Find out about the folks behind the Milktooth magic.
Milktooth is a kids art school in Perth, run by husband and wife team Elizabeth Marruffo and Campbell Whyte with the help of their son, hairless dogs and a tank full of fish.
They both hold university degrees in Visual Art and have years of experience in delivering high quality kids art classes and workshops. Their clients include The Red Cross, Awesome Arts, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University, University of Western Australia as well as countless libraries and schools.
All staff have Working With Children Checks and police clearances.
Elizabeth Marruffo is the Founder and Creative Director of Milktooth.
She is in charge of the Art Studio in Milktooth, with her programs exploring a range of different materials, from painting, sculpture, drawing and textiles. Each of her courses is themed around the lives of notable female creatives, aiming to expose students to incredible individuals who might have been overlooked in history books.
Elizabeth is originally from the small border-town of Agua Prieta in Mexico. She brings to all of her work an ability to find magic in the humblest of materials and a sensitivity for quiet achievers. As a child she was terribly shy, often hiding behind her mother’s skirt, but found great comfort, pride and community in the small crafts she was taught by her grandmothers.
Her own works are predominantly in the medium of painting, but includes sculptures in her immersive installations. Elizabeth completed post-graduate studies at Edith Cowan University where she graduated with first class honours. She has curated many group shows, had solo shows at Turner Galleries in Perth and Friends of Leon Gallery in Sydney, has won numerous art awards and is represented in collections across the State.
She is a Co-Founder of the Perth Comic Arts Festival and has curated their last three exhibitions.
http://www.elizabethmarruffo.com
photo courtesy of Light Grey Art Lab
Campbell Whyte is the Co-Founder of Milktooth.
He is in charge of the Story Studio in Milktooth, with his programs focusing on comics-making. His different courses highlight the incredible diversity of genres within comics, the history of notable manga artists and the power of autobiographical works.
Campbell was born in Perth and has lived here for most of his life. He has a deep love of comics and believes that they are a profound and accessible storytelling medium. While he loved school and has an insatiable appetite for knowledge, he had to work through many difficulties due to previously undiagnosed inattentive ADHD.
His own comics works include the award-winning graphic novel series Home Time, that is a children’s fantasy story set in Perth. Shaun Tan describes it as “Beautifully realised, funny, smart, weird and surprisingly epic in scope, Home Time is also just plain brilliant.” Campbell has been awarded the DCA Young People and the Arts Fellowship, a DCA Development Grant an Australia Council Jump Mentorship and an Australia Council Development Grant.
He is a Co-Founder of the Perth Comic Arts Festival and runs the monthly Comics Maker Network.
Soolagna Majumdar (Su-lug-na) is a teacher at Milktooth.
She was born in Kolkata, India and has grown up in Perth for most of her life. Since graduating from Curtin University with a BA double majoring in Creative Advertising and Graphic Design & Illustration, she’s had the privilege of working as an illustrator and comic artist.
Her work explores whimsical environments and characters, filled with stories about belonging, feeling deeply and mild existential crisis. She loves to play wide a range of mediums and she is always keen to find new and creative ways to breathe life into each project.
Soolagna’s work has been featured in Kookie Magazine, Vice, Buzzfeed and in the warmer, more fuzzier places on the internet. She’s a proud member of the Perth Comic Arts Festival committee and loves designing dream destinations for the festival in poster form.
Christina Marruffo is the behind-the-scenes wizard at Milktooth.
Like many small businesses, there’s not much we could get done without the support of our family. Liz’s mum is a constant help, from feeding the dogs when we’re running late-night programming, performing emergency supply runs when we’re low on stock or helping chaperone our child while we’re busy delivering courses, Christina is an essential part of our business, even if it all happens behind-the-scenes!