Attention Ceramic Artists:

AMOCA is asking for donations of hand-made ceramic beer steins or beer mugs to be sold as a fundraiser. Purchased mugs will receive a complimentary beer or beverage at AMOCAFEST. Steins are traditionally defined as drinking vessels with at least one handle and a lid (lids are optional for this project). Styles include art deco or baroque, depicting classic, folkloric, and jolly scenes, embellished with sprigs, transfers, and inscriptions. Or go out on a limb - do your own style, something playful, unconventional, or a little “tipsy.” As drinking vessels they must be food-safe. Include your business card, and a suggested sale price. If you are able to create and donate two or more beer mugs, you will receive two free tickets to AMOCAFEST.

Join us for a Summer Tea with Patti Warashina!

So this past week, things have slowed down a bit here at AMOCA. My main focus before the Warashina exhibit was to scan images for our upcoming Mettlach show, which consisted of 8 binders, each of which contained at least around 200 images of works. That’s a whole lot of pictures. Now that things aren’t so hectic my main priority is labeling each image with its corresponding date and mold number used to create it. Not so easy when some of these were created hundreds of years ago.

Where do I start? Last week was awesome! The preview party for the Warashina exhibit just so happened to fall on Friday the 13^th, but luckily everything went by without a glitch. To my surprise I was volunteered to work the register at the gift shop. I had only used the register one time for someone who needed to pay admission and that one time I had to go and ask for help, so the thought of having to deal with more than one customer, large amounts of money and credit card numbers scared me to death, especially because I’d have to enter items in manually as opposed to just scanning them. I was afraid I’d end up entering the wrong amount for anything and just plain sabotaging the whole gift shop. Eventually, though, after the 4^th or 5^th transaction I got the hang of it and was extremely proud of myself for keeping every customer happy.

It’s several weeks of the AMOCA Internship experience and I have experienced a lot. The exhibit Patti Warashina: Wit and Wisdom had a private opening last night and it was a great success. Patti herself with her family came and did a meet and greet with the entire audience. The night was fun and I got to see how an exhibit is put together from start to finish. Needless to say it an unique experience to help out with such an amazing exhibit.

Last week was a blur. Everyone was running around with art work in one hand and Starbucks in the other. My first task was to remove all the vinyl on the wall from the previous show. Nothing too bad. Next, I thought we just had to move artworks to the back of the museum and move in the new ones. This wasn’t hard at all, but it got a little annoying when people lagged it and didn’t pick up their pieces. It definitely would’ve helped out quite a bit. For our next task we had to find pedestals, which I thought would be cake because we had all the pedestals we could’ve wanted and then some in the gallery already. Little did I know that Minh-Thu and I would soon be on a scavenger hunt.

My first week working as an Education Intern for the American Museum of Ceramic Art has been very beneficial to me. I am working with the museum’s educational director Angie Reyes and so far she has given me work and knowledge that will augment my skills not only as an educator, but as a curriculum and activity planner. She has me working on a teacher packet for the new exhibition coming up titled, Patti Warashina: Wit and Wisdom.

It has been an exciting few weeks. The first event was my first HUB event at Scripps College, where I met the other interns in the area. We got a chance to view an exhibit that was designed by grad students and it was a pretty spectacular exhibit. After we viewed the exhibit I and the other Interns had a pizza lunch and arranged to have carpool set up. I volunteered to drive.

I’ve been at AMOCA now for a couple of weeks and I have to say everything’s been going better than I could’ve imagined. I’m getting to know everyone here more and more every day. Last week Angie informed Arthur and me that we’d be helping her with a Clay Camp for kids. Right away my first thought was “Oh no”. Not to say I don’t like kids, but the thought of being around them for a long period of time frightens me. So for the Clay Camp we were making animals, and I was expecting the worst on this day- kids running around, not paying attention and not listening, the whole nine yards. As the day progressed, however, they actually turned out to be pretty well behaved and seemed to get a kick out of being able to make any animal they wanted. I even made a pig. Overall, that day went really well and it was definitely a really good learning experience for me. Mission accomplished.