My Experience at Salem Art Association

On the last week of my internship, I was finishing up some duties like the jury presentation for the future exhibition Radius 25. After loading the finishing touches and putting it on a disk to submit to the juror, I did other sorting tasks as well as helping James with random Art Fair things. My last couple days were finishing up my overall internship tasks that were goal objectives for my internship as a whole. Once I finished everything on Wednesday, I had a meeting with Catherine, my site supervisor about my overall success as SAA's art intern. We talked of my ending credentials as well as what my future holds and it made me very happy I chose the Bush Barn Art Center for my spring internship. I ended up meeting some very important and amazing people during my experience and I am sure I made friends and connections for life. Every staff member was very nice and supportive of me as I helped them through the busy art season in Salem. Not only did I gain experience for my future career, but I also gained great tips and information on working in an artistic profession. For me, this internship was sort of a spur of thought as the idea came to me and I was instantly intrigued. If any others out there either in the late high school age, in college, or still on the boat of what career path you should take, I would recommend an internship in any field of interest you have. Some people tell me that art is a hobby and not a realistic profession choice and I think that is false. I believe there is a career choice in every subject and if you love something enough, you can find a working profession you love in a similar realm. I would of never thought of art in this sense if it wasn't for my great experience at Salem Art Association. 

Get Your Art On!

This week is technically my last week being the intern at SAA through my school and while at the morning's meeting, I realized how wonderful the whole staff really is. Individually they are all fabulous and have all helped me in a way grow during my learning experience at the Bush Barn. After the meeting and routine laughs, I went back to attack the rest of the pile of submissions for the Radius 25 show. After a while I finished the stack and had almost 300 slides in the jury presentation along with about 74 artists who have entered. This isn't even finished! I made a small stack of ones that were missing certain details and problems with their image that would soon be emailed back to us and those I will finish up next week. I will also continue next week as I want to review my overall internship experience with my site supervisor Catherine as well as finishing the edits and last submissions on the juried Radius 25 show. It was great to wrap up my overall learning experience with helping set up and look through submissions of a up and coming show after learning the basics of the Bush Barn Art Gallery. I also got my "Get Your Art On" tee shirt as I have decided that I enjoy this organization so much that I will volunteer throughout the summer and help out with the Art Fair & Festival that I have been helping out with periodically. I thank anyone who has taken the time to read my blog about this internship and I hope to keep posting more about art and the opportunities for me to come. 

Radius 25 Submissions

Thank you all who have contributed your entries into the upcoming Radius 25 show we will have this summer at the Bush Barn Art Center! The due date for submissions ended with the month of May and I begin June with gathering and organizing every entry. I walked into the Barn on Monday to a GIANT pile of submissions. That was what I did all day. Manila envelopes on small packages on white envelopes on paper clipped papers on endless CD's created the vast pile I sorted through. I have been on the intern computer putting the art images on our computer's files as well as typing up the artist's process statements and information on the jury PowerPoint. About 40 artist submissions in, I still have a pile to go Wednesday as I continue filing every submission (even some of the SAA staff have entered). Seeing all of the artwork first, I am very excited to help curate this show as well as visualize the finished product. 

This week, I had Monday off from SAA as it was Memorial Day. I continued onto Wednesday with our weekly meeting. I talked a bit about my duties as well as everyone else sharing their progresses. After business and a few laughs, we all went into our separate work areas and duties. I grabbed a large stack of Radius 25 application submissions and headed upstairs to the intern work station computer and got busy away on plugging in their location and email info to the artist spread sheet. I also took all of their CD's full of images and loaded them onto our computer's file folder as well as putting them into the Jury PowerPoint. Every time I would finish a stack and take it downstairs to file, I would get another small stack of applications from Jennifer at the front desk to add in as well. The due date for submissions is May 30th in two days and more and more artists keep sending in their submissions. My Wednesday was pretty much full of Radius 25 applications and sorting as well as one David-Douglas entry I filed in as well. It rained hard outside today and so it did as well in the Bush Barn with Radius 25 application submissions. 

For more info on Radius 25 applications before the due date, visit SalemArt.org

~Slide Shows of Art~

Today at our usual meeting, we decided we sit in the same spots every time and we played musical chairs as we changed locations from our norm. With a dog sitting on my lap and us passing around childhood photos, it is comfortable as usual. Then after departure, I head up to the nest and fire up the intern computer as I start plugging away on uploading Art Fair images (artwork pictures I chose last week) onto an online database so the Statesman Journal can have access to showcase and advertise some of the works that we will display in the summer. Next, I started on working on the David-Douglas show that I got a feel for about a month ago with the nature walk. I sorted through the artist files and CD's of images for the botanical artists and created a similar Jury Presentation as I did for Radius 25 through PowerPoint. We as only have some of the submissions, I just got a head start for the September/October show before I worked a bit more on Radius 25. The artwork submission deadline is May 30th so by next week, I will have all of the materials to finish plugging in the artists as well as polishing up the jury's slide show. Then as James will always have tasks for me to do, (it is busy, busy marketing season as Art Fair approaches) I helped and shadowed him on Photoshop as he needed to extract and cut images for a different layering appearance to put art images up on ours and other websites. I then ended my day as I was going to help with an InDesign task, but then our program stopped working so it seemed like a good time to end my day. 

