Making a Mark

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm not the only person at the Harrison Center trying to make something interesting this summer. I thought I'd take a minute or two to shine the spotlight on one of those fellow projects and the creative forces behind it.

It's block printing. Block printing on a massive scale. And it's done beautifully, too.

Emily Andrews, a recent college graduate, is leading a project this summer that may be in your mailbox pretty soon. She and several interns from Herron High School are working together to create a unique envelope for the Harrison Center's annual letter to the community.

The envelopes are a testament to several things, namely the quality of Emily's artistic talent with mark making pattern design, as well as the Harrison Center's overarching mission to cultivate community through place-based artistic celebration.

Before college, Emily took private art lessons from a neighboring artist in her hometown of Monroe, North Carolina. She graduated high school and eventually decided to major in visual arts when she started college in the fall of 2010. Over time, she began creating more conceptual art than the classical realism her previous instructor had specialized in, and she took a special interest in using smaller mark making and pattern designs to create larger works.

Emily was eager to apply her degree immediately after school, so when her college art professor mentioned the Harrison Center to her, she signed up for an internship.

Now we are fortunate enough to have her vision and expertise to handcraft over 4000 envelopes for the Harrison Center’s letter. Emily created the design, traced it, transferred it, carved it, inked it, and is now printing envelope after envelope with it.

Her hands are tired, but thankfully she currently has two interns from Herron High School helping her: Te’nice Foreman, a junior, and Jeshua Harris, a senior. Both students will be working for the next two months to help complete the project in Gallery No. 2 outside of the Harrison Center’s renovated “Sound Cave.”

What I’m coming to realize is that when you work for an organization like the Harrison Center, anything can become a project. Everything can be made unique, and everything can have a story. All you have to do is find capable hands to make their mark.

Envelopes can, after all, be art.