#gettyinterns

Hello! My name is Keila and I am the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Intern at Able Arts Work for the summer of 2018. In the fall I will enter my junior year of college at CSULB where I major in art history. My love for art history and my interest in working in the arts started in the fall of my senior year of high school. I had signed up for AP Art History and within months I was hooked; so hooked in fact that the following March I applied for a curatorial internship at the Museum of Latin American Art. They were test driving a program that involved bringing in five high school students to curate an exhibition in their museum. We were handed a theme and the rest was up to us. We sent out the call to artists. We vetted the submissions. We did studio visits [FUN FACT: one of the studios we visited was here at the ART Center! We hosted the work of a few Able Arts Work artists!]. We dragged the big heavy pieces from one end of the gallery to the other as we figured out the layout of the room. It was all us. It is genuinely some of my proudest work and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity given to us by the museum. That was in 2016. It's 2018 now and I am a curatorial intern at an organization I worked with during my first art internship. This was a full circle I was very happy to complete.

The focus of my internship here has to do with assisting in the organization of the annual CORE show. That has been a whirlwind all on its own. Over the years the CORE exhibition has grown larger and has almost become an art festival of sorts. You can image what multiple events happening in multiple places within a short span of time can entail when it comes to planning it all. Within that, my own individual project has been to curate a print show at our shop space at CRAFTED at the Port of Los Angeles. This show will feature work from artists both within the organization and outside of it. I have visited all the facilities and taken a look at any work our students have been working on that fall in line with the themes of the show. I have also contacted several artists from outside of the organization whose work I admire, and think is a good fit for the show. I want the show to be a celebration of DIY/working-from-scratch culture. This is something that I believe is at the very core of what Able Arts artists do. Our students are always creating so much from whatever we have in the classroom. A similar theme followed my own work as I did most of the work for this show from my laptop. I'm going to be honest, I have sent more emails during this internship than I believe I have ever sent in my life. The amount of times I have typed the same introductory paragraph describing Able Arts Work as an organization is so out of this world it has become my inner monologue. Now I am going to be even more honest; I have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. I believe myself to be an artist and I have created enough work on my own to be able to defend that, but I was truly built for administrative work. Emails don't bore me. Meetings are endlessly thrilling. I love taking notes. I love organizing. Before I even started my internship, I was already beyond excited to get my hands on the archive room. These are in fact a few of my favorite things.

I think of all the work I did this summer, I learned the most from the studio visits. My supervisor (Exhibitions Coordinator: Jason) and I frequented all the different facilities and at each one we visited with a handful of artists who had been working on something that they felt was ready to be shown in an upcoming exhibition. The studio visits were a chance to understand what this artist was creating, why they were creating it, and what they envisioned for it in a gallery space. Some of our clients use non-verbal communication a majority of the time so it was all the more an educating experience to see how to navigate that kind of situation. Learning to get your ideas across and understand others, with or without words, is a valuable skill to have. I recognized the dedication the artists at Able Arts had to representing themselves and making their opinions known to the curator, and it taught me how I might want to express and assert myself in future studio visits of my own. It is clear to me that there is more than one way to be assertive.

above: Cowboys by Andrew Echols.  I love cowboys and I love how simple this piece is.

above: today is a circle all the days are by Dennis Lauterwasser.  This is my favorite piece out of the entire collection. I loved it when I saw it while I was working at MOLAA and I love it now. 

All in all, having an office job for the summer was a wonderful experience and I'm going to miss being surrounded by creative minds and their encouragement to be confident in my ideas. I am very grateful to the Getty Foundation and Able Arts Work for the experience. I have learned things I will remember for the rest of my art career.

first impressions: we are what we make is supported in part by the Getty Foundation through its Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Department of Developmental Services and Harbor Regional Center. - opening October 4, 2018!

My name is Uluwehi Kang. I attend California Institute of the Arts where I study Art and will be a BFA 4 in the fall. I have been blessed to have amazing teachers and mentors that helped to foster my passion for art and guide my practice in the right direction. This internship has given me the opportunity to pay this forward by working to produce a program that cultivates creative thinking and making for other artists in my community. 

Over the past nine weeks I have been working to curate an exhibition, “Hearts On Our Sleeves”. The show aims to deconstruct naturalized modes of communication, those hegemonic codes such as “proper english” and “high art”, which are responsible for alienating so many from art production. By showcasing an alternative material language, “Hearts On Our Sleeves” subverts and plays with traditional systems of representation. The wearable textile-based soft sculptures featured in the exhibition transform the body into an art material itself and allow it to become a site for expression, both verbal and non. 

I visited each of the four programs: Art Center, Tap II, CECA, and EPI, multiple times to conduct a series of workshops that would produce the pieces for the exhibition. We began with creating textile collages where the students cut and glued various fabrics in a myriad of colors and textures to make new patchwork-style pieces. Next, we draped those fabric collages over a model to compose a garment. Finally, the model was photographed in their concluding work of wearable art. The students also participated in painting workshops where they used acrylics to give life to sheer curtains that would serve as the backdrop to the textile works in the exhibition. 

