UArts Summer Fellows 2018

The start of this week has been full of new art restoration experiences. Someone had rust damaged pieces that we couldn’t fix by chemical processes, so Megan turned to my experience with Photoshop to fix the art. The art I was photoshopping was caricatures of famous artists sitting together at a bar, in several large prints. George Gershwin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Marilyn Monroe, and Groucho Marx were stylized excellently in rough pencil strokes. Because the prints were fairly large, I had to use the skills I learned last year in Digital Imaging to scan them in pieces and puzzle them together. Then came copying tiny bits of clean paper to cover the rust damaged paper, rotating and warping them to blend into the art. Sometimes I would have to select just one pencil stroke so that I could more smoothly transition the doctored pieces. The most fun Photoshop project was fixing the rust damaged baby portrait. Megan put a before and after post on Instagram that really showcases my hard work—@ar...

So far, I have also been included in two shoots with women's international fashion brand Quaker Factory. Quaker Factory sells women's clothes through their own website as well as QVC and other vendors. Working with this brand in particular is great experience for me as I aspire to be a fashion photographer. Learning more and more about different lighting techniques, and learning to work with other artist to complete the look you and your client are going for was great for me to learn within these types of shoots. The work hours for these shoots ranged between 10-12 hours. For the shoots, we were taking portraits of models showing off new Quaker Factory material for their online web-store as well as QVC. The usual lighting setup was two lights with large soft-boxes with grids attached on both sides of the seamless on about a 45 degree angle hitting the seamless, and a B1 with a large umbrella in front of the seamless. Sometimes a white card is used as well to soften the light. I...

The logo is all finished! After several weeks of sketching, editing, lining, and coloring, we've finally picked out the logo we liked. The red, in combination with the gray, was too similar in color palette for the station, so we switched it up to green. We also found that we liked the inner line of merchtanville better on it's own, so we made a transparent version with it, but also a version with a dark background to accentuate it, in case the logo is placed on top of light paper instead of dark - and to go with the green accents, we made the dark background chocolatey brown instead of just a dark gray. I can't wait to see this printed on the maps!

These past few weeks in the Eiland Arts Summer Camp have been hectic. Some kids have finished for the summer, while some new kids are just starting. Even though I haven't been present for every class, I still was surprised by the amount of shift and change from class to class. I had thought kids would attend every class for one country, and for several countries across several weeks, but instead kids only attend some classes and for a handful of weeks. It's been surprising, and learning about each new kids for such brief periods of time has definitely kept me on my toes. Two weeks ago, we did Italy. I came in an extra day so that they could have an extra pair of hands in the cooking class, both because that class is wild and somewhat dangerous if not handled right, and because Nicole needed to be out and would not be there to watch over the kids. I think it was good for me to come in, so that I could be another familiar face to those kids returning, and act as someone they ...

The progress on the Shop Merchantville logo is really coming along! Since Eiland Arts is in charge of the logo completely, we had free rein to do whatever we wanted with it - which also meant I had free rein to do whatever kind of style of type I wanted, since Nicole wanted to encourage my growth and, more than anything, wanted me to have fun with it. The only limitation I had was that it couldn't be too  modern, or it might not pass. This is the "final sketch" that I came up with, just as an outline for design and style - not taking into consideration the kerning or perfect angles. Nicole approved my sketch, and really liked the lighter lines inside of "Shop" but wasn't sure that the decorative insides of "Merchantville" would work, since they might give off a hollywood-lights feel. to compensate for that, I decided to move the light inner line into "Merchantville" instead, and to give "Shop" a different but simple t...

Week 3 The UArts alumnus I’m working for is Megan Becker, who pursued the same internship program I’m part of when she was an Illustration student at the university. She has been the one handing me an airbrush and letting me (tentatively) try my hand at stain remediation for water damaged pieces. Megan and I are a good alum-student match because of our shared interest in illustration, and quieter introverted nature. Although Megan’s and my art is very different, we share an understanding for visual meaning and narrative.  The weeks at ART are fairly reliable work-load wise, but on Wednesdays we get to do something a little different. Megan teaches art classes for young students directly after work on Wednesday, so she takes me with her to where her classes are. Of course, I can’t roam around aimlessly while she works, so I take her car to Dunkin Donuts and sit outside, sipping a black coffee and reading The Sandman, volume 5. I enjoy these little quiet moments where I f...

On the third day with Dot, the curator of Allen's Lane Art Center came to look at possible works that will be shown at the gallery. The curator snapped photos of the pieces I helped on and talked on his excitement of the solo show. After the visit Dot and I took a trip to the Fabric Workshop and Museum. We had a small tour of the studio spaces in the museum and saw the artist Ursula Von Rydingsvard's solo show called The Contour of Feeling. I had to awesome opportunity to the hidden screen printing in museum and actually get a close look at how the screen printing ink was made and the workshops process of screen printing repeat patten. I took screen printing class at Uarts with a professor who is the head of the screen printing at the Fabric Workshop. When the person giving to tour explained the printing process it related to the experience of her teaching the class at Uarts.  I really enjoyed Ursula Von Rydingsvard's work because throughout looking at her pieces I could se...

