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Melissa Kitty

@melissakittyj

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Illustrator London ➡️ Newcastle 🖤

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Whether it's the Churel, who stalks unfaithful men on her backwards feet, or Robin Hood, everyone's favourite lawless activist, we can learn a lot from the rebels of days gone by: how to speak out, embrace our flaws, and be unashamedly ourselves - even if that means being a cannibalistic swamp witch. ✨ Check out Rebel Folklore today.
🖋️ Written by @icysedgwick
🎨 Illustrated by @melissakittyj

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From fascinating folklore to precious penguins, we've got DK staff recommendations for every kind of reader. 🙌
📚 The Odyssey: 🖋️ Written by @livalbert 🎨 Illustrated by @worldofhazem
📚 Rebel Folklore: 🖋️ Written by @icysedgwick 🎨 Illustrated by @melissakittyj
📚 Counting Penguins: @watsonthesummit
📚 A Home-Cooked Year: @theculinarybee

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I've been looking for either of these in an independent bookshop since I heard Paul Bestall interview Icy on @mysteriesmonsters months ago. Today I came across BOTH of them in The Falmouth Bookseller and had to grab them! I've only flicked through so far but the illustrations in both are STUNNING and I can't wait to get stuck in!

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Exactly who are the volunteers who have been quietly cleaning up the 1 billion+ nurdle spill in the north east of England?

These are just a few of the lovely and committed people we met while nurdling (yes, it’s now a verb) last night at Fish Quay in North Shields.

Everyone had been touched in different ways by the disaster, but we all shared an ambivalent feeling of sadness (about what happened) and hope (in the amazing and rapid community response).

There was also a deep sense that volunteers were having to step in where authorities had failed - not just in their immediate response but in the lax regulations that have led to multiple preventable plastic pellet spills in recent years.

Since the spill here on 19 July, thousands of people have been showing up to sweep, sift and even hand pick nurdles out of seaweed and sand - and we will need thousands more in coming weeks and months.

Whether you are local or not, you can help - find out more at the Nurdle Cleanup Community website (link in our bio).

p.s. we didn’t get everyone’s names so please tag them if you know them!

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The Land That Held Me, 2025
Naturally dyed muslin, appliqué textile, eco resin, light

The Land That Held Me is the second vessel in this series.
Where the first piece showed a figure collapsed in pain, this one stands a little taller, supported by the landscape around it, with a setting sun marking a quiet shift toward return.

The fabric is dyed with home grown and plants foraged on the Isle of Man, a place that became central to my healing. Working slowly with muslin, stitch, and light helped me rebuild my practice. I wanted the material to feel both soft and solid, like a textile that remembers the shape of a ceramic vessel.

This piece is about the moment you feel yourself coming back. Not fully, not suddenly, but enough to notice the land beneath you holding some of the weight.
It’s also about the mind–body connection, and the way recovery often happens in the smallest increments: standing a little taller, breathing a little deeper, recognising yourself again.

Watch to see the research, details, the dyeing process, and the natural world that held me.

Illustrations by @melissakittyj , Appliqué by @tomattaa , Structure by Mandy Maker, stitching by myself and @tomattaa

Thank you so much @bethlemgallery @artscounciliom @nhs_maudsley @maudsleycharity for supporting the show ✨

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As 2025 comes to a close, I’m reflecting with deep gratitude. ✨

Thank you 2025. For my recovery, for finding my way back into the world, and for creating again.

So thankful to everyone who supported me through this time. Friends, family, collaborators, clinicians, and all of you who offered patience, belief and love when things were very quiet and uncertain. I’ve felt it deeply.

Grateful to Rebecca Brahde and the BBC for sharing my story and this exhibition, and for holding space for conversations around illness, recovery and creativity. You can read more via the link in my bio.

As the year turns and the light slowly begins to return, I’m carrying hope for continued growth, new beginnings and renewal. With a gentler pace and deeper trust in my process.

And to anyone still moving through uncertain or quieter days: I see you.

Thank you so much for being part of this journey 🤍

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The Pain That Changed Me, 2025 Naturally dyed muslin, eco resin, light

This vessel was the first piece I shaped for the exhibition, a quiet portrait of the moment my world folded inward. The figure curls into itself, the Celtic dog at her feet, and the tree shaped by the wind. I wanted to create a large, ceramic-like vessel that felt empty and ghostlike. It carries the colours of the Isle of Man and the rhythms that helped me heal.

Working with these materials. Foraging, boiling, straining, dyeing, became a slow ritual of returning to myself, inch by inch.

This piece holds the memory of being consumed, but also the first sense of shift. An understanding that, like the seasons, we move through cycles. There are times when we feel hollow, and times when we begin to bloom again.

Here is the process of foraging and working with blaeberries or freoaghane in Manx Gaelic for the piece.

Illustrations by Melissa Kitty Jarram, Appliqué by Karen Kewley, Structure Mandy Maker and stitching by myself and Matta Siregar.