The materials were hand picked by the students. With CECA, I went on a field trip to the Salvation Army, where students chose fabrics that caught their eyes and fingertips. The students were engaged with the physicality of these materials, the textures of the textiles. They made composition choices based on the feel of the fabrics, their colors and patterns; they enjoyed the sounds it made once glued down. This hands-on approach is something that I foster within my personal art practice as well. Despite primarily being a painter, I use found materials such as cardboard, fabric, and wood as the basis of my compositions to expand the conversation of the work beyond the wall. This is something that I aimed to do with these works for the exhibition as well.

While the show featured non-verbal forms of poetic language, traditional poetry was also shown via snippets of writing from transcribed conversations between the artists and I. I asked the students, “what would you like to share with your community?” and the results were vast, from the influences and concepts behind their art practices to ways that they wanted to change the world around them. 

For the final exhibition, the textile works were suspended on the wall next to the portrait of the artist wearing that piece in order to give the context of the creative process and shine light on the maker of the work itself. All the pieces were hung on top of the painted curtains that the students did, including the text of the writing from the aforementioned conversations with the students. Additionally, a handful of pieces from the Able ARTS Work archive were featured on a separate wall in order to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the organization. These works also lined up with the theme of poetics and language.

With my internship coming to an end I would like to thank Jason and Monica for all their support over the past weeks in helping to put the exhibition together. I would also like to thank the Getty Foundation for this fantastic opportunity to work with such a valuable organization like Able ARTS Work, as well as all the instructors and staff here who have assisted me in the workshop process. And, of course, the biggest thanks to all the artists and students who worked so hard on the pieces for the show. It has been an amazing experience to work with everyone at Able ARTS Work, and one that has opened my eyes to the power of art in fostering inclusion. 

Uluwehi Kang, Curatorial Intern

The exhibition runs through July 2018 at The Long Beach Dept. of Health and Human Services.  Contact us for a tour or drop by anytime.

The Journey of Curating I-DEN-TI-TY

Bonjour bloggers! I’m Sophia Zarders and I’ve been the Getty Multicultural Intern for the summer at ASD. In May, I received a BFA in Illustration from Cal State Long Beach, but I’ll still be there this fall to finish up a couple classes. Thanks to my wonderful supervisor Jason Triefenbach, my curating efforts will be on display with the new art exhibition I-DEN-TI-TY at the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services. As of now I’m feeling pretty excited and nervous while doing some last minute paper cutting, pamphlet stapling, and social media-ing. Since I’m at the finish line, I’d like to share my experience of being a Curatorial Intern!

As soon as I heard I had gotten this incredible internship, I started thinking of my ideal exhibition. I realized that a.) I wanted social justice to be a key theme and b.) I wanted to showcase posters. Almost all of my personal artwork is about injustice and feminism, so I thought that maybe the artists at ASD would want to create works related to those too. As a zine/comic queen, my heart belongs to all sorts of print media. Posters have been used by radical artists for years and were the perfect medium for the concept of this exhibition. I researched other shows that focused on print media, including the interactive All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area at the Oakland Museum of California and the Stedelijk Museum’s permanent collection of political posters in Amsterdam. As I was researching, I happened to be listening to my fave female-fronted early punk band X-Ray Spex and heard the song “Identity.” I think Poly Styrene would be proud! Soon the exhibition’s concept became about the lack of representation of artists with disabilities within the art world and the curating process took off.

At the same time, I began going through the extensive ASD archive. Over 500 artworks from the early 90s to the present were alphabetized, numbered, and photographed into a digital record. Jason helped a lot with organizing the physical archive and making a place in the office for it. Only about 20 pieces were chosen for I-DEN-TI-TY. I’m always going to be attracted to bright and bold works, so many of the archival works in the show make a statement. It’s also no surprise a few prints made the cut!

After figuring out the basis for I-DEN-TI-TY, I visited each ASD location and talked with students to see who would be interested in making an empowering poster for the show. I really hit it off with 6 artists who were each deeply passionate about their art and their media. Whether its music or dance or visual art, each of them were excited to showcase their talents and ideas to the world. Then, I came back with my camera and my computer and began working on the poster designs. The students then chose one of their own pieces for the background, an inspiring phrase to scrawl across the top, and after I took photos of each of them, they chose whichever picture of themselves they liked the most. It was important that these 6 artists had complete authority over the design of their own poster portraits. At its core, I-DEN-TI-TY is about representing artists with disabilities through empowering and inspiring art. One student in particular, Alison, really embraced this concept and chose the phrase “I Believe in Justice” for her poster. When I met up with her to work on the piece, we talked for a long time about the activist movement for people with disabilities. After finalizing all the designs, it was off to the print shop and frame store to get these works brought into reality, as well as a lot of support from Jason.

And now we’re here! It’s the night before the opening reception and everything is coming together. I’d like to thank Jason, all of the instructors and staff at ASD, the Getty Multicultural Intern program, and the incredible ASD artists I was privileged enough to work with during this process. I never really thought of myself as a curator, but I’m so thankful I was given this internship to prove that I am to others and myself. I’m so excited to see the exhibition come to fruition and where this amazing summer internship takes me!

Au revoir, tumblr!

Sophia Zarders

Thank you to the J. Paul Getty Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Council for Long Beach for supporting I-DEN-TI-TY

I-DEN-TI-TY opens Friday, August 19, 2016

6:00 - 9:00pm Long Beach Department of Health & Human Services 2525 Grand Ave Long Beach, CA 90815

For more information about the exhibit, visit our Facebook page