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With a major retrospective of her work running in
the Gallery of Photography and National Photographic Archive over the summer, American sculptor and portrait painter Helen Hooker O’Malley’s work behind the camera lens is put in perspective. words Cormac K.H. O’Malley Stella Frost (artist), Evie Hone (artist), Sybil le Brocquy (writer), Eileen McGrane MacCarvill (Lecturer in English at UCD), and Roisin Walsh (Dublin City Librarian) who commissioned Helen’s interior design work for libraries in Ballsbridge, Howth, and Pearse Street. A Model Farm in Mayo, 1939–1944 In 1938, Helen was drawn home to Greenwich by her father’s untimely death. By this time, having lost a libel action, Ernie was no longer at ease in Dublin, and they decided to move to Mayo and pursue their photographic projects from there. On Helen’s return from the US in August 1938, Ernie had already rented a house on the Louisburg coast in Co. Mayo. They sought a more permanent home, which they found that November at Burrishoole Lodge, near Newport. During the Second World War – ‘The Emergency’– they were determined to make their contribution and established a self-sufficient farm and the first tuberculosisfree herd west of the Shannon. They leased additional land and employed men to grow crops and to plant an entirely new garden full of diverse fruit trees. Helen would say proudly, if a little exaggeratedly, that they were self-sufficient except for sugar and tea. Over this period, Helen gave birth to Etain in 1940, and Cormac in 1942, and also continued her photography. Her focus turned to subjects close to hand, such as planting, reaping, harvesting, threshing and other domestic matters. Using funds inherited from her father, Helen designed striking new farm buildings and an art studio at Burrishoole Lodge, and Ernie oversaw their construction. Dublin — Visual Art and Theatre, 1942–47 A driven and committed artist, Helen started to spend time in Dublin, and in 1942 she began renting a small studio there for sculpture. Her work was included in the inaugural Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943. By 1944, Helen and Ernie decided that rural life was not for them. Helen rented a house in Clonskeagh, Dublin, moved the children to local schools, and threw her energy into the Dublin arts and theatre scene. In late 1944, Helen helped found the Players Theatre with actors Gerald Healy and Liam Redmond. Based on the Famine, the Cork and Dublin productions of their first play, The Black Stranger, received considerable acclaim in 1945. Other plays followed, including Donagh MacDonagh’s Happy as Larry. Helen played an important role on the Board in addition to designing stage sets, costumes and the company’s logo. When the war ended in June, Helen returned to Greenwich to see her family and her theatre enterprise fizzled out. It was revived in part in London where she moved in 1947-48 and again in the 1953-54 season. America, Divorce and Remarriage The immediate post-war period from 1946 to 1950 was challenging for Helen. With her marriage in trouble, she spent more time in America, away from her husband and children. During this period, Cahal and Cormac contracted primary tuberculosis, and Ernie took them out of school and back to Mayo to rest and recuperate. A New Creative Phase With the encouragement of her American family, Helen returned to Ireland in 1950 and took her two older children, Cahal and Etain, out of boarding school and flew them to the United States – without Ernie’s permission. Helen started a new life with them in Colorado. She designed a new house, garden and amphitheatre amid the dramatic Colorado mountain landscape. She started to sculpt, paint and take on interior design work again. By 1952, when she divorced Ernie, she had her first exhibition in Colorado Springs. The following year, she moved between New York and London, working on theatre projects. In 1956 she married Richard Roelofs Jr. By early 1957 she had a significant exhibit in Greenwich, shortly before Ernie died in March of that year. The next 14 years were spent initially settling into married life again, then later tenderly caring for her sick husband in Greenwich and renovating Burrishoole Lodge, which had been uninhabited for almost ten years. The refurbishment of Burrishoole, and subsequently the Dublin mews, gave Helen an opportunity to buy a second collection of contemporary Irish art. She continued her photography in Ireland, which now included work in Kodachrome, and also expanded her artistic activity to 33