Thank you so much to @bethlemgallery @artscounciliom @nhs_maudsley @maudsleycharity for supporting the show

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Stepping into This Wild, Achingly Beautiful Place has felt like stepping into a completely new chapter of my practice, one shaped by recovery, research, and a return to the Isle of Man, where I rebuilt myself slowly and quietly.

For the past few years, I’ve been rethinking everything I knew about making. I stepped away from fashion and into a period of deep rest, learning new materials. Clay, porcelain, natural dyes and letting them behave in ways I didn’t expect. I stitched, sculpted, foraged, read, and poured over archives at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, trying to understand the long, complex history of invisible illness and women’s health.

This exhibition is the first time I’ve centred my own body and lived experience in the work. Light sculptures, textile vessels and porcelain forms ask us to navigate them physically and emotionally. To feel the body as wild, painful, exquisite and alive.

Light became a crucial part of this journey. It was both a trigger in my illness and a symbol of clarity and hope, so the exhibition uses soft, low lighting to honour those who live with chronic pain. The natural world threads through every piece too. In the plants I foraged, the dyes made from blaeberries, gorse and heather, and the island landscape that held me when I couldn’t hold myself.

The first sculpture in this series, The Pain That Changed Me, sits here beside a historic work ‘Melancholy’ and ‘Raving Madness’ Statues in the Museum of the Mind. Made from naturally dyed muslin and light, it marks the moment when pain consumed my world and I couldn’t see a way forward. From this vessel, a whole body of work grew about being held, about returning, about becoming the version of myself I never expected to meet.

Alongside the finished piece, I’m sharing the research and process behind it: the Celtic markings inspired by the standing stones of my homeland; the wind-shaped trees that echoed my own resilience; the foraging, dyeing, sketching, stitching and sculpting that carried me slowly back to myself. These images trace the quiet labour and the healing held within each vessel.

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Snippets from Saturday’s opening event ✂️

See @bethany_williams_london new solo exhibition #ThisWildAchinglyBeautifulPlace which explores personal experiences of chronic illness, at Bethlem Gallery until 10 January 2026.

@artscounciliom @nhs_maudsley @maudsleycharity @enowrites @melissakittyj @kewleykaren @mandythemaker @spencermartin.uk

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From folktales about our favourite outcasts to spine-chilling ghost stories, we can't think of a better duo to read at this time of year than @icysedgwick's Ghostlore and Rebel Folklore! 🍁💚

🎨 Illustrations in Ghostlore by @mabel.esteban
🎨 Illustrations in Rebel Folklore by @melissakittyj

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最近の横長写真🤳 i conclude from this dump that @chrisharnan should come every month or so so we can play 5-a-side together 😇 忙しくても、ちゃんと遊ぶ時間作っている自分偉いと思っている自分はキモいのかな？笑写真見返すと、ここ最近下田くんとあかねちゃんめっちゃ会ってるやんってなってるw

・Martin Parrを彷彿とさせるChrisとのツーショット by @saho_yoshimoto
・僕が🫰を全力でしているストップモーションをみなさんに共有します
・フットサル楽しすぎた、面倒だけどまたオーガナイズするもん！
・Chrisが来日しているからせっかくだから箱根行く予定だったけど、雨でキャンセル。急遽高尾山を登った。こういう柔軟性、とても自分の性格的に苦手だけど、周りの人のおかげで柔軟になってきてる気がするw 登山って言ってもほとんどリフトで”登った”けど、めっちゃ楽しかった。登山前に少し雨が降っていたのか、緑が深くて、木材が少しテカテカしてて、めっちゃよかった🥺帰り道の川というか流れている水のところで休憩するのもいい思い出。
・’原広司+アトリエ・ファイ建築研究所’で開催された原倫太郎＋原游の展示会に行って、作品に夢中になっちゃってるうちら。原広司氏の本に挟んでるメモが良すぎた、、、頑張らなきゃと思わせてもらえた
・最近の初対面はアイザックさん、Mayaさん、Tanakaさん、ハッピー😇
・アイザックさんは初対面の数日後にフットサル来てくれて、嬉しかった。先週cwondoさんとも収録したけど、cwondoさんともサッカーしたいw
・it wasn’t the first time with missy but felt like it as we surprisingly never had the chance to actually talk lol wish everyone else was there but especially bryds 💕
・大川さんとは初対面で興味を持っていることが全く違うのに話が合いすぎてびっくり。ラジごを聴いてもらってる人に会うと、気が合いやすすぎて、本当にありがたい、、、
・最後は弾丸で大阪に行った日と助けようとしたけど1日で亡くなってしまった鳩。名前は番鳩と書いてバンチョウちゃんだった。

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A quick snapshot and little look back at one of our best builds… Three trefoil shaped benches for @adidasoriginals and their Carnaby Store, September 2020

They’re now at a new location and hopefully still going strong!

A brief summary:
-designed by @melissakittyj to highlight underrepresented media coverage of females in US sport.
- deadstock clothing from @stuffstr transformed by @bethany_williams_london and @natalie48 and team
- frame created by @m3inds Manchester
- upholstered by @loose_button
- all planned and coordinated through the team @broadwickstudio

What a fantastic collaboration!!

Thanks all for the opportunity x

@adidasuk

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