Contact Tricia Gourley via Facebook or Email above.
What is the LINK Program?
At Animas High School all juniors are required to apply for an internship with any business we are interested in. Once an internship is found, we meet with our mentor, the person you will be working under the most, and formulate a plan/project you can do during the internship. As students we are required to spend three weeks at our internship (30-40 hours a week). It is essential that we take notes and photos throughout the internship as we learn new things and grow as a person and a student. This program ultimately helps us when it comes to reaching out to strangers, and working with people in the real world to gain more experience for future opportunities. It is a really awesome transition from high school to career and college readiness.
Preparation and Anticipation
Ever since the middle of my sophomore year I was hearing about the LINK internship. I was very intimidated by the idea of going out into the “real world” and interacting with strangers while looking for an internship with a legit business. When I went on to my junior year I gathered much more information and received a lot of support from our LINK coordinator Janae. I began considering possible internships that I would end up benefiting from. I am an artist at heart, I do a lot of studio arts and have thousands of paintings. This helped me narrow my search to local artists in the community. I wanted to go out of my shell still and learn about something I am not completely familiar with. That's when I got the idea to work with more fabrics and dyes because it would be a new experience but I would also be able to work hands on, something I cherish a lot. I first spoke with my mom because she has many connections. She told me about Tricia Gourley, a woman who she had known for a while and told me about her company, Colors of the Earth. I looked up her art and noticed how organized and decorative she was. Her website provided pictures of her work, natural dyed scarves with leaf imprints, stitched and dyed designs, clothes and more. She had an amazing eye for abstract earthy art and I really wanted to learn the ways she dyed with bugs, plants, seeds and more. I emailed Tricia and spoke to her about the program. She told me she was interested and I emailed her the rest of the LINK information. The interview was very easy going and I was much more nervous than I should have been. We discussed my project plan involving creating a clothing line using embroidery and natural dyeing. It was an amazing opportunity to take responsibility and find an internship.
Challenge
I had few challenges regarding my internship coordinations and finding an internship. Although before the internship I had my appendix removed, it was a very long process and I was ill and slowly healing for about a month after my operation. This made it a little more difficult when I was preparing for my internship because I wasn’t at school with my peers and counselors. I didn’t end up hearing the word “no” from any of my possible internships because I ended up having two possible choices, Tricia and Mariah Richstone, a woman who take professional photos and creates websites and designs for clients. This was my second choice because it was less hands on and I really wanted to do more textile type of work.
Why I Chose my Internship
For my internship, I wanted to do something that related to a hands on textile sort of idea that I could also use for my future jobs as an artist. I wanted to see different aspects of the art business, the ways a small business runs and grows. I went and spoke with Tricia and saw all of her beautiful artwork; her dyeing is what caught my eye because she used large vats, plants, bugs and avocado pits. Discovering this new style of art inspired me, helping me make my choice. After we spoke, the internship was confirmed and I couldn’t have been more excited.
What I Hoped to Gain
From this experience I hoped to gain real world experience working alongside a mentor, understanding how a small business is established, and trying my hand at a new type of art. It was such a new experience for me so I was really just excited to have various understandings of art. In the future I hope to sell my art and make a living off of it. I am pursuing my dreams and my LINK internship assisted me in this. Trying and learning new art styles helps me find new inspirations and opens my horizons to more opportunities.
Hope to Bring to Business/ Mark I Left
What I hope to bring to this business is a learning experience. This is the first time Tricia had an intern and she had been an intern to another artist previously. After hearing Janae speak about asking questions about processes and sometimes the mentor doesn’t know why they do something and it makes them think about their processes. I also feel as though I was helpful when I went with Tricia to the farmers market to sell her art. It was a windy day, and the first time she had done a farmers market. I feel as though I helped her throughout the market, cleaning up, keeping order, and keeping items nice in the wind. It was an awesome experience to see people come and view her art and buy it, the compliments they gave her and the things that they admired about her work. At the end of the day she asked me if I would come back when she did the farmers market and help her out, since it is such a large job for just one person.
At Animas High School all juniors are required to apply for an internship with any business we are interested in. Once an internship is found, we meet with our mentor, the person you will be working under the most, and formulate a plan/project you can do during the internship. As students we are required to spend three weeks at our internship (30-40 hours a week). It is essential that we take notes and photos throughout the internship as we learn new things and grow as a person and a student. This program ultimately helps us when it comes to reaching out to strangers, and working with people in the real world to gain more experience for future opportunities. It is a really awesome transition from high school to career and college readiness.
Preparation and Anticipation
Ever since the middle of my sophomore year I was hearing about the LINK internship. I was very intimidated by the idea of going out into the “real world” and interacting with strangers while looking for an internship with a legit business. When I went on to my junior year I gathered much more information and received a lot of support from our LINK coordinator Janae. I began considering possible internships that I would end up benefiting from. I am an artist at heart, I do a lot of studio arts and have thousands of paintings. This helped me narrow my search to local artists in the community. I wanted to go out of my shell still and learn about something I am not completely familiar with. That's when I got the idea to work with more fabrics and dyes because it would be a new experience but I would also be able to work hands on, something I cherish a lot. I first spoke with my mom because she has many connections. She told me about Tricia Gourley, a woman who she had known for a while and told me about her company, Colors of the Earth. I looked up her art and noticed how organized and decorative she was. Her website provided pictures of her work, natural dyed scarves with leaf imprints, stitched and dyed designs, clothes and more. She had an amazing eye for abstract earthy art and I really wanted to learn the ways she dyed with bugs, plants, seeds and more. I emailed Tricia and spoke to her about the program. She told me she was interested and I emailed her the rest of the LINK information. The interview was very easy going and I was much more nervous than I should have been. We discussed my project plan involving creating a clothing line using embroidery and natural dyeing. It was an amazing opportunity to take responsibility and find an internship.
Challenge
I had few challenges regarding my internship coordinations and finding an internship. Although before the internship I had my appendix removed, it was a very long process and I was ill and slowly healing for about a month after my operation. This made it a little more difficult when I was preparing for my internship because I wasn’t at school with my peers and counselors. I didn’t end up hearing the word “no” from any of my possible internships because I ended up having two possible choices, Tricia and Mariah Richstone, a woman who take professional photos and creates websites and designs for clients. This was my second choice because it was less hands on and I really wanted to do more textile type of work.
Why I Chose my Internship
For my internship, I wanted to do something that related to a hands on textile sort of idea that I could also use for my future jobs as an artist. I wanted to see different aspects of the art business, the ways a small business runs and grows. I went and spoke with Tricia and saw all of her beautiful artwork; her dyeing is what caught my eye because she used large vats, plants, bugs and avocado pits. Discovering this new style of art inspired me, helping me make my choice. After we spoke, the internship was confirmed and I couldn’t have been more excited.
What I Hoped to Gain
From this experience I hoped to gain real world experience working alongside a mentor, understanding how a small business is established, and trying my hand at a new type of art. It was such a new experience for me so I was really just excited to have various understandings of art. In the future I hope to sell my art and make a living off of it. I am pursuing my dreams and my LINK internship assisted me in this. Trying and learning new art styles helps me find new inspirations and opens my horizons to more opportunities.
Hope to Bring to Business/ Mark I Left
What I hope to bring to this business is a learning experience. This is the first time Tricia had an intern and she had been an intern to another artist previously. After hearing Janae speak about asking questions about processes and sometimes the mentor doesn’t know why they do something and it makes them think about their processes. I also feel as though I was helpful when I went with Tricia to the farmers market to sell her art. It was a windy day, and the first time she had done a farmers market. I feel as though I helped her throughout the market, cleaning up, keeping order, and keeping items nice in the wind. It was an awesome experience to see people come and view her art and buy it, the compliments they gave her and the things that they admired about her work. At the end of the day she asked me if I would come back when she did the farmers market and help her out, since it is such a large job for just one person.
Above are a few of Tricia's Peices. The bottom left photo is natural plants dying fabric.
Reflection
When I first walked into Tricia’s studio the first thing that caught my eyes were all of the colorfully dyed scarves hanging on a rack. There were big windows lighting up the white walls making a colorful glow throughout the room. It was a cozy beautiful work space and I hope to one day have a cute little studio filled with all of my colorful pieces of work. The first week was super exciting. I was learning lots of new stitching and finding old clothing to embroider. Tricia gave me quite a few embroidery books showing me lots of crazy stitches. Tricia was very tentative when it came to my question asking and disastrous stitches. I began to get the hang of the process of holding a needle and thread, even stitching, and threading the needle. In the end I was much more comfortable with embroidering as I continued to improve. As the first week came to an end I was much more familiar with stitching and had my clothing line planned out. Once Tricia critiqued my work and spoke with me about my ideas we decided to buy silk scarves from Dharma Trading Co. The scarves were good to dye because the fibers were thin and it looked more vibrant. As I continued my clothing line, stitching, sewing and in a sense refurbishing old clothes. Tricia and I then started mortant on the scarves. This was a process of putting the scarves in a boiling pot of water and add alum. This brings natural oils out and allows the dye to attach to the fabric and last longer. The first scarf I dyed with Indigo. This is an organic compound extracted from certain plants. Most blue Indigo dyes now a days are synthetic, so it was incredible to use. The second scarve I dyed using avocado pits. This is a process where you boil down avocado pits for 1 to 2 hours and get a softer light peach color. Before dyeing each scarf I stitched areas of it super tight using tough string. This allowed the scarf underneath and around the stitches to stay white while the rest of the scarf was dyed. Tricia had just made a new vat of indigo so the color was very deep and the smell super pungent. I dyed my scarf only for about 7 minutes, when I pulled it out it was green! This is because when Indigo is exposed to oxygen it changes to blue. After dyeing the scarf it gets rinsed and hung to dry. The Indigo dye stays in the fabric for a while so it takes a few rinses to complete the cleansing of the fabric. After drying and rinsing and getting all dyes out of the fabric I used a seam ripper to remove the thread very carefully. This was super fun for me because pulling out the string and seeing the light white colored patterns underneath amazed me. At the farmers market towards the end of the day I ended up helping Tricia out with her booth and learn the ways she promotes her business and sells her art. It was such an amazing experience to be learning from an artist in the real world where I can express myself and dive into new experiences. The LINK internship was awesome.
Indigo dyed scarf after one rinse. This scarf was only dipped for about 7 minutes.