ARTEMIS.

Taxidermy, dinosaurs, noodles and sunshine. This pretty much sums up how I spent yesterday over in Leeds and I was truly in my element.

In run up to my placement with Lord Whitney in two weeks time, they kindly invited me over for a day visit with them to Artemis in prep for their next project. If I remember correctly, Artemis is an organisation that stores pretty much every thing that surrounding museums don't have enough room for any more. From this, they provide a loan service to schools where over  10,000 artifacts and original artwork can be used for teaching and learning in a way where the children can get up and close to the items. It's an amazing scheme that could be used so much more. I'd of gone mad for something like this when I was growing up and still would now. The collection keeps growing as they get more pieces donate quite regularly by the sounds of things. The staff we spoke to were incredibly kind and let us explore and take as many photos as much as we wanted, followed by a tour of the workshops and storage rooms.  Having had time to potter around the many different rooms that built up the huge warehouse, I was blown away by 1. The vast variety of everything that they stored and 2. How it was referenced and labeled in such an organised manner. When I say vast array, that's probably a huge understatement. They had pieces from natural history, ethnography, geology, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, crafts and paintings. I've probably left loads out as well. Apologies if I have.

I was instantly drawn to the fantastic array of taxidermy they had on display and quickly found myself captivated by the little critters. I've seen a lot of average and quite disturbing taxidermy (some of which can be seen here) which is a well and good, but this collection was pretty much perfect and there was a real sense of care them all. Some of them had recently been made new little boxes and looked very happy with the results but it was kind of like a retirement home for dead animals. As much as I loved admiring everything I was almost frustrated by how these amazing pieces weren't being taken advantage off enough. I would have kindly taken some (all) of them off there hands but it would sort of defeat the objective of the program. 

After Jane had very kindly showed us round and dates were set, we went back to the Lord Whitney HQ to discuss the brief itself and eat noodles. I went for mild curry.  It's got me really excited to be working with them on such an inspiring project and has given me a real boost I needed with my work.

I hoping to get the chance to go back to Artemis as I would have killed to sit and draw for a couple of hours. I'm not sure I can leak any info about the brief they're working on just yet but I can assure its going to be impressive. Thanks again LW.

Penguins are pretty small.

Sly fox and house Sparrow skeleton.

Monkey skull, massive Gannet and amazing moving biology illustration.