Monday, April 15th, concludes my eleventh week working at MoArtDeLand. This week I was given the layout to my final few weeks of work duties. I will be working on one final event for the Museum and making the design for the fliers, posters, place cards, food tents, etc. Other than receiving the layout I had a relatively simple week doing paper runs, printing, desk work, reviewing press releases, and so on. The Museum of Art also has a film showing of the documentary, The Last Resort, with artist Gary Monroe happening on May 8^th that I helped promote. I had one day dedicated to calling and emailing all local synagogues and temples for the educational benefit. The Gary Monroe film focuses on 1970s Miami Beach and its large community of Jewish retirees. The screening of the film will begin at the Athens Theatre, and will be followed by a question and answer session with Photographer and Author.

This week, I was working only once and mostly was assisting my supervisor with answering emails and Instagram messages. Something new that happened that day was that my supervisor got a message from one of the shows that said to recruit child models. So, my job was to find composite cards and bring them to my supervisor, to see if they were right for the job. After writing down their email addresses, I was asked to create a new email about the show, where it is going to happen, what to bring, what to wear, who you can bring with you, etc. and send that email to kids’ families to see if they were interested in participating. It was a busy day and I liked that I was active in my tasks and was able to show my creative side and add my personality to the emails. I am thinking about asking my supervisor next week if it’s okay for me to help her with improving the business’s website. Before, I was still learning about the html code and how to apply it, but now I think I am ready, and I know a little bit, and can help her with a few tricks and tips I learned. My thought, going into this internship, was for me to be able to help in improving her website, so I am determined to accomplish that and see if she has time for me to do that. Even though her main priority right now is for me to work with the clientele and assist them with any help they need.

Monday, April 8th, concludes my tenth week working at MoArtDeLand. This week was a lot of photography. My assignments consisted of taking photos to document the newly installed shows. These two shows feature two very different artists. The downstairs gallery features over 70 sculptural pieces by artist Robert Thiele and the upstairs showroom features Abstract Expressionist painter, Grace Hartigan. Photographing these two exhibitions was a true learning experience because I never really realized the difference in photographic techniques involved when documenting shows of differing medium and background. Hartigan’s paintings contain “content and emotion” through abstraction and figuration while Thiele’s work can be characterized as “minimal.” Many of Thiele’s sculptural pieces are large scale sculptures and paintings as tall as 9 feet high to 10 feet wide and assume a wide variety of shapes. The components that I considered the most when shooting were the dimensions of each work, medium, color, background of works, and viewing audience. The photos I took will be used as reference during condition reports and will be used as Social Media posts to resonate with the Museum of Art DeLand’s’ viewing audience.

This week I was mostly working answering emails. Also, this week my supervisor got the news that some shows are coming up. My job was to get all the information from the paper and write three new, thorough emails about what the shows are and send them out to our clients. I had to dig deep and find all of our clients’ email addresses. Some disorganization was present in the office, but I was able to manage. Some of my other tasks include that I had to take pictures of the credit card information and send it to the accounting again. A new task has been given to me as well. I was asked to find pictures of a model and send information about her to the other agencies to see if they were interested in representing her. Answering emails from existing and future clients can be hectic sometimes, especially if you just wrote a nice email and sent it to one of the clients, and two minutes later, they have replied with a new question. Going back to the fashion week show emails, I have sent them to at least twenty people, with most of them replying within a day. Since one of the emails had little information about the event itself, it was said to contact our agency for more information, which most people have done, and a new obstacle was on my way; I had to reply to each one of them with another email about what to bring, who to call and where to send their comp cards. These events are few weeks away from now, and I am sure that when I come back to intern next week, I will have much more emails to answer about these modeling jobs coming up. Getting used to the workflow has been easy and difficult at the same time, because some days I have little to do and others have tasks that are just overwhelmingly piled up on top of each other. This experience has taught me to stay on top of my homework and assignments’ due dates; For example, I do a little bit of my projects every day, so that I could turn it in on time and it would not become too stressful, and I have implemented this technique since the beginning of this semester.

Monday, April 1^st, concludes my ninth week working at MoArtDeLand. This week was all about Social Media.  My work time involved a lot of social media management including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter captions for some upcoming exhibitions and Facebook banners. I learned a lot of strategies this week aimed at attention grabbing for social captions and the benefits of proper hashtaging and tagging. It is important to realize that social media changes our realm of communication. Social media networking allows organizations to reach millions of users on a platform they are using on a daily basis. Through these platforms the Museum of Art is able to reach the DeLand community and advertise upcoming events to increase public involvement. That is why it is important to analyze the content I put out for the Museum of Art as it affects their image. Going forward in my career, these strategies will have a constructive impact on how I produce content for Social Media.

In this blog entry, I would like to reflect on the experiences I got from the internship so far. It has been a positive one for me. I think I learned a lot of new things in the industry. I am glad I got the opportunity to participate in this business. Being here, I got involved in many tasks that I am sure are useful to me and my future. Becoming an assistant has been a journey, because at first I did not know where and how to start, but with guidance of my supervisor I was able to learn quickly and understand my job. I think that my communication with my supervisor has become much better, and I am able to speak with her and address any questions that I have. Many tasks I have done were involving computer use, and I am very happy that I got to Photoshop a few images, as well as managing her photo gallery and organizing it. I am also a lot better at writing professional emails, which surprised me. I am thankful that I got a few tips from my supervisor about that. Answering emails and writing new ones has been a difficult task at first, but now I am able to do it on my own and even add my own twist to it. Before starting this internship, I thought that being an assistant wouldn’t be as interesting and important to the whole business, but it certainly is; I learned a lot by working here and now I know that assistants play an important role and help supervisors manage their business. Sometimes in this job, I get to input my personal opinion and express my thoughts on certain projects. Often supervisor needs my creative eye to look at things in a different way. Overall, I am very pleased and proud of the work that I do here and am hoping to continue to explore new tasks and projects that come my way.

This is my last week interning with SHE Changes Everything. Despite it being the end, I’m still keeping busy with designing graphics for them. I finally gained access to all of the folders needed to make more quotes for them so I’ve included an example of a few of those. Additionally, we’ve begun to focus more on poster options for SHE Day which is coming up soon. Everyone on the team has helped contribute to the idea for these, I’m just the one putting it all together in hopes of finding one that’s just right. I’ve also attached a few of the options we’re trying to decide between for these posters.

Although at times this internship has been a bit frustrating because I didn’t have access to the right folders, or I wasn’t hearing back from anyone, or because they’d assign a huge project and then want it by the next day, I can honestly say that I have gained so much from this experience. Without access to the folders, I learned to adapt. With a lack of communication, I learned how to better mine. With a huge project and a short deadline, I learned how to schedule my time properly and work under pressure. Overall, I learned more from this internship than I ever expected to, and I have the opportunity to attend one of their SHE Day events this summer, so I’m sure I will learn even more while I’m there.

Monday, March 25^th, concludes my eighth week working at MoArtDeLand. This week I was super busy finalizing all of my designs for fliers, posters, and shop cards for the Museum Guild and their Art in Motion event. I was at the printer every day and made numerous deliveries to get everything done on time. A major skill I learned from this process was learning ways to simplify my work. I always try to do more and add more or cover up more white space when I am turning in works for a grade, but I have learned I need to relax my mind when it comes to delivering work in a professional setting. Stylish work doesn’t have to be cluttered with wording or design. It can be simple with communication, design expectation, and knowing the audience my work will be presented to. I realized through this process that the delivery and communication setting in a classroom differs greatly from that of a real work environment.

These last couple of weeks have been verrry slow. Our schedule was cleared since the Women’s Basketball team didn’t advance in their tournament. We did have the opportunity to start doing Softball games as we had our first double header on the 18th.  After the broadcast I tried helping out the camera men and women disassemble their tripods and such. I figured it would help me get familiar with what they do a bit more and maybe give me an opportunity to run camera for a game once I learn how to set it up and all. We have a game against USF coming up for Baseball and I was entrusted to do their headshots for the game. Not only am I getting experience with the headshots but I’m also learning how to organize the files and share them in an efficient way now that I have a bunch.

And thus concludes basketball season as we march right into baseball. Last time blogging I wrote about doing headshots for our team so that we would have them ready on game day. Ever since I’ve been trusted alot more with doing headshots for upcoming games and even started to do some of the other team’s headshots as well. I’m definitely getting a lot of practice within photoshop and really defining a work flow. It only takes me about an hour now to do the whole team! This weekend’s baseball game went pretty smooth considering it was our first one that we aired this season. I’m hoping that once I’ve concluded with my senior project that I’ll have more time to start working on SBP graphics and such. I’m really excited to do those for the team.