indigo18’s Articles at WOW Fellowship Blog

Concluding Thoughts

As my internship comes to a close, I really cannot believe that it is over. This was by far one of the best internship experiences that I have had. This summer gave me the opportunity to take all my past academic and work experiences and blend them into the career that worked for me.

Toward the middle to end of my internship I really learned about the art of blogging with Word Press. I scanned the internet for up and coming innovations in the sustainability world and wrote about them for LAGI’s blog. This was a really wonderful opportunity for me to see the new amazing inventions coming from engineers, artists, and architects and I loved being all the more educated about this business. My blogs have since been published to the internet and can be found here.

My dedication to LAGI’s Twitter and Facebook accounts had an overall large impact and increase in LAGI’s social media reach. During the first week of my internship LAGI had around 450 Twitter followers—they currently now have 668 followers (that’s over 215 followers added!) and the Facebook likes went from about 1,100 to 1,219 (over 115 added!). As someone who didn’t even have a Twitter account about a year ago, I cannot believe how much I adapted to the platform—it has become very intuitive—and I also learned so much more about the importance and impact of social media from my experience at LAGI.

During the denouement of my internship, me and my supervisor discussed the future of LAGI in the form of a 3-year plan. We brainstormed what LAGI would need to satisfy to bring its major projects for the near future into fruition. I couldn’t believe how much LAGI had to juggle in the coming 3 years: my supervisor already knew the locations of LAGI’s future sustainability competitions, and my supervisor is already flying to Copenhagen for LAGI’s 2014 competition in the fall. They also had a handful of local projects going on, including ongoing collaborations with both national and Pittsburgh-based artists to revitalize low income urban towns. It was a privilege for me to see the planning and components that go into the progression of an organization—and it taught me how important it is to be organized and to stay on top of the game at all times in order to not only manifest one’s own goals, but to maintain positive professional relationships with business partners (this last component can make or break a project–in most cases).

FOR-BLAGI4 — Image courtesy of LAGI at www.lagi.org

If I were to pick a major lesson that this summer’s internship taught me, it would be to never sacrifice your dreams just because you, or others around you, may think it’s not feasible to pursue your chosen field. This could be from the job’s societal stereotype/prestige, the starting salary it yields, and so on. My supervisor told me that most people start non-profits because they love the work they do—money is not the initial motivation to begin non-profit work. And to be honest, the supervisor that I had this summer was the happiest and most motivated supervisor that I have ever worked for. It is hard sometimes to defy the wants of others in order to pursue your own dream, but I really believe that if one is willing to put in some extra effort or time, the sense of satisfaction that it gives is worth it in the end.

I really did not want to leave my internship, it so resonated with my career interests and I knew that I wanted to pursue this field in my present and future. That’s why I was thrilled when my supervisor offered that I could help her with the planning of a major project happening next summer throughout the year, meaning that I could still be connected to this world of work even though I would be in a different state. This really makes me grateful for the internet—I can’t imagine correspondence without it!

I am so happy that this will be the field I pursue–both academically (through Brandeis’ IGS and Environmental Studies programs) and work-related through my internships and employment opportunities. It makes me very excited as I anticipate a very rewarding future ahead!

I want to thank my supervisors, Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry, for offering their guidance, wisdom, and this wonderful internship experience.

I also want to thank the Hiatt Career Center, and the WOW Program, for giving me consistent assistance if I had questions, for providing me the funding to pursue this opportunity, and for adding the enriching component of an online blog so I could organize my insights and see the fruition of my peers’.

Thank you very much! I wish everyone a wonderful, and productive, remainder to their internship experiences!

–Karrah Beck ’15

Looking to the Future: Sustainability and Green Energy

Now that I am at the midpoint of my internship, I am sure that I want to pursue sustainability and green energy in my future career. I have seen how valuable this discipline is, and how much it is needed on a national and international scale.

From the start of my internship until now, I have been researching for the follow-up publication of LAGI’s [Land Art Generator Initiative] Field Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies (linked here is LAGI’s already published guide). Through this research, I have learned not only about the many renewable energy projects that are currently happening across the world, but so too I have studied the art of grant writing, and the process of finding and applying for grants. With the application of these funds, LAGI and similar non-profits have helped multiple communities save money with energy management, make towns cleaner and healthier to live in through the implementation of green technologies, and have added additional comfort and beauty to urban surroundings. With the experience I have gained, I have begun learning about how I can help the world in tangible ways through the use of visuality and environmentalism. Growing up wanting to pursue the arts, I was often told that specializing in any career related to the creative process was a waste of my time and money. Going into art was never something that my inner circle wanted for me–mostly because they wanted me to be financially secure. But I now have seen, firsthand, how useful, important, and present art is in our daily lives.

One aspect that I have noticed is that design and visuality influence the happiness and overall mental health of workers, especially those who spend the entirety of their days enclosed in small offices. During my time working in a cubicle, I remember feeling so isolated from the outside. I would’ve given anything to have seen the blue of the sky or the green vitality of the trees and grass from my tiny office window; many of my coworkers felt the same. I have realized that even though some businesses need to conduct work in offices, that doesn’t mean that their employees need to be isolated and withdrawn from nature. Quite the contrary, a recent trip I took to the Phipps Conservatory proved that cubicles don’t have to be disconnected at all.

The Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, PA has recently constructed a revolutionary green building that creates more energy than it uses, saving energy for the city of Pittsburgh as a whole. This building is called the Center for Sustainable Landscapes. Its entire office space utilizes natural sunlight from glass windows; the internal temperature is stabilized from the condition of the outside heat, and plants are placed in nearly every corner of the building, adding another source of life to the indoor space. I have never felt so comfortable in an office space; this building was also generating energy for other Pittsburghians, too. I was truly amazed.

The skills that I have learned in my current internship have laid the groundwork for developing more advanced research skills for non-profits who utilize grant writing, and if I happen to work for a company engaged in international business, I can also mention that I have first hand experience understanding the difficulties the company faces going green (such as funding and grants, managing public space vs. private space rights, navigating internal politics, or overcoming the NIMBY point-of-view (Not In My Backyard: those who are opposed to renewable structures because they take up too much of the natural landscape).

This internship experience has helped me in decide what graduate degrees to consider and what additional minor/major I want to declare. By going into environmental studies and green energy, not only is this field of work helping societal and global concerns, but it is also fascinating and gets right to the heart of urban maintenance and development.

With this career I have the possibility of seeing the fruits of my labors, and seeing the people that I am helping through making their lives more convenient and healthy.

–Karrah Beck ’15

Finding Artistic Power at LAGI

Hello Everyone! This was my first week working at the Land Art Generator Initiative [LAGI], and already I have learned so much about urban processes and the teamwork required in making urban spaces healthy and successful. A city is really a living, breathing organism. It is shaped by the inhabitants, growing and changing with the times and through the culture of the area. For some, it is a place where good times can be found through public musuems, parks, restaurants, and entertainment. For others, like those who work at LAGI, it is a place of endless possibility where opportunities to support the livelihood of social justice can be found through creative and inventive means.

LAGI is located in Pittsburgh, PA in an urban town called Lawrenceville. I’ve known about LAGI since last year, and was able to secure a position for this summer. I found LAGI through searching the internet, as I knew that I was interested in both art and urban development–and LAGI offers the best of both.

Upon first receiving this internship, I knew that LAGI worked to aid energy consumption and the beautification of cities (including those in Copenhagen, Dubai, New York, and Pittsburgh) but there was also more to their business that I had missed. A huge part of LAGI’s work is holding competitions where artists, architects, and engineers are encouraged to collaborate on building artistic and functional energy efficient structures. Though these collaborations are for potential projects and winning does not guarantee that the rendered plans will be constructed, these collaborations are creating something very powerful. They encourage creativity and inspire teams to be imaginative when they are not permitted to so otherwise. My supervisor, Elizabeth Monoian, shared that the competitions they hold give participants a creative freedom, for in their normal day-to-day responsibilities they normally are too busy with client obligations to utilize their more unique approaches to architectural design. She stated that the art form she has seen being born, as a result of collaboration between disciplines, is rapidly developing and may change the face of art as we know it.

This type of art practice, comes from the methods of Land Art or Eco-Art. This discipline has a wide range, but it can either use the natural world as a material, or speak about environmental issues through creative expression. At first I thought that all projects of Land Art would be healthy and conducive to the environment, but Elizabeth told me that this was not the case. Land Art can be as equally destructive to the natural world as it can be helpful. That is why when entering LAGI’s competitions, the pieces submitted must be helpful to the environment, and not cut down trees or damage the environment to come to fruition.

I was unaware of this practice of art. Throughout my artistic education, I learned about aesthetic mediums (paint, pencils, pastels) and the various types of canvases I could use, or the wonders of digital manipulation and graphics. Land Art so speaks to me on a personal level, because it gives art a purpose it has never really been assigned before. It makes art useful in everyday life and current global issues, which is exactly what I’ve been struggling to find in my career. As an interdisplinary major (IGS) with an undeclared minor (I really think its going to be environmental studies now), I really did not have a great idea of where I would end up. All I knew was that I was a social justice advocate who loved the arts since birth. I wanted to make that a reality in my adult life. Now, happily, I think that that dream will be possible.

During the first two days of my internship, I researched grants that LAGI could apply for, and looked for current “happenings” of the surrounding communities and possible future reconstructions. I am very happy that next week I will begin to learn the art of grant writing, which will be a useful skill when I start looking for careers post-college.

The last day of my first work week I helped set up an art gallery opening in mid-June. One of the exhibits is LAGI’s work, and there are other land artists featured as well. From abstract pieces to city planning architectural sketches, everything surrounding the gallery was pro-environment and pro-urbanism, and I felt very much at home.

I am very excited to see where this internship will take me as LAGI furthers their creative powers and efforts. I am so happy to just be learning about this relatively unknown art form, and I seem to be finding myself as I reawaken, and respect, the creative artist within me.

–Karrah Beck ’15