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.

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.





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