This week’s Isle of Man Art update has a very international flavour, with our Artists’ work reaching Melbourne, the United States and indeed worldwide – read on to find out who has been doing what.
Katy Mitchell, always a very busy lady, said that she was “very very VERY excited” to have been selected to participate in the inaugural mentorship programme organised by the Craft Potters Association, in partnership with Adopt A Potter. She has been paired with Helen Beard, an established and successful ceramicist based in Clerkenwell, London, who produces wheel-thrown and hand-illustrated porcelain pots. Katy says that she has followed her work for years and almost fell off her chair when she read the acceptance email. She will be visiting Helen in June and then follow up with Skype sessions. Katy goes on to say that she is “deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn from such a talented and respected maker” and added her thanks to the Isle of Man Arts Council for approving a small travel bursary to assist with flights to London, along with thanks to the good friends who offered advice on her mentorship application.
Katy will also be participating in The Cup Collaboration again this year. Her partner will be Anne-Laure Charlier, a French potter who produces beautiful porcelain vessels, hand-painted with magical, dream-like creatures. Sixty-two Australian and International ‘clay’ sisters and brothers are making cups for this year’s project. The participants are carefully matched and asked to collaborate to produce two cups together and one cups each for this event, so 4 cups between them. The cups will be exhibited in Melbourne but available to purchase online. The event dates are 12-18 Sept 2016 – here is the website if you would like more information on this event. You can also find more of Anne-Laure’s work on Instagram.
I’m not sure on first acquaintance that I would put Jeremy Paul in the ‘cool dude’ bracket, but that’s right where he is in my estimation right now! Jeremy got in touch to let me know that his ‘Lion-Warrior’ image which is licensed to the US shirt company ‘The Mountain’ features in Rhianna’s video “Work”. When I looked on You Tube, it had had 357,346,491 views. Let’s hope he sells even half as many shirts….. Just to clarify, in case you think Jeremy is a big Rhianna fan – which is possible in all fairness – he did tell me it was his daughter that spotted it 😉 I think this is brilliant – thanks for getting in touch Jeremy! Here is a screen shot and a picture of the shirt. 
Another of our local Artists, Gary Bennett, seems to have ‘gotten himself a cult following in the US of A’. (You need to imagine saying that in an American accent by the way and I said ‘gotten’ on purpose – doesn’t it make you cringe?). I can hardly believe I’ve got two such hugely entertaining stories to tell you in one news update, but Gary has a ‘Goth’ fan club and his work features on the website Gothic.Life. This blog has a whole page about Gary and his work, along with a few ‘interesting’ adult ads which I can assure you has nothing to do with my browsing preferences….!!
Moving back to more local news, Phil Kneen posted up that this December will mark the 10th anniversary of him photographing “the seedy underbelly that is the Isle of Man music scene”. From late 2006 he photographed most of the local bands. As he has A LOT of these photos – most of which haven’t been seen for years or not at all – he plans to put on an exhibition. He’ll need a venue and a sponsor so if anyone is interested please do get in touch. If the pictures Phil regularly posts up on his blog are anything to go by it will be a fabulous show.
ISLEXPO is on Wednesday this week and it promises to be a great day. I’ve booked a day off from the day job so that I can go and will be dragging along my wing-lady, Sarah, who enjoyed herself immensely when she came with me on the first day of the Isle of Man Art Festival. Hopefully the Google Digital Lab I’ve booked us in for won’t make her run for the hills. From an Arty perspective, Helen Fox made a video about the Pecha Kucha presentation which is on from 6.00pm- 7.00pm. It looks like it’s going to be great with some really interesting speakers.
I posted up about Essentia, the BA (hons) Fine Arts Degree show in last week’s news. This promises to be a great show and is on for 4 weeks, opening this week on Friday 27th at 9.00am. 
You may remember I mentioned last week that there was to going to be an Ad for the Directory and that it was going to be pretty big….. Well here it is – and the reason it is big is that that it is going on the side of a bus! I’m pretty pleased with it – if you see it around and about over the next few weeks do take a picture of it or let me know whereabouts on the Island you’ve seen it. Very grateful thanks to the Isle of Man Arts Council for their support in helping to fund this and to Isle of Man Advertising and PR for getting this together and onto the bus for me!
There are a couple of new pages on the Directory (and a couple more nearly ready to go live). A very warm welcome to Neil Milsom and Rob Jones.
And finally, here is this week’s round-up of images from Social Media… Enjoy.
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Have a great week!
Jane