Last week, [since I am doing this internship as college credit for Chemeketa Community College,] my instructor for the class came to the Bush Barn to do an evaluation for a school grade. He met with Catherine and visited with me as I showed him the facility that I work in every week.  Here is a picture of me in the A. N Bush Gallery as I look towards my favorite painting in the Watercolor exhibit. 

This image was put up on Chemeketa's Cooperative Work Experience Facebook page!

t r a v e l S A L E M

This week, I finally started working on Radius 25 artist filing and PowerPoint documentation. Catherine started me on a stack of early submissions as they had their application and info sheets as well as discs with images of their artwork. Plugging away on the intern computer on the quiet Monday, I entered all of the artist information into a spreadsheet as well as saving all of their art images onto our computer in their own files. I then started making the Jury Presentation PowerPoint for the exhibition that included slides for each artist with their process statement as well as their art images along with the info and pricing with every submitted piece. There was separate stacks of filed and artists not filed and soon after a few hours of working and typing, I sorted through all of the submissions and organized the first steps towards the summer show. Being a curatorial assistant in the Radius 25 show, I will be in charge of creating the PowerPoint for the jury as well as helping out in every aspect of planning the future art show. After that, I watched and helped James for a while as he was sending out marketing emails and creating InDesign advertisements and show cards for Art Fair planning/advertising as well as helping out with renewal card designs. James and I then drove to Travel Salem downtown as there was going to be a marketing reception to advertise Salem Art Association to other organizations as well as hotels in the Salem area. As hotels are dealing with travelers and people foreign to Salem, we wanted to provide hotel staff and representatives with knowledge of Salem entertainment and local organizations to recommend to other exterior people of this capital town. We set up our half of a table in the friendly lobby of the Travel Salem business building as we were warmly greeted by the staff and friends of our non-profit organization. We displayed many stacks of the Bush Barn Art Center's current exhibition, Bush House Museum, and the CAE program show cards for others to see as well as a newsletter for SAA and a flier for our upcoming Color Run that will be a precursor to our annual Art Fair in July. Then along with snacks on the tables and booths with wine tastings and other organizations throughout Salem, hotel representatives flooded the lobby and listened to every table as we talked and glorified our individual organizations and event locations. Giving a similar introduction spiel to every curious citizen, we had the chance to introduce many people to what SAA does and I was interested that many Salem residents have never heard of/been to the Art Fair & Festival. I have been an attendance to the Art Fair ever since I was a little kid and it was great to spread the word of SAA to others as they would put our show cards in their hotel lobbies and hopefully influence Salem visitors to stop by the Bush Barn and support the arts with Salem Art Association. The long reception was great as there was food and interesting people to meet as I was curious on the Salem events as well as the guests of the Travel Salem reception. There was even a prize drawing for the guests of hotel stays, wine tastings, and even our SAA "swag bag" full of a membership, tee-shirt, bumper sticker, poster, and other great SAA goodies. Then after staying there for a few hours, my internship day was then ended as we packed up the remains of our flyers and unused pamphlets. Afterwards I felt glad to be helping out this organization I am now apart of and was proud to represent SAA in this event.

To see information about SAA on the Travel Salem website, look here to see our organization along with other fun things to do in Salem if you are ever bored of a place you call your hometown. (like myself) :) 
http://www.travelsalem.com/Arts-and-Entertainment/Art-Galleries

-Documentation of Artwork-

This week I only technically came in once since Catherine was gone on Monday out looking at other galleries.  I came in for an hour mainly looking at the new exhibitions and helping James sort Fine Art Friday pictures. On Wednesday after our normal meeting, I went up to the Nest and created the Young Artists' Showcase poster with James as they will be printed and handed out to participants. I then started a long project of cataloging the artists participating in Salem's Art Fair & Festival 2014. They were already organized into a database online with more of their information but this time, their works needed to be projected onto the website for further promotion. I cataloged over 200 artists involved by their medium. I put their names, websites, and one of their best pictured artworks on a document and saved onto our computer. Then hours and many word document pages later, I finally finished. Next week I will be able to help put them on the website so people can click on a pictured image of someone's artwork then it will direct them to their name and website URL for further promotion before Art Fair. A mini break in between work, I helped assist in a photo shoot for a picture for the poster/advertisement of our "Hip to Be Square" barn dance pre-Art Fair celebration for helpers and volunteers. It included our normal photographer James and volunteer Tabitha dressed in simple button ups and plaid as they posed in a white paper backdrop. With lipstick and a red flower used as props, they posed in many silly ways laughing and being serious to help give us a wide variety of great pictures to choose from (after Photoshop of course). I can't wait to see the finished result of them advertised for people to see but here is a picture of the goofiness that they exhibited for only a few to see.

(James, our photographer, does not like his picture taken)