Celebrating our Indigenous community at Art Mania Studios

Indigenous art by Mungi

  FEATURING Charmaine Lehman, Gini Mac, Mungi Lock, and Sandy Lee.  To celebrate NAIDOC Week 2023, we spent the last few weeks encouraging the Indigenous artists within our community to speak up and share their stories with us.   Our staff member Jade had the great privilege of meeting our artists one on one to chat, hearing and documenting stories of pride, […]

Refractions: Diversity From Within

 Thank you so much to all those who came along for a fun afternoon with us, on Sunday 14th August, to celebrate the launch of our exhibition at Lake Macquarie’s Museum of Art and Culture titled ‘Refractions: Diversity Within’. Our amazing artists (pictured above David, Fee, Andrew, Lara, Gini, Geoff, Opaque, Absent: Indi). Each artist […]

CREATIVE KIDS AND COVID

It’s hard on us all being put into lockdown. Having restrictions placed on our movements, our day to day life. As adults, we can understand it, we may not like it, but we do understand the need for it. But how about your children? Especially the younger ones. Suddenly they can’t have that sleep-over they […]

LOCKDOWN WITH A LABRADOR

It’s been weeks since we went into lockdown and my golden labrador and guide dog Aimee is not happy. Not only is she unhappy, she is making sure I know it! Once a week, on a Tuesday morning, my support worker, Alichea, and I take Aimee to the dog beach. Aimee knows the routine and […]

RECIPE FOR PLAY DOUGH

If you are running out of things to do with your kids, why not try out this recipe for play dough? It’s a cheap and easy way to make hours of fun. Ingredients: 2 cups of flour ½ cup of salt 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil 1 and ½ […]

LIFE IN LOCKDOWN

As we enter the eighth month of 2021, Newcastle and the Hunter region are now in lockdown. Sydney, the Central Coast and other areas of NSW have been in lockdown for a month or so now. The threat of COVID is real again, especially for those of us who may have become complacent. Having positive […]

HOW ART IS MAKING ME BRAVE

I am not a particularly practical person. If something breaks or stops working around my house, I contact the real estate  so they can send someone to fix it for me. If my computer plays up, I call one of the IT techs at Guide Dogs so they can talk me through the process of […]

THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF JOURNALING

Earlier this year, Art Mania ran some workshops on journaling. They were: journaling for creativity, journaling for organisation and journaling for welbeing. They were held at the Hunter Wetlands Centre and were a huge amount of fun. They also left us all with some incredibly useful skills and tools. These workshops were also so popular, […]

A TASTE OF THE TERM TO COME

One of the best things about a new term at Art Mania is getting to try something new. Not just for you, our students, but for the staff too. I’m so excited, I just couldn’t wait. I had to share this. Starting on Tuesday, 13 July, we will be running Creative Tuesdays for all who […]

STAFF SPOTLIGHT: ANDREW

Andrew is one of our glass fusing and lead light teachers. He is also responsible for kiln maintenance firing schedule development. If anything goes wrong with the kilns, both glass and clay, it is Andrew who is comes in to save the day and keep everything running and stopping general panic amongst students wanting to […]