It’s here in Ashbourne, Co Meath, that de Brí has produced large-scale sculptures for Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, Princess Anne, the Hollywood actresses Hilary Swank and Christina Applegate, and Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess champion.
The Dublin-born artist has 27 large-scale sculptures on display as far afield as Hong Kong and Beijing. However, one of her most striking pieces — a 5m gold-leaf tree with a 3m human figure — sits closer to home, atop the 14th-century Belvelly Castle in Cobh, Co Cork.
De Brí, who splits her time between Ashbourne and Madrid, is hosting a new 18-piece exhibition, Out of the Shadows, at the Solomon Gallery in Dublin, until October 18. The exhibition, which is her ninth solo collection of work, reflects on the global challenges of war and climate change, as well as her own personal struggles.
The mother of two often travels to meet the people she is creating work for, to get a sense of their personality and a better understanding of their life. In 2009, de Brí met Tutu, the late South African archbishop and winner of the Nobel peace prize, in Dublin after being commissioned by the St Patrick’s Trust to create a sculpture for him.
“The sculpture was a female figure called Spéirbheann (heavenly woman) as Ireland was often referred to as a woman,” de Brí told The Sunday Times. “I did present the piece to him and he was actually lovely. We kind of had a joke together; he was saying that he was a ‘connoisseur of women’ and then he emailed me later saying, ‘Oh, you charmed me,’ and he signed off the email as ‘Bish’. He was an absolutely lovely person.”
Her commissions for Swank and Applegate came via a friend, the author Cecelia Ahern, who wanted to give each of them a sculpture. De Brí met Ahern 18 years ago at a Christmas party in Kildare shortly after she had just finished writing her debut novel, PS, I Love You. Before that, the novelist’s father, Bertie Ahern, the former taoiseach, commissioned de Brí to produce a sculpture that was unveiled in Dublin in 1999.
“Cecelia was working with both of them [Swank and Applegate] at the time and so she told me all about them and then she asked me to come up with pieces for them so she could give them,” the sculptor said.
De Brí, who studied dress and design at the Grafton Academy, was interested in sculpting from a young age but never saw it as a career. She took her first sculpture course when she was 12, a night class for adults at North Strand Technical School.
“I’ve been making objects and sculpting things from the time I was a kid really but I think when I discovered three-dimensional work, I was much better at that and I could kind of make anything I thought of,” she said.
“We used to travel a lot as a family, camping and going all over Europe on a shoestring, and when I was around 14, one of the exhibitions my dad brought me to was a Salvador Dalí in the north of Spain. I remember being kind of immersed in these rooms with installations and thinking I could express myself this way if somebody taught me how to do it.
“When I told my dad I wanted to do sculpture he was saying, ‘No, you wouldn’t make a career out of that.’ I suppose at that time, they couldn’t see how it would work.”
De Brí’s father, Fred Corcoran, whom she recalled as having a profound influence on her career, died in March at the age of 93. He is the inspiration for one of her pieces in Out of the Shadows, titled Grounded.
“He taught me to be visually aware, to notice the changing colours in nature, and to appreciate your surroundings. As children, he would give myself and my siblings drawing classes, he’d set up a still life and we would each draw it in our own way. I remember him sculpting an elongated head from the leg of an old dining room table; I later cast that piece for him in bronze.”
De Brí lives with her husband, Finn, a former chief information officer at the Houses of Oireachtas, whom she met when she was 18. They have two children: Jeda, 32, who is a film writer and director, and Cal, 30, a videographer.
De Brí said being a sculptor has helped her manage her ADHD and dyslexia. “In school being ADHD/dyslexic was very difficult, they didn’t really know about it then,” she said. “I have a low boredom threshold so I would draw or write poems to amuse myself in class. The nuns weren’t impressed, so I spent a lot of time outside the door or down with the headmistress. Being a sculptor is perfect for ADHD, when I am making a sculpture I don’t think about anything else. I am completely focused on the piece, almost like a meditation. The physicality of the work also calms the mind.”
Despite her unique line of work, De Brí still manages to work the standard 9-5, Monday to Friday. She said some pieces could take up to 18 months to complete, though she usually works on several simultaneously.
“I basically start making a model piece in wax and then it goes into the foundry and is poured and cast,” she said. “Then I get it back and do the metalwork on it. But while it’s in the foundry, I’ll be starting another piece, so I’m jumping from working in wax to working in metal. I like to work on big-scale pieces because there’s a whole engineering aspect to it as well. There’s lots of female sculptors now, but it definitely is a male-dominated industry; it’s a very physical discipline.”
De Brí, who is reluctant to disclose her age during our interview, said she had no plans to retire, citing Louise Bourgeois, the French sculptor, who continued working until her death in 2010 at the age of 98. She added: “There’s no way I’ll ever stop working.”
