Family home now a thriving art gallery

If Deborah Watkins and Gavin Lavelle had paused for a moment during the official opening of their revamped gallery in Clifden last weekend to ponder the role played by fate in bringing them together, nobody could have blamed them.

Deborah and Gavin first met in Dublin the 1980s when they were students at the National College of Art and Design – she was studying ceramics and he was specialising in painting. They were part of a big group of friends at the time and there was no romantic interest.

That came later, in the mid-1990s, when they met by chance on the street of Clifden. Kildare-born Deborah had moved West in 1991 to take a summer job in Kylemore Abbey where she initially worked as a window dresser.

“I loved it so much I asked the nuns if I could stay,” she laughs. Deborah stayed on for seven years, working in different roles until she eventually became manager of Kylemore Pottery.When crossing the street in Clifden one day during 1995, she met Gavin, whose family are from the town. In fact, the building on Main Street which houses their gallery was his grandparents’ home and has been in the Lavelle family for six generations.

Gavin’s father, who set up the gallery in that building and ran it as a seasonal operation had died in 1994,  so Gavin who was living in Brussels came home to look after the business, as did his brother Ralph. They initially ran it together, before Ralph moved to Australia.

Meanwhile, in 1997 Deborah opened her own pottery studio in Clifden, specialising in Japanese raku pottery, mostly very large pots. The couple married in 2000 and had two daughters in quick succession.

For more, see this week’s Connacht and City Tribune.