The Portland Winter Lights Festival |
Our goal at the Portland Winter Lights Festival is to cultivate community and to bring light to the dark times in Portland.With over one hundred and twenty artist entries this year. This event will take place February 7-9, 2019 in different locations around Portland. This is a family-friendly, free to attend, and open to everyone event and is sponsored by PG&E for the year of 2018. The most important thing is to know and acknowledge that community and being able to be interactive with others the joys that come with celebrating light.
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Artist: Lumascope community installation
photo by Amy Sakurai My contribution to the Portland Winter Lights Festival has been as a Graphic Design intern working with the director of Graphic Design at PNCA who gives me a new assignment every week. This may range from throwing together a brochure or an invitation to designing signage and banners. To do this I have the use of the Adobe Suite that may include InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.
I have put in focus towards reaching out to the Latin community in Portland and in Gresham to make it out for the event. This is to outline the need to cultivate community among the Latinx people around the area. With the help and mentoring from those involved in the organization, we have reached out to hundreds of families and individuals of all ethnicities. What I Have Learned
Through my time working for the PWLF I have learned above all to practice patience with myself. Through the work I have found it all to be in a field of Graphic Design that I have not been well practiced in: page design and typography. These two things are what I have struggled with the most throughout my work in designing as I consider myself as more of an illustrator. Not only have I been able to develop my skills in the indesign suite but also to work with other designers and network so that I may be able to continue my work with nonprofit organizations in the future. I would say that open communication has been the most important pillar of empathy that has come into play this project because I have been able to make my issued heard to my superiors and they have been very supportive and flexible with me. |
With the interactive art installations provided by the artists, the PWLF is an event that curates a space in which members of the community may feel accepted and welcome. This event outlines the possibilities of interpersonal communication within the art community and being able to support local Portland artists. This communal event brings light to the authenticity of interactive artwork and how it has the power to bring strangers together. This is a great reminder of how unifying and gratifying it feels to acknowledge that we're all a part of something bigger than ourselves and also to stand in solidarity of that.
With over 120 artist submissions in 2019, we are anticipating a beautiful conglomerate of light, creative thought, and the overwhelming power of community and standing together, knowing that no individual is really alone, even in the coldest of months. Over my time working with this organization I've learned to further develop my typography and page layout skills, which have long been a weakness of mine. I've come to know members of the Latinx community here in Portland and have been able to cultivate interpersonal relationships that run deeper than a simple interview. How I came to work for the PWLF
The story of how I came to take on this position with this organization is plain and simple. I cat-sat for the Director of the entire event, Alisha, and she in turn offered me some work for my portfolio. I decided to take this individual project on because I was interested in getting more involved in the community and being able to establish strong interpersonal connections among the People of Color in the area. It is so important for every group to feel like they are welcome and this community event came to me as a perfect opportunity to contribute to bringing people together. Going into work with this organization, I really hadn't a clue what to expect. All I knew at the time was that I wanted more work experience and a way to contribute to building a more unified and diverse community. This experience has been unique because the communication was a bit short-handed which left me in the dark part of the time. I used this obstacle to create an opportunity to learn more about my own work ethic as well as gaining perspective on how working in graphic design in nonprofit organizations may be like in the future. What I'm Up to Now I am currently still working in this internship doing all the same old grunt work. I am working as a Spanish-English translator in the handouts being designed and created for the event. This work is very meticulous and it takes a thousand and one do-overs to reach a conclusion that the audience and employer may have in mind. I look forward to seeing where else graphic design may take me in my professional career after college, mostly in a way that I could help others. I would love to find a career in which I may have creative liberties as well as helping others, whether it be individually or to a community. |