Intro

My name is Brelyn Gerard and I am a student worker for Gary Art Works in Gary, Indiana. Gary Art Works an organization dedicated to keeping the arts alive in Gary by providing opportunites for artists of all ages, like me, and programs to expose members of the community to different aspects of the arts.
I was really excited about working with Art Works. I had to push to get the job because there were so few spots available, but I assured Rudy Williams, the executive director of the program, that I was willing to learn and work hard, so I got the job. At orientation, I found that Monday through Wednesday, I would be working with the Children's Art Institute. Ms. Mac, Art Works' program director, gave me some information about the Children's Art Institute's head, Ms. Murcie Poplar Lavender. I was really impressed. Ms. Lavender is a very accomplished and well respected artist who has done a lot support the arts in the community. She also won Indiana's Governor's Arts Award. I was really excited to learn that past winners of this award were Bill Blass and Kurt Vonnegut, who I respect a lot because they've excelled in my aspiring career goals: respectively fashion design and writing.
I started work on Thursday. I work at Art Works on Thursdays and Fridays since the Children's Art Institute program is just Monday -Wednesday. I really like this arrangement because I reap the benfits of two really great programs. At Art Works, I was really impressed by how Ms. Mac had well prepared tasks for us to complete as soon as we got there. In the afternoon, we work with kids, so in the morning, we prepared some things for them to do. What's really great is that in preparing things for the kids to do, we're learning ourselves. We prepared some acting excercises, skits, and improv excercises for the kids, which allowed us to flex our creative and writing muscles. I'm not a very experienced drama person, but I've been working with the West Side Theater Guild since I was 9 (I'm 19 now) and I really like writing, so I didn't feel left out being a visual art person. That afternoon, we only had one kid, but we made the best of it. We did our excercises with our lead drama artist, Ms. Tabitha. It was a lot more fun than I initially thought and I was refreshed on some of the things that I had learned in the theater. After drama, we went to work with our lead visual artist, Derrick Burnett. Mr. Burnett has a studio at Art Works, so we got to see a lot of his work. His work is centered on issues that face today's African Americans, which is really positive in a city like Gary. I talked to Mr. Burnett about my own work and he gave me a lot of good advise. He also said that he would help me to develop my portfolio over the summer. Although I attended Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts as an art major up to my sophomore year, my portfolio is a bit skimpy because I attended the Indiana Academy for Science, Math, and Humanities (boy, magnet schools have long names...) my junior and senior year. The Academy is a really hard core academic school, so I had little time to work on art outside of my sketch book. I made it into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with my sketch book and some larger work from Emerson, but I probably could've gotten a lot more scholarship money if I had a more current portfolio. I'm hoping that with Mr. Burnett's help, I'll be able to develop a portfolio that will get me some more money for school because the Art Institute is really expensive.
I'm really looking forward to having a positive, productive summer at Gary Arts, not to mention making some money to help with my college bills!