Hi Everyone! So to follow up, on day two I continued to help Dot with her practice pieces. I laid down cement and helped with cutting metal wire. I never worked with cement as a medium, but working with it for the first time I immediately bonded to how inexpensive and heavy the material is. With concrete the artist is able to mold and sculpt the concrete into what ever shape is possible and I find the material useful for projects in the future. These practice pieces are small studies of the actual large and heavy pieces that will be featured in Dots solo show at Allen's Lane Art Center. Today I mixed a huge batch of concrete to fit within the the metal wire. The with Styrofoam acts as a barrier to help control where the concrete is going and to define the its shape. After mixing concrete and cutting Dot and I went out on a trip to collect materials. We went to Jomar, which is a fabric store in south Philadelphia to look for some fabric that I can use for my projects.    ...

Another busy week! The Eiland Arts camp has really kicked off. Each week, we focus on a different country, as a theme for the five classes: cooking, music, 2D art, 3D art, and sewing. Our first week was Japan. The first class I aided in was cooking, and let me tell you - vegetable sushi would have been a lot less nerve wracking if each kid, ranging from first to eighth grade, did not have their own knife. It was definitely a testament to soft but commanding control, and how to handle being in charge. While our chef was the teacher, it was my duty to continuously bring their attention back to him, to watch over their cutting, to keep them from fighting, to make sure everything was evenly distributed. The best part was watching it work . I made sure to keep their conversations on track - but only while they talked over the teacher. It became a lot more effective in making sure they listened when I called them and redirected them, to the point where other kids out loud agreed with m...

So the day came to meet with Kay, and I was excited but nervous. I was curious as to what kind of interaction would lead to an artist saying their preliminary student match wasn’t ideal… I suppose I’m a worst case scenario type of thinker sometimes. I arrived at 13th and Carpenter and gave Kay a call, letting her know I was there. It’s just around the corner, at Artspace 1241 she said, and she’d be right down. I found the door to the studios and was warmly greeted by Kay who showed me where I would key in the code from that point on so I could be buzzed up. She gave me a tour of the building that housed three floors of artists studios, passing by pieces by various artists that were on display. There was work by painters, ceramicists, glass artists, and other fiber artists like Kay. She told me how she enjoyed spaces like this because not only were you in the company of other creatives, but a lot of times you could share the resources other artists in the buildin...

Moving into July, we've been doing some cleaning up around the art center and station. The wall sized calendar was brought down, wiped, and re-written. The newsletters have been sent out, and events are coming together. I've redesigned these two postcards to be printed on yellow cardstock. The information was already there, but the sides had 5 different fonts and forced the information to fit into one grid. I brought it back to two simple but effective fonts, and focused on legibility and making sure all the available information was important as well as easily read. I've also started on some designs for the new Shop Merchantville maps, to pitch during their shop meetings.

So for my first shoot, I was lucky enough to help assist on set for the SLAM Magazine cover with Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons. For my first shoot since starting this fellowship I have to say this was possibly an once in a lifetime opportunity and I was more than thrilled to be on set. I was able to learn more about strobes and working with big name clients. I even got a SLAM magazine t-shirt!

       After my first two weeks at Art Restoration Technologies, we started going on art-pickups—driving to the customers’ homes to take their damaged art back to the office in our company van. The first art pick-up was standard, removing mold-damaged pieces and wrapping them before tucking them safely into the boxes in the van. The second art pick-up, though, was more interesting.  My boss and I pull up in Large Marge—our company moving van—and park in front of an electric front gate. Our coworkers from Electronic Restoration Services have already been waiting for several minutes for the gate to open, but to no avail… and there’s no service in this rural part of New York state. We sit in the grass and spend some time viewing the beautiful rolling hills. Shortly, the owner of the house pulls up in a sports car, and a very kind woman gets out, apologizing that her two kids were supposed to open the gate for us. She remote-controls the gate to swing open, an...

Art Restoration with Kat and Megan: Weeks 1 and 2 The best thing about being an artist interning at an art restoration company is joining while already understanding the basic nature of an oil painting or an inkjet print. The worst part is being absolutely terrified to rub a canvas with a sponge. Although art restoration is not my ultimate career goal, this internship has been extremely beneficial and enjoyable so far, and I recommend art restoration as a jumping-off point for other artists.  I’ve been learning the beginning to the end of art restoration, including packaging the pieces to return to the owners and the fact that removing smoke from a damaged painting using a chem sponge (a sponge particularly good at picking up particles) actually does not harm the piece. Art restoration is about returning a damaged piece of art to its original state as best as possible, and reducing the chance for further damage by re-sealing the art so that it’s dust and mold fr...

Hey Guys, So today was pretty great. I spent the morning labeling different pieces. Then I got the opportunity to paint clear glaze on pieces that have already been fired. Its a really easy job, but very relaxing and mindless. After that I cleaned the rolling pins. They are really easy to clean, all you do is scrape them with a metal rib. This morning we had four girls in the studio. Its really fun to see how they all interact with each other. A lot of them at that age will copy what each other do. Its fun just to witness the innocence of them making things in clay. Sadly, this morning I had other projects to do, labeling and glazing, so I didn’t get to be as involved with the kids in the morning. The afternoon was a lot of fun. We had five kids in, two boys and three girls. While they were doing hand building, I started with cleaning the rolling pins but after that was done I didn’t have that much stuff to do. I decided to ask the kids if they wanted to th...