This Limerick Life - Una Heaton
Artist Una runs a gallery in the Old Leamy School, scene of Frank McCourt's early education. Plans to expand the venue into a McCourt museum are approaching fruition and there are ambitions later for more cultural and educational activities to be based there
I grew up in Rathbane. Initially we were in Pery Square, but we moved to Rathbane and I loved it. It was countryside then. We thought it was the city but it was the countryside. We had to get a bus in. The bus was a penny in, which we thought was a lot of money. We'd actually walk in to school in Presentation on Sexton Street and we'd spend the money on sweets. We'd be in before the bus, because the bus would take the route. My mother copped on to us a few times though.
My favourite memory was my mother coming home one Saturday with a sketch book. I would have been six or seven. I filled it. Everytime I had a blank page, I'd fill it, any bit of paper at all, I'd fill it with everything and anything.
I'm an artist first, but a businesswoman and entrepreneur too. I have something nearly up and running now, a Frank McCourt museum. We have two rooms upstairs, which we're going to fill with period furniture from the 1930s. I have all the props got, so it will be open soon. We have got a lot of memoribilia and even some of Frank's ashes. We've got a lot of photographs and books of his, people offered so much.
My husband John met him 18 years ago. Jim Kemmy said to John one day, "I want you to meet this guy, he's writing a great book on Limerick" and it turned out to be Frank McCourt. I met him a few years later and he used to come in here when he was back. He did a walk for People In Need when I was with them and he opened an exhibition of mine in New York, which was great.
I've never had a real job. Well I did. When I left school first I had a job as a widow display artist in Cannocks when I was 17. I went to Monarch Enterprises, which was a graphic design place. It was a breakaway from the Monarch Showband. I worked with them and their offices were across the way in Hartstonge Street and I'd always admired this building when I was working, looking out the window dreaming. Little did I know then I'd end up across the road.
My father-in-law bought the building in 1956. It had closed as a school four years before and there had been fencing clubs and other clubs in there in the interim. He opened up a clothing factory, Crescent Clothing Factory.
This place became vacant last year and I said to John to give me a chance to run it as a gallery. It's going well and we've sold quite a few pieces in the last couple of months. A lot of tours come in and the Angela's Ashes tour finishes up here.
We couldn't get God to open it, so we got the Pope! Poor Frank McCourt was supposed to open it but he was too ill to travel, so we got Brent Pope to do it. Brent did the haka – it was great. We had about 500 people at the opening, they were all over the place.
We hope to make this a literary centre too. There will be workshops soon for creative writing and maybe children from disadvantaged areas will come in, people outside the mainstream education system, and get one-to-one tuition. We don't know if it will work, but we'll try it. It will always be a gallery, but we hope to make it a cultural centre. I'd love to see it as an educational-based arts centre.
Bill Whelan actually got me my first studio. I left Monarch Enterprises because the wages were desperate and I thought I could do better. I was friendly with Bill and he said he'd get me a temporary place for a few weeks and he got me Dentist McMahon's basement in O'Connell Street. I stayed there for four months, it was grand.
I don't have a typical day at all. I don't know what's happening from one end of the day to the next. I'll have a few appointments set up alright, but it could vary greatly. I'm going home now to paint a picture of Terry Wogan, which I'll give to him.
John and I are 31 years married this week. You're on your honeymoon for the first 10 years, but even then it needn't be smooth running. It's only boring if it's smooth running. You have to have your ups and downs because the fun is making up as well and saying you're sorry – and if you're not sorry you have to say you're sorry anyway.
You have to have a bit of a laugh and some fun and have your own independence, your own friends and interests. There's nothing worse than living in each other's pockets, that'll kill you. John has his interests and I have mine and we combine them as well, we go to the rugby together. We love life, the two of us love life and meeting people and it's great. But have your independence, don't be just the two of you because you smother each other. John never knows for one minute of the day what I'm doing!
Interview: Kevin Corbett
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Monday 21 May 2012
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