Mary Leen.
LOCAL stained glass artist, Mary Leen, was asked to contribute her expertise and craft to a historic project for Irish whiskey giant, Jameson.
In a video posted up on Youtube by Jameson on Wednesday, Mary can be seen working on a project called ‘Pencil and Sledge’ to help promote a new brand of Jameson whiskey called ‘Caskmates’.
The video celebrates the release of the new whiskey by providing a behind the scenes look at the production of a stained glass art piece made by Mary Leen and ‘The Project Twins’, who are a graphic design team from Cork.
The stained glass they created was unveiled to the public on Thursday night in Dublin. The work was designed to reflect the whiskey and also the Irishness of the product.
“They were looking for a stained glass artist who was doing contemporary work so they contacted me to ask would I be interested,” said Mary Leen.
To create the whiskey, Jameson took old stout barrels from the Franciscan Well Brewery in Cork and stored whiskey in them to create a new and interesting flavour.
“The concept was called ‘when old meets new’. Stained glass being an old craft while graphic design being modern, Jameson were interested to see what we could come up with if they clashed the two styles together,” said Mary.
The locations where the video was shot were in Cork while working on the stained glass with the Project Twins, at home in Tralee and at the Jameson distillery, also in Cork, where Mary was given a guided tour and – for inspiration – got to sample some whiskey as well.
“I thought it was really fun just to collaborate with someone, I put different things into my work that I wouldn’t normally do. It took me out of my comfort zone as well because I was so used to working on my own,” said Mary.
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