Museum of History, Anthropology and Art Internship, University of Puerto Rico - Rodolfo Enrique López-Gutiérrez, Week 2
Week #2 - Internship Journal Blog
Museum of History, Anthropology and Art of the University of Puerto Rico
by Rodolfo Enrique López-Gutiérrez/YAP 2022
This week was a busy one and overall it was great! Tuesday was the usual, developing my workshop in the office and later after lunch I was at the archives. This time though I took a break from organizing since Lisa was giving a tour, and I accompanied her to the exhibition (therefore I have an idea of what it would be like when I give my own tour). She told me she gives her tours differently depending if it’s in the morning or afternoons. In the mornings, school, summer camp and tourist groups usually are more active and have more time to be around the museum,so she gives a complete tour of the museum, plus an interactive activity. In the afternoon, she shortens the tour and invites the guest to walk around the exhibition at their own pace since they likely had a long day and probably be tired. Tours also depend on the audience, if it’s a school group we need to take in count how many students and in what grade they’re in. After the tour it was already closing time, so everyone called it in for today.
The next day I started my work shift at 10:00 a.m., because there was a workshop in the extended hours later in the day from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. This time the workshop was about drawing with prisma colors. Gabriela, Beth and I set up the tables and materials again, only this time we had to work faster since guests were starting to arrive super early and get overwhelmed by incoming participants. Workshops like these get packed easily since a lot of people like to come with friends or family. We had to fetch more chairs and tables since it was over capacity. After things settled down our art professor instructed us to choose an object around us or look up an image in Google we wished to draw and color, he also invited us to give it an artistic spin. We had two hours to work on the assignment; luckily I had time to help the participants and make a drawing too! In the meantime, I met a professional artist who also studied at my high school (Central High School of Visual Arts), his name is Nicholas Damiani López and studies architecture but he loves to draw and paint, and he has exhibited 10 art pieces at the Museo de Arte de Ponce. He encouraged me to give myself the experience of studying in the United States and he also has lots of life and art advice. By the end of the workshop everyone had finished their drawings: environments, monuments, sceneries, animals, structures, objects and things from their imagination.
Wednesday I had a new task. Chakira Santiago, collections manager, teached me how to carefully remove prints from their frame. It was pretty simple, removing the screws and the artwork was easy, and the more complex part was repositioning the glass, since it’s very fragile. There were many framed prints, therefore I spent the morning until mid-afternoon. . After my lunch break I helped Chakira wrap the now empty frames in bubble wrap and store them all in the museum’s container, for later use. The museum has a large storage unit, but since it’s under reconstruction, Chakira has to move the frames inside the container for the time being.
Rodolfo Enrique reframing artworks at the Museum of History, Anthropology and Art (Photo by Lisa Ortega)
Thursday was a very exciting day since we had the artist and printmaker Yolanda Velázquez Vélez come again to lead another art workshop. This time though, it was “monoprint” by stamping leaves and textiles on paper). It was a very fun workshop mostly because of its simplicity, as in not requiring a lot of materials and its beautiful artistic result. Many of the participants walked by the museum’s outdoor green areas searching for plants or flowers they could stamp in their artwork. We provided them with printing inks in colors such as green, blue, pink, red and white; we also encouraged them to mix colors with rubber rollers and use textiles, fruit nets and sponges to create interesting patterns and texture illusions. By the end of the workshop we had a variety of artworks with vibrant colors with diverse patterns and textures showcased in the hallway.
Participant’s artworks from the monoprint workshop at the Museum of History, Anthropology and Art
(Photo by Rodolfo Lopez)
An hour before leaving work, Lisa took a break from her work to try the activity too. She also invited and encouraged all the staff members to try it. We all set up a large table with different textiles, plants and leaves we found and made our own artworks. I mostly used ferns and round shaped leaves for my stamping and primarily used yellows, oranges and reds. Lisa and Lourdes used blues and whites with star shaped leaves and some of us experimented on making gradients with the rubber rollers. Unfortunately when I placed it outside to dry I got distracted for some time and didn’t notice it was raining outside so when I came back for my artwork the paint was dripping on the paper, which actually, gave it an interesting touch! Happy accidents.
Rodolfo Enrique’s nature stamping (Photo by Rodolfo Lopez)
Rodolfo E. López Gutiérrez/YAP 2022
Museum of History, Anthropology and Art
University of Puerto Rico
Internship Week 2
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