Not so typical days

Every weekday morning, we have to be up and ready by 9am to be driven to the studios at the college by Robert, who works at the Burren College of Art. However, from there, most days vary.

During Summer 1, we spent most days at the studio from 9am to 5pm at the earliest, working on our individual projects. At 5pm, Robert drives the shuttle bus back to our house for anyone who’s ready to go home. However, many of us stayed later at the studio to do more work on our pieces.

For lunch, we pack our own lunch and eat it at the cafe around noon or buy lunch there at the school. For lunch, the options are bagels, wraps, soup, or the daily special. The daily special is usually something like Irish stew, cottage pie, or bangers and mash. Martina and Ann, the workers at the cafe, always make the best dishes and amazing pies for dessert.

During Summer 2, we’ve been doing a lot more group hikes around the Burren area as well as “visits” to locals. Over the past two months, we were able to hike Blackhead Trail, watch a sheep get sheared, meet a “friendly ferrier,” and visit an archaeological site. These days, we go to the school, attend a lecture in the morning that’s related to whatever we’re going to see, and then get a lift to the site from our professor or Tom the cab driver (who conveniently lives right next to the college). After the visits, we return to the studios to do some work or back to the house, if it’s late enough in the day.

After a long day in the studio or out on a hike, we come back to the house and usually relax by eating snacks together in the kitchen. We go out to the local grocery store to pick up whatever we need for the night and the next day. Dinner usually takes place around 7pm. After dinner, we sometimes watch a movie at the house and work on some art, or we go out to the village hang out with our local friends and listen to live music at a pub.

Then, we get home around midnight and prepare for another day full of art and exploring western Ireland!