Most interns who paint on the walls or floors at their work get fired. But one local student is being heralded for it.
When Jake Abraham began his internship at the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature in Solvang, he had no idea he would make such a permanent impression. But when he began his internship, the museum’s executive director, Stacey Otte-Demangate, had an unusual project for him: Paint animal tracks on the stairs and walls.
“We wanted to represent more local species through their tracks and then have them be a fun identifying activity for our younger visitors,” Otte-Demangate stated in a press release from the Wildling Museum.
Abraham, a student from Allan Hancock College and recent Santa Ynez Valley High School graduate, worked on the tracks as an expansion of the museum’s Valley Oak Mural project. The mural, started in 2016 by artist John Iwerks, is an 8-foot-by-10-foot painting of a Valley Oak habitat in the Santa Ynez Valley, and features many local animals such as deer, owls, hawks, and others.
“We came up with the idea of doing these animal tracks,” Abraham said. “It was left up to me to paint them and put them around the museum.”
Abraham created templates for nine different local animal species, including deer, coyotes, black bears, gray squirrels, possums, raccoons, striped skunks, and red foxes. He made stencils of the animal tracks he researched and cut them out using an X-Acto knife.
“I had never painted on a wall before,” Abraham said. “It was fun to be able to share art in that way with the community, and to be creative with something like that.”
But there’s more to Abraham’s work than just random stencils. The college student meticulously researched each animal’s particular walking stride in length and pattern, making sure to create an accurate copy of what it would look like if the animal had actually left tracks all over the museum. The intern also created a key for visitors to use to identify the tracks, available at the front desk.
“I had no idea each of the animals had such different paw prints and walking patterns,” Abraham said. “So I really learned a lot.”
A grant from the Santa Ynez Valley Foundation helped pay for the animal track project and also allowed the museum to install a video companion to Iwerks’ mural. Abraham’s internship was sponsored by the Los Olivos Rotary Club.
“[Abraham] has been a marvelous addition to our staff this summer and has helped with all kinds of tasks, learning about many aspects of working in a small art museum,” Otte-Demangate said in the release.
For Abraham, the project is an opportunity to play an important role in educating the community.
“I think it will show some of our local species and help people learn more about them,” he said.
Arts and Lifestyle writer Rebecca Rose does not leave her tracks uncovered. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 7, 2017.