MARKING the 150th anniversary of Oscar Wilde leaving Enniskillen, 150 golden swallows have been created by an artist team from Fermanagh as part of the ‘Wilde Island Town: Home of the Happy Prince’ literary tourism project delivered by Arts Over Borders.

After winning the tender for the project, artists Simon Carman and Helen Sharp, aided by studio assistant Arthur Brooke, worked together to bring to life the flight of the little golden swallow from Wilde’s ‘The Happy Prince’.

From initial sketch to the installing of the swallows on buildings throughout Enniskillen town centre, the team were involved at every stage.

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter, Helen outlined the design process, explaining that initially they had a number of ideas, including 3D sculptures, but they decided to focus on the swallow as a silhouette.

She said: “We searched through lots of photographs of real swallows and then we drew up the outlines of the ones we liked, and then we made templates of those.

“We decided to use the ones we liked best – 12 of them,” said Helen, noting that they tried to show the swallow in every stage of flight.

After the templates had been created, Simon used a plasma cutter to cut the swallows out of stainless steel.

“A lot of people said I should have used an industrial process to cut the 150 swallows out of the steel, and they would all come out kind of identical, but I didn’t want to do that.

“I wanted to cut out each one individually,” said Simon, explaining that he preferred the idea of each swallow being unique, to have a handcrafted feel.

Next, they sanded down the edges and welded 60mm bolts on the back of each one for mounting.

‘A beautiful shadow’

“I kept those bolts quite long, because the idea was, if you see the swallows, they are actually out from the wall, and this creates a beautiful shadow behind them when the sun is on them which really gives them a three-dimensionality,” he said.

The final stage of the creation of the swallows was the application of 24ct Italian gold leaf.

Simon described this as the most complicated part of the making process due to the specific timings required for the application of specialist glue, called ‘size’, prior to adding the gold leaf.

Throughout the making stage, Simon was assisted by Arthur.

“I love working with my hands, so I was just really interested in learning how to work with Simon on welding, plasma cutting and gold leafing. It was a really amazing experience,” Arthur told this newspaper.

Saying that it has been a nice project to work on, Helen added: “What I loved most of all was when we were putting the first one up – people walking by, they seemed to just take it straight to heart.”

With the swallows being installed throughout the town over the past couple of weeks, Helen noted that they are gathering momentum, a bit like the swallows coming home following their winter migration.

“Where we live on Crom [estate], the swallows came home just as we were finishing the project, so it’s completely timely with nature that the installation is going up,” she told this newspaper.