NO STRANGER TO public art commissions in Ireland, artist Joe Neeson is busy completing his latest job for Kerry County Council.

His Seaform sculpture will be unveiled in Dingle shortly with the Killarney native hoping it will be finished by the end of this week.

“[I] designed an object which had a relationship with the sea,” he told TheJournal.ie. “The spiral form suggests the slow movement of water. There is also a reference to seal life.

“The way the sun hits the resin, it creates an effect like being in the water.”

The sculpture has taken about two years to complete – longer than expected due to delays in getting the top section correct. The resin work was undertaken in Birmingham, while the metalwork was completed in Cork, where Neeson now lives.

This is the artist’s fourth commission in Kerry and the last of 13 works commissioned by Kerry County Council through its Public Art Programme in 2010.

About €48,500 was made available for the Dingle sculpture by the Percent for Art Scheme.

Neeson studied at both Limerick School of Art and Design and the Crawford College of Art and Design in the 1990s. He moved to New York in 1996 and worked in the Bedi Makki Art Foundry in Brooklyn. In that year, he was also honoured with the Thomas Dammann Jnr. Memorial Trust Award. Since 2000, he has produced work for Kerry, Cork, Mayo and Kildare county councils. His works can be found in various corners of the island: