Staffordshire University Fine Art End of Year Exhibition: Melissa Roden

Patrick was kind enough to take some photos for me from the Fine Art Exhibition at Staffs Uni. This is some awesome work by Melissa Roden about pop culture and the obsessions that can grow from it, and her own interest in The Cure, and I am ragingly jealous I was unable to attend.

More work can be found on her tumblr: http://melissarodenart.tumblr.com/

And these are the resulting sketches

This is Lorraine Bennett's beautifully detailed sketch of her doll.

I think I'll call my collection 'Attack of the Crayons'

 The bottom right picture is a sketch of the picture below

These are photos of Lorraine's initial mackettes

Here be a lovely sketch of Pat by Lorraine Bennett
Patrick has a habit of having his picture drawn.

I am ridiculously excited to be able to publish some of the work done by and with Lorraine Bennett. I'm not sure where to begin. I guess a good place to start is from a couple of initial drafts from Lorraine's sketchbook.

While I'm at it, here's some goddamn Arthur Berry, a personal hero of mine when I was 16 and just starting to draw.

The Soul of the Potteries (is not dead yet)

Faye Rowe- The Soul of the Potteries at Theartbay Gallery in Fenton

I have often heard it being said that nothing gets made in Stoke-On-Trent anymore, but I know for a fact that there has always been a quiet but consistent art-scene churning away in the background that people seem to forget about. I'm not trying to persuade anybody that there's hidden swathes of art galleries in the potteries, but there is more than people often realise.

YOU MUST TELL US

Made my old JSA agreement into a nice collage drawing of a leaf :) tis a bit highschool-ish standards but at least all that crappy paperwork became useful. 

Most of the pages I used are recent improvements that mean that if you leave a job voluntarily then you will not be able to claim job seekers allowance, which I think is quite unfair because that job could be making somebody really miserable and mentally unwell or they could be being bullied. That means that the UK government will penalise those people into feeling like they have to keep that job no matter what the cost. 

Also you are meant to inform the DWP if you ever decide to stay away from home, even just for a day, because there's no way you can look for work and visit friends at the same time (le sarcasm). That is why the title is 'you must tell us'.

I am grateful for the help provided to me by the government, and I am lucky in some ways that because I have doctor-legittemised mental health problems, I was exempt from a lot of of the rules because the only thing worse than claiming JSA is dropping JSA for disability benefits in their eyes I guess. I just wish there was a more empowering way to help people find work and support individuals when their income hits the shitter.

Nicer folio pictures

Somewhere deep below germany

http://www.blauhoehle.com/www/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57&Itemid=71

http://www.blauhoehle.com/www/

http://www.agw.kit.edu/english/blauhoele_cave.php

http://www.showcaves.com/english/de/springs/Blautopf.html

http://archaeology.about.com/od/upperpaleolithic/ss/hohle_fels.htm

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=503826639678385&set=a.352867368107647.80532.352857924775258&type=3&theater

There are more scientific minds than mine that can explain this better (hence the multitude of links provided) but it does make me wonder about all the undiscovered pockets of air beneath the surface and what they hold. From what I can gather, until 2010, this one (the Blauhoele) was originally only accessible by diving through an underwater cave at the bottom of a spring called the Blautopf, named for its intensely blue water. There are species living down there that are 300 million years old.
This planet is such a mind-bending place.

another doodle

Seems like every time I go to the park I come home with something weird in my sketchbook.

Popped down to west park because it was nice and sunny this afternoon and came home with a scary drawing of a clock