If I were temporarily displaced from my studio and moved to my front porch due to construction, I would bring along the following tools: Clay, red rubber Mudtools rib, serrated rib, drywall boards, canvas board and my new intern, Kaylee.
Yep, that’s right. I have an intern. Last year in my university ceramics classes a lot of students were asking me questions about pricing their work, maintaining a studio after graduation, marketing and promoting. I knew that the art department already had an internship program set up with a focus on linking students with Graphic Design companies in the community and I thought, “Why not have art students work with Fine artists in the community as well?”
Ask and you shall receive. Kaylee was a student of mine at Florida State for two semesters so we already have a general idea about how each of us functions in the world, which is a plus. She knows that I’m a somewhat dorky, rigid planner whose house is generally pretty cluttered. (Kaylee also did some house-sitting for me this summer) And I know that Kaylee is a responsible, soft-spoken, funny, tolerant person who shows up on time, doesn’t complain and loves monotonous activities.
So far, those monotonous activities that Kaylee has performed are: entering 120 new e-mail addresses into my list, weighing out clay balls for nesting bird bowls and keeping me calm when I thought a glitch in the system wasn’t going to let us enter 120 e-mails into my list.
Even though the backyard construction isn’t going quite as quickly as I had planned and things seem a little chaotic, I know that two days a week Kaylee is going to show up as scheduled and do whatever it is I need her to do for the studio that day. Even if she’ll be doing it on the front porch instead of the studio!
kaylee the intern