ABOUT
ALICE
MY STORY
A costume designer, sculptor, community artist, prop-maker, textile artist, puppet enthusiast, and relentless pursuer of knowledge!
It’s hard to say when it all started, but let’s begin when I graduated from university with a BA in Fine Art Sculpture. Then at some point in the amorphous time between graduating and Knuckling Down to become a Real Person with a Real Job, I gained qualifications in training and community facilitation.
I started working as a community artist and honed my skills as a costume designer through volunteering, hobby projects, and small commissions. I took sewing classes in my spare time and made costumes for friends and family, whether or not they asked me to. I trained in puppet making and in creating costumes for carnival, and ultimately steered myself into my childhood dream* of getting paid to make strange clothes and weird dolls (costumes and puppets).
*it was technically a late-teens/early twenties dream. My childhood dream was to be a fancy doctor who drove around in a red sports car and did very little actual doctoring.
These days, I work across a few different creative areas.
COMMUNITY ARTS
A source of great joy to me as you can never know entirely what to expect – every project, every group brings something new and exciting, and it basically involves chatting to people and doing some fun art stuff.
COSTUME DESIGNER
I’ve worked with national and international arts organisations, carnival producers, and theatre companies; creating costumes, masks, puppets, and props that are often big and frequently ridiculous.
Some of my highlights so far include making a bio-luminescent jellyfish costume, a pair of stiltwalking elephants for Belfast Mela (I call them the Melaphants™), huge silk flags celebrating the rich and varied history of the Belfast music scene, and designing and creating costumes and props for some of the events that welcomed Little Amal to Belfast.