Maurice Harron
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Maurice Harron is a sculptor, born in 1946 in Derry, Northern Ireland, where he grew up. He studied sculpture at the Ulster College of Art and Design in Belfast.
Much of his work is public art sculpture and he has works sited in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. Two of his most acclaimed commissions are Reconcilition/Hands Across the Divide in Carlisle Square, Derry, overlooking the Craigavon Bridge crossing the River Foyle, and the Gaelic Chieftain, arguably his most experimental and impressive piece sited in the Curlew Mountains, County Roscommon. This statue overlooks the site of the Battle of Curlew Pass, fought in August 1599, when a Gaelic Irish force under Hugh Roe O'Donnell defeated an English column during the Nine Years War.
His work Let the Dance Begin, dating from 2000, is sited near the Lifford Bridge in Strabane, County Tyrone and was commissioned by the Strabane Lifford Development Commission. It features 5 semi-abstract figures (a fiddler, a flautist, a drummer and two dancers) on the theme of music and dance, each 4 metres high and is made of stainless steel, bronze and ceramic tile mosaic. It is one of the largest pieces of public art in Ireland.
He also has work sited in the United Kingdom and the USA, where he created the Irish Famine Memorial on Cambridge Common, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was dedicated on July 23, 1997.
