Hi Everyone!
Long time, no blog, huh? These last few weeks have been quite eventful here at the Petteys internship,
so let me fill you in on what I've been working on.
On the gallery side of things, I was able to help set up a lunch/meet-and-greet with
our visiting artist, Charles Clary. It was a great experience working with Pam to
prep a gallery event and to get a moment to chat with Clary. I stayed for the lunch
with various other students from the School of Art and Design and we just enjoyed
some sandwiches and the very cool company of Clary. He talked to us about where he
finds the materials for his pieces, how he creates them, and why – all of which painted
a really interesting picture of this truly brilliant artist who I highly recommend
you check out. His Instagram is fantastic!
Hopping on over to Michener, on the library front I have been spending time working
with our librarian Rachel to get some research completed on some of the artists in
the collection. This research will hopefully accompany the digital UNC copies of
the pieces they are describing. So far, I have completed research for Kathe Kollwitz,
Helen Lundeberg, and Rosa Bonheur to accompany the reasearch already completed by
Dr. Kiki Gilderhus who has reported on Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Catlett, and Louise
Nevelson. You can read Kiki's writing now, and keep an eye out for mine here soon!
And then going downstairs to archives. This is where, in my opinion, some real magic
is happening. All of the collection has been sorted into series and sub-series and
I have started plugging everything in to Archives Space. Doing this is going to allow
you, yes you, to be able to see what all the collection has by browsing the data base
online. We have made some really awesome progress here, but there is still plenty
of work to be done! I'm really hoping that we will be able to get this live before
I wrap up my internship at the end of the month because trust me...it's really exciting
to see what all is in this massive collection (or maybe I'm just a nerd...)!
Speaking of archives, this last Friday (March 30th), Dr. Gilderhus came and joined
me to look through some elements of the collection together. We looked at some of
the reference artist files that Chris Petteys had constructed and marvled together
at the amount of work Chris put into her research. I showed her some of the particularly
interesting correspondence letters I had stumbled across and we both agreed just how
impressive it was for Chris to reach out and correspond with so many people – keeping
in mind this is a time without email, only snail mail. To say Dr. Gilderhus and I
could have spent many hours in archives would be an understatement. Our time definitely
ran out before our curiosity did, so we are planning to get together again soon and
spend some time looking at the art together.
I can't believe this is my last month working with these incredible people on this
outstanding collection of women artists, it really feels as though I just started and
it makes me sad knowing it won't last forever. But let's not get hung up on that,
let's just see what else we can get done!
Sorry for the lack of photos this post, guess I've been so busy I forgot to snap some
along the way!
Until next blog, take care!
