Helen Moloney was an Irish stained glass artist, known for her work with architect Liam McCormick in the churches he designed throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
22 Facts About Helen Moloney
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Helen Moloney was born in Henry Street, Tipperary on 2 January 1926, one of a pair of twins with her sister Mary.
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Helen Moloney's parents were James and Kathleen Barry Moloney.
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Helen Moloney had two younger sisters other than her twin, and a brother.
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Helen Moloney's paternal grandfather, Patrick James Moloney, was a pharmaceutical chemist and Sinn Fein TD in Tipperary from 1919 to 1923, being re-elected in June 1922 as an anti-treaty candidate.
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Helen Moloney's father was an officer in the 2nd Southern Division and the 3rd Tipperary Brigade during the war of independence, serving with the anti-treaty IRA as director of communications.
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Helen Moloney's mother was the older sister of Kevin Barry and was active in Cumann na mBan, the Gaelic League, and Sinn Fein.
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Helen Moloney worked in the Dail Eireann Department of Home Affairs, and served as a judge of the republican courts.
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Helen Moloney toured America and Australia in the early 1920s raising money for the Irish republican cause and was the general secretary of the Irish Republican Prisoners' Dependants' Fund.
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Helen Moloney's father was a chemist, and struggled to find work until he took a post with the Irish Sugar company in Carlow in 1934.
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Helen Moloney left school just before her 14th birthday, going on to study drawing part-time at the National College of Art with Art O'Murnaghan.
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Helen Moloney was awarded a series of bursaries and awards which allowed her to attend full-time to train as a painter, and she graduated in 1948.
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Helen Moloney lived in Paris for nine months where she studied life drawing at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Montparnasse.
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Helen Moloney took a position teaching art part-time at Blackrock Technical School from 1952 to 1964.
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Helen Moloney studied stained glass under John Murphy at NCA from 1958 to 1961.
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Helen Moloney went on to work as an assistant to Patrick Pollen at his studio on the premises of An Tur Gloine from 1960 to 1962.
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In 1964, having received a grant from the Arts Council, Helen Moloney established her own studio where she worked full-time as a stained glass artist.
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Helen Moloney went on to work numerous times with McCormick on the Catholic churches he designed, completing 11 commissions for him.
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Helen Moloney's windows worked in keeping with the radical and modern architectural style of these buildings, using semi-abstract designs in strong primary colours against his white surfaces.
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Helen Moloney was one of a group of craftspeople and artists McCormick assembled, including John Behan, Ruth Brandt, Ray Carroll, Oisin Kelly, Patrick McElroy, Patrick Pye, Veronica Rowe, and Imogen Stuart.
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In 1977, Helen Moloney was commissioned to work on a non-catholic church, Donoughmore Presbyterian church, Liscooley, County Donegal, creating the windows and designing a reredos hanging depicting the burning bush.
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Helen Moloney died at her home in Dublin on 6 March 2011, and is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery.