With a new semester underway we’re again excited to be working with a new group of interns. Gallery 400 would like to take a blog moment to introduce them to you.

Sophia Leiby is currently finishing her final semester at SAIC, working towards a BFA with an emphasis in printmaking and visual/critical studies. She was impressed by the exhibitions she'd seen at Gallery 400 and wanted to get more involved. As marketing intern, she regulates mailings, web postings, and other promotional projects.

On top of graduating this May from UIC with his BA in Art History and a minor in Cultural and Media Studies, Nicholas Stevens is pouring his body and soul into his thesis paper, organizing events for UIC's Art History Society, expressing his undying love for contemporary female pop icons, and working as communications and campus outreach intern for Gallery 400. His objectives at the gallery are to beef up our physical presence on campus, our virtual presence on social networking sites, and also to pull together various groups of people throughout the university and across disciplines in order to welcome them into the gallery space. Nicholas also plans to design a number of infrastructural social and educational events in order to bolster communication ties between art makers, art historians, and beyond.

Ronnie Zhang, one of the two new archive interns, is Canadian-American but was born in China. She just obtained American citizenship last July, and recently graduated from ISU with a BA in studio arts/photography. She works the graveyard shift at Gallery 400, sorting through a basement of decades-old boxes – a task that takes supreme concentration and meticulous avoidance of paper cuts. But she enjoys leafing through the correspondences; reading through how gallery and museum directors and collectors communicate and make the exhibitions happen.

Nathan Thomas, the other half of the archive team, stands out among our interns with epic facial hair, a flare for pure hue colored belts and a voracious appetite for