As stated in my initial outline regarding the foreseen content of my work at the CAG, my main work included blogging and creating education materials, both related to the work of resident artist Keg de Souza and her projects in Vancouver with the CAG’s Burrard Marina Field House residency program. These two projects were indeed the focus of my work during my time with the CAG, but I was able to assist in other ways as well:

-I attended Keg de Souza’s artist talk on September 28th

-I visited Keg’s open studio hours on October 15^th

-I attended Keg’s final presentation of her project Appetite for Construction on November 4^th

-I helped create sample collages, and plaster casts, for two Family Days

-I volunteered at Family Day on October 29^th

-I volunteered at the CAG’s Annual Auction on November 5th, and walked art during the live bidding

-I was present during a High School tour of the gallery space on November 28^th

-I took photos at various events, some of which were incorporated into my blogs and education materials, and some of which I gave to Holly for the CAG’s use if needed

**Volunteering at the Auction was such a new experience. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about the commercial art scene. It was very informative.

Overall, the majority of my work was completed onsite at the CAG over many Tuesday afternoons from 12-5 pm. I also completed some work at home. It was so helpful to be able to check in and meet with Holly Schmidt week by week during these Tuesday afternoons to be able to chat about our progress and consult about the direction of our projects.

About my blogs:

I completed an initial blog entry, as requested by the CAG, to introduce myself and speak to the content of what I would be blogging about. You can read this blog entry here:

http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/blog/hello-from-michele/

I completed three blogs for the Burrard Marina Field House Blog page:

1. “Objects of Displacement: Keg de Souza’s Installation in Vancouver’s Chinatown”

This blog was created in conversation with Keg’s open studio hours that were open to the public. I was able to be present during one of these open studios and assisted Keg in placing objects into Vaccuum-sealed bags. I was able to become familiar with some of the objects that were being collected in the earlier stages of the project and found that creating a blogs that reflected on some of the objects would be a nice representation of the work in progress.

2. “Engaging Communities in Conversations: Keg de Souza’s Installation in Vancouver’s China Town”

Also in response to Keg’s open studio hours, I was struck by the theme of conversation that was infused within the process and took a central role to the meaning behind Keg’s work. I witnessed visitors come into the space and engage in conversation with eachother and Keg about the project and about China Town. A central activity during these open studios was for people to contribute stories and information to a large map that was spread out on in the middle of the room on the floor. This map was meant to gather and chart people’s knowledge of the area as represented through stories, memories or facts about food, and food localities. I wanted to create a blog post that communicated some of the conversation that was being generated by this project, as well as to reflect about the concept of conversation and community engagement in art practice.

3. “‘Appetite for Construction’ Keg de Souza’s Final Presentation”

I wrote my final blog in response to Keg’s final presentation of her work, which took place on Firday November 4^th in the evening. I was able to witness the final structure, and array of objects, as well as engage in conversation with people who were present at the event. In this blog I did my best to contextualize the experience, convey the themes and atmosphere of the final presentation, and reflect on some of the themes explored in Keg’s work as exhibited in this piece.

I was able to complete a substantial amount of work on the education materials about Keg de Souza’s work, that will be made available on the CAG’s website and are meant to be used as a resource by High School teachers. The happy news is that I will be able to continue working on these materials and finish them up in this upcoming term. I talked to Holly, and she has agreed to let me stay on as an intern with the CAG. I am very excited to be continuing this work as I have already spent so much time on the project, and it will nice to see it through till the end.

In editing and creating this teacher’s guide, I edited all of the writing that was present in the rough draft that Holly gave me to work from, that had been begun by another intern before me. I did a lot of work with formatting and structure, adding in pictures that I took during my internship. I really wanted to create a layout that elegantly moves through Keg’s bio and projects, while highlighting key concepts, terms, web links, and that intersperses content links and curriculum links into the body of the guide. Here are some sample pages of my draft:

cageducationmaterials_samplepages_micheledavey

I met with Holly on November 28^th and walked her through all of the work that I had done on the guide. We agreed on areas that can still develop, and consulted about further curriculum links and activities that can be added. I am looking forward to the final product, as I think that it will be such a rich resource for teachers to draw from and learn more about Keg as an artist. There are so many wonderful links to Vancouver’s history, geographical reality, and so many opportunities to link Keg’s artistic content and practice to other elements of BC curriculum.

While I have had some experience blogging in the past, and I have also had some experience teaching and creating lesson plans, creating content specifically about the work of an artist was new to me. My experience with the CAG helped me put into practice these pre-existing skills in new ways. I feel as though creating education materials in conversation with Keg’s work has strengthened my capacity to examine artistic practice, and contextualize it for others to interact with. I am sure that this skill will serve me in the future, and I am excited to continue growing in this capacity in the upcoming term as I finish the materials. I will also be able to continue to volunteer at events such as Family Days and the Auction in the future, which I am looking forward to.

This experience definitely strengthened my ability and confidence in communicating with a “boss” figure in a responsible, authentic and supportive way. I learned so much about the communication that exists in creating materials and working on projects for an institution like the CAG. I learned that I enjoyed the small work environment (the CAG’s staff size is pretty small) because it became familiar and personal. I was always so happy to head downtown to spend time at the CAG, which is good for me to know; I enjoyed the environment. I also learned that I really enjoyed working on the education materials. This is good for me to consider in moving forward in my career as an artist, as perhaps this means I will want to teach in the future.

The Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver

During my internship at the CAG from September – December of 2016 I was able to use my writing skills to complete various blogs for the CAG’s Burrard Marina Field House Blog page. I also worked on creating education materials about Keg’s work to be used by High School teachers. During my time with the CAG I communicated professionally and frequently, practiced punctuality, worked positively, and took advantage of being able to volunteer at other events when possible.

As I closely followed and learned about the work of artist Keg de Souza during my time with the CAG, blogging about her process and project, and creating educational materials about her work to be used by high school teachers, there were a handful of terms and concepts that became central to my writing and reflection. For my creative response I created two textual collages inside of vacuum-sealed bags. In creating my collage, I focused on typing out the following phrases and words repeatedly in different size fonts: displacement, conversation, community, origin, politics of space, and objects. These words refer directly to the themes and practice of Keg’s work, as well as the mandate of the CAG that I learned about during my time there, which largely focuses on engaging with the community and facilitating conversation and learning with youth and children. In wanting my creative response to embody the kind of work that I completed during my internship, which was largely writing, I felt as though typing and printing these phrases was an appropriate medium to use to convey the conceptual aspects of my experience with the CAG.

I displayed these collages on the windows of the third floor Audain lounge space for our presentation. I wanted to reference Keg’s project in China Town, Appetite for Construction, in which she placed various objects in vacuum-sealed bags, creating a transparent cube-like structure, in which the bags became a sort of frozen form of evidence, suspended the objects. In my repetition of the words, I wanted to examine the language, and the layers of meaning that these concepts carry. As I have been repeating these words and concepts within my work and reflection during my internship, their meanings have grown and become more nuanced. I attempted to capture this reality inside these collages. This response was also related to Keg’s work in mapping concepts and conversations that she facilitates within communities. I wanted these collages to act as a sort of jumbled and complicated word map of concepts that I have collected and learned about through this internship.

Lola and I wanted our creative responses to engage with one another, creating a dialogue of our experiences that reference the work of Keg de Souza’s art practice. As Lola prepared Holly Schmidt’s favorite food, we felt as though hanging my vacuum-sealed collages above the food would reference Keg’s use of food in her projects. Keg places food in dialogue concepts, giving a space for people to visually consider objects and themes while enjoying various foods. I also felt that hanging these collages on the window was successful in that it created a transparent effect of the paper layered over the open backdrop of Vancouver, which framed the words “place” and “origin” within a geographical context of the outside world.

Link to PDF handout:

contemporary-art-gallery-of-vancouver