We were delighted to attend the graduation ceremony of our two Cube Self Storage Art graduates at Brighton University on Monday, it was a bit of a hip hop affair, but was bound to be when it includes an introductory video of Fat Boy Slim and artist Alison Lapper as keynote speaker!
A great Cube cheer goes to our two graduates, Rachel Sankey and Maddelena Zadra.  The cash award normally goes to one winner but this year the judges were torn; there were too many fantastic artists.

Maddelena
21 year old Maddelena was thrilled with her Award, she has an innate love of art;“Art makes me feel happy, as long as I can keep doing art I will be happy and your Award enables me to make new art”
Italian born Maddelena plans to have some much earned rest with her family back home near Verona before spending a term in September at The Royal Drawing School in London.  Not one to stand still for too long, she is then to take up an Art Residency in China in May, a challenge she is most excited about;
“I can’t wait to learn about the different techniques and colours and meet new cultures”
In the meantime you can see her work at The Oxo Tower in London in August and the War Pavilion, Bexhill in December.

Rachel
We were immensely moved by Rachel’s emotive portrait etchings she says;
“Over the last three years, I have been specialising in printmaking within a fine art context.  I strive to capture how the face can involuntarily be an instrument that expresses our inner state.”
Indeed most of her subjects are family members.
In September Rachel will start a teacher training course in Southend-on-Sea.

“I am really excited to become a fully qualified teacher and be able to encourage creativity and ambition in my classroom.”
She wants to continue with her art and will use her Award to purchase a small etching press.