UArts Summer Fellows 2018

Hey guys, I just completed my first week at Say It With Clay. Sadly on Monday, the electric company was supposed to shut the power off at some point, so they had to cancel class. I found out about this as I got to the door at nine with it being locked and had to give Abbie a call to see what was going on. Abbie was upset she forgot to call me, but had me just label different art pieces so I didn’t waste a drive up there. Abbie also had forgotten to let shae know so me, her and Linda spent the day there until about one when the power went out. Even though it was upsetting that we didn’t have camp it was still nice to have a chill starter day. It also gave me a chance to figure out where a lot of things go and how things work before summer camp starts and I’m in there with children. Today, Thursday, I got to go and actually experience camp. In the mornings they have the younger children, ages six to twelve there from 9 to 11 and in the afternoon they have teenagers there from ...

Hi everyone, My name is Madison Mayhew and I am going into my sophomore year at Uarts. I am a sculpture major and am trying to figure out whether or not I want a minor in art therapy. My alumni-host is Abbie Kasoff. She is the founder of Say It With Clay, which is a clay therapy organization. The organization is a non-profit that works with children, adults, people with disabilities, marriage counseling and hold many different fun camps and classes.  This summer I will have the opportunity to work at Say It With Clay two days a week and will get to assist during the children’s summer camp as well as have the opportunity to go on field work with different staff members. While there I will get to understand one of the areas that a art therapist can work. I will also begin to understand exactly what art therapists do.  Im really excited to just be surrounded by different artists who are just looking to help people. I think that this will really help me grow and begin ...

Hey folks! It's Tyra here. So on Friday, June 15th, Smith Memorial Playground kicked off its fifth year of the Kidchella Music Festival! I played a role of documenting the evening on social media. The playground was met with fair weather, and I found myself running between Southwest Philly and East Fairmount Park to prepare for both Kidchella and the Paperback Poetry Festival, which was an outdoor poetry series ran by Glorious Piner, a Summer Fellow from 2017. The playground was open to kids and families, of course. I don't know if you all know, but Smith has the largest wooden slide in the region, and 6 & a half acres of outdoor space for the playground. For this Friday, the playground closed early (around 1 p.m.) and reopened around 4 with vendors such as Honest Tea and Powercrunch, a main stage for the headliners to perform, local food trucks, and several youth-centered arts organizations taking over the front lawn. Teens from Junior Music Executives were DJ...

Me Hi! I'm Manuela , a Venezuelan student, soon to be senior majoring in fibers and textiles. This summer I was lucky to work with the  artist Myra Reichel.  I like to think this summer for me was a mix between destiny and opportunity. There are so many reasons why summer fellow was just the right thing to do for this time of my life. The first reason was to gain more experience with weaving and working with looms, which sadly I couldn't have last semester because of my schedule. I wanted to complete my Jr year with that knowledge so I could potentially apply it for my thesis. Now I can see it as an option. I also learned that I love working with threads and patterns. Another huge reason was how much time I had between school ending and my trip to Spain. I know myself too well and I knew all that free time was going to make me feel lost. I love working around people, I am a very social person who loves hearing stories and experiences from others....

Hey! After some time with Nicole, I'm finally settled. Our first week was spent organizing and setting up social media. We downloaded hootsuite, and from there managed instagram, facebook, and twitter as a business. I made two posts a day - one for The Station, and one for Eiland Arts Center. We've talked about business cards and fliers, and what events bring people in. We also took a trip to hand back art and meet the kids the we're going to be working with. My second week there was focused on photoshop and actually making some of those graphics for immediate use. The first was an imagine for their email-based news flier, in order to promote their July free coffee. We debated fully digital versus using an imagine of the needed mug, what information was important to put on the flier, hand done versus digital, and on what platform it would be mostly viewed on. In the end, this is the graphic I made: After that, I focused on starting to spruce up some of the signs in...

Hey! I'm Nina Maria. I'm an Illustration major, about to go into my junior year at UArts. So far I've learned a lot about expression and intricacy - my biggest challenge has been overcoming the expectations I put on myself, and exploring what I do like instead. Patterns, linework, simplicity. I also found, this past semester, a deep love for hand done font. I love the graphic side of illustration - posters, book covers, quotes, and anything else that has to do with type. I can really see myself pursuing a type driven career, with greeting cards and wedding invitations and wrapping paper. Meeting with Nicole has been hugely exciting. I'm going to be working with her for ten weeks, both during her camp at Eiland Arts Center, and within her coffee shop The Station. I'm going to be learning a lot about the business side of art - managing yourself, attracting customers, putting on shows, teaching children, and balancing social media. I'm super excited to get ...

Day1: helping Dot with her test project pieces Hey, Everyone, I'm Kat and I'll be a senior at Uarts this September. Craft +Material Studies (Fibers) is my major and for my internship this summer I'm working with an alum from the fibers program. I will be helping Dot Vile construct heavy material pieces of hers, and getting a head start on my senior thesis project. This was the first day and it was amazing! It was also my first time using a double cut saw, I was a little intimidated at first because of the sparks but after the first cut, I became very used to the process. The pieces I cut out were for a test piece that involves heavy materials such as concrete and metal. After cutting Dot and I went to HomeDepot to pick up some supplies for the next time we meet up. We bought more concrete and I bought some materials to make test pieces myself for the senior thesis.  

You can sometimes find me sitting in a graveyard, enjoying the care and quietness of my surroundings, or other times driving through rural Pennsylvania with my Destiny's Child cd on full volume. I’m an Illustration Sophomore named Kat who spends their free time watching cartoons and picking the perfect old-book-scented candle to light. So far, UArts has increased my level of self-awareness, as I learn that some of my greatest strengths lie in academia, and my greatest weaknesses in casual social gatherings. This summer’s internship is the perfect balance between the two, and is helping improve my person-to-person communication and grace.   One of my proudest moments from Freshman year was creating a color-based video describing social phobia. Although smearing paint across my face during filming was fun, the most satisfying part to work on was editing and re-editing. I thrive in time consuming, picky work, like checking my friends’ essays for grammar mistakes and color...

  Week 4 – Summer Fellows 6/12/2018 On 6/12/18 I went back to the studio with Denise and we decided to head over to Kelly Drive to sketch for a while. It was fun to leave the studio and do something different.   We each brought a sketch book and picked a spot under a tree to start sketching.   We sketched the river and parts of boathouse row.   We sketched on our own but afterwards Denise answered any questions that I had about how to make my sketches better.   I was pretty happy with my sketches and I asked Denise some questions about my work.   After we were done sketching we went to Artists and Craftsman in Chestnut Hill to pick up some supplies that Denise needed for her studio which included glass jars, paint markers and colored ink.   Denise also asked me to pick up some supplies for her in Center City to bring back with me on Thursday.   When we were done I jumped on the train to go back to Center City.   It was a gr...

Week 3 – Summer Fellows June 5 & 7, 2018 Week 3 was a good week with Denise.   I was able to attend her Exhibition friday night and was excited to get back to her studio on Tuesday.   On Tuesday the 5 th I continued to help Denise with her panels by covering them with two coats of gesso.   In between each coat of gesso I would lightly sand the surface to make it as smooth as possible.   After two coats and two rounds of sanding the surface of her panels were ready to be painted for some time in the future.   I also helped Denise untangle light wires.   Denise uses objects that she finds in different places to create material installations.   She is planning on using these wires for a future project.   She doesn’t know what that project is right now but she is very creative and will come up with something interesting I am sure. On Thursday June 7 th I was back at the studio helping Denise with cleaning up the studio.   I...