Interning at the Delavan

Before I begin to rave about my internship experience at the Delavan a little background information will be helpful. My name is Kari O'Mara and I am a Studio Arts,with a Specialization in Photography, major with minors in English and Art History at Cazenovia College and I am in my Junior year. Last semester I began hunting for an internship site for the spring semester. I over heard my professor, Anita Welych, talking with another student about an internship opportunity with the Delavan. The other student did not seem very interested but how Anita was describing the Delavan it seemed very interesting and fun. I hounded Anita until she got me in communication with Caroline, the gallery manager at the Delavan. After email transactions and an interview I became the new intern at the Delavan.

I'll admit I was unsure what I had gotten myself into. I had visited galleries before, mainly photographic exhibits, but what it was going to be like to intern for a gallery I had no idea. Naturally I was nervous before I started and looking back now it seems silly because interns are not welcomed to the Delavan with basic training and gradual acceptance; interns are pulled right into the Delvan experience with open arms and a vast supply of sugary sweets. While Caroline made sure she did not give me tasks in which I was in over my head or overwhelmed, she would give me a task, make sure I understood, and then she would let me at it and feel confident in my abilities to continue on unsupervised and I greatly appreciated that. It is odd to be writing about my experience as an intern because honestly I do not feel like an intern at all, because at this gallery tasks are assigned and done by all, everyone puts in the same amount of hard work, and every one's ideas are written down and stored away for the perfect time.

Listening to the other internship experiences of my classmates I am confident that interning at the Delavan was the best place I could have picked. I have been able to talk with amazing and highly creative artists, I have been able to put my artistic insight to use,and I have been able to walk into a gallery and see all of the hard work that is put into a show come together and see how people react to it.

The task that I have enjoyed the most at the Delavan would be deciding and hanging art in the gallery. That task, while enjoyable, is also frustrating, tiring, and humbling. One day I was left alone for two hours before Kathy, a gallery volunteer, arrived to help with this simple task "redo the continuing artists section". Sounds easy? Oh boy. Kathy and I worked for four hours trying and hanging pieces. There were sections we had done that we loved and sections we were not so fond of. When I came back two days later wondering the final outcome of our work I was delighted to see the section I was the happiest with remained, for the most part, the same. But it is a lesson of working in a gallery that not everything you do is enjoyed by all and some of what Kathy and I had done had been changed or removed. I learned that lesson early on at the Delavan and realized not the take it personally but there are still times when you are disappointed with changes to your ideas.

Overall and by far, I am so happy and content with my experience at the Delavan. And although my merger ideas of what interning at a gallery was going to be like were squashed, they were replaced by great, odd, and fun experiences. And I will never forget how silly and wonderful the staff at the Delavan is, even when they are trying to force feed me everything edible they have stocked.

-Kari O'Mara, Gallery Intern