpture sited in the United States, Canada & Ireland. Her largest sculptures travel around the world on the Sun and Dawn Princess cruise ships and she has created wall sculpture for city council offices in Phoenix, Tempe and Glendale, Arizona. Several hospitals in the United States include Sally's work in their permanent collections, St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix and JFK Memorial Hospital in Edison New Jersey. Corporate offices in the American cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Houston, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tucson. Omaha and Minneapolis include in their art collections interpretations of Sally's view of the world in metals and mixed media fibres.

In Ireland, the heritage Sculpture for Kiltimagh called "The Way Home" and "Solar Orb" created for Ballindine National School are her largest pieces of outdoor sculpture to date. In 1980 the Olympic games in Lake Placid, New York commissioned a large wall piece titled "Stonehenge Solstice". Twenty-five years later she is still working with the theme of sun, seasons, landscape and growth. A large sculptural Tree of Life is installed under the auspices of the Colomban Missionary Awareness Centre in Dalgan Park, Navan. County Meath.

The title is "Sun under Tara". It is part of an ongoing education project about Sustainable Earth Ecology with Lismullen national school in Navan. Sally taught and helped students paint the sculpture. A heritage walk for the town of Kiltimagh is started with two Bronze sculptures on the street. The 12 year personal journey that she and her husband began in 1993 to see Ireland was shown through paintings, drawings and sculpture in July of 2004 at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre in Dublin.