Artist Talk: Joseph Walsh

The Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the Georgia Museum of Art present a visiting lecture by artist Joseph Walsh. The event is part of the university’s annual Spotlight on the Arts festival.

Joseph Walsh is an Irish designer and maker whose work reflects his passion for expression through material and form. From monumental scale sculptures to one-of-a-kind site-specific commissions, every piece within his body of work reveals an intuitive relationship with making, a sympathetic use of materials and an expressive engagement with form. Walsh was born in County Cork on the south coast of Ireland, where he established his own studio and workshop in 1999 and remains based today.

With no formal training, he began to explore his passion for making, visiting master makers around Europe, and developing his own mastery of wood working and deep knowledge of the material. From the outset, he pursued innovation in making based on traditional techniques, often from other craft forms, which enabled new making methods and forms. This led to significant early commissions for various ecclesiastical clients, the Embassy of Japan and the National Museum of Ireland. From these early years of experimentation and development, Walsh began to break some of the traditional rules of making, and even his own rules, in order to create the truly bold and expressive forms for which he is known today, realised in an ever-widening range of materials, including wood, marble and bronze.

His achievements in design have been recognized by an honorary doctorate from University College Cork, a major commission for the National Gallery of Ireland and the acquisition of works for many major international collections, including more recently the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In addition to his studio practice, Joseph Walsh has cultivated a rich cultural program. Making In, established in 2017, is a non-profit organization initiated as an annual seminar of international creatives from the disciplines of art, craft, design and architecture. Recently, the program expanded beyond the workshop at Joseph Walsh Studio to a wider audience through the making and release of documentary films.