The first weekend in October looms just over the horizon.  The Archiving for Artists signs are being printed, the worksheets edited, and the workbook compiled.  Our final preparation is to refamiliarize ourselves with our upcoming audience.  To do so, we examined the applications of those who will be attending the workshop.

The group is diverse in their mediums, backgrounds and archival needs.  They have various expectations for what they will learn, from how to archive without a computer to how to archive their Web presence.

Alberto Ortega Rodas, for example, is a mid-career painter particularly interested in the documentation of artistic process.  While his finished work is painting, a large part of his process involves multiple media: photography, digital image processing and digital sketching.  These media allow him to “explore lighting situations and to envision paintings and to spark ideas.”  The resulting digital images form an archive of their own, separate from the paintings, to which he refers frequently.  The difficulty Alberto Ortega Rodas finds in researching other artists’ inspirations and holistic practices inspires his interest in ensuring documentation of his own to assist other artists or researchers.

Beyond his interest in documenting process, Alberto Ortega Rodas also hopes to learn more about image, storage and sale inventories for his paintings, as well as appraisal and disposition of his documentation and materials.

You can find more about his work on his website: www.aortegarodas.blogspot.com.

Jina Valentine, also a mid-career artist, works in paper, text and found objects, basing them within her own “system of poetics”.  She has been involved with projects archiving the narratives of artists and taught a graduate seminar on The Archive.  She now seeks to further her knowledge of personal studio archives

Like Alberto Ortega Rodas, Jina Valentine is interested in databases to document her work and sales.  She also wishes to learn more about archiving both her digital and physical presence, from email correspondence, social media and digital records of her work to her physical records and artworks.

You can find more about her work on her website: www.jinavalentine.com.

Maria Epes is a late-career printmaker, as well as an installation- and book-artist that operates out of both solo and communal studios across the country.  She already established an archive, but seeks to update it, in keeping with current technological advances.  While some of the archive is digitized, Maria Epes wonders how best to approach the process, hoping to locate a studio archives assistant to facilitate the shift.

Like both Jina Valentine and Alberto Ortega Rodas, Maria Epes hopes to gain knowledge in how to archive her digital records and artwork, but she also expects to learn how to archive the entirety of her online presence and to reorganize her physical work and records based on current best practice.

You can find more about her work on her website: www.mariaepes.com.

Blog posts reflecting on the results of the Archiving for Artists Workshop on 3 October at the North Carolina Museum of Art  will be posted shortly after the event, so stay tuned for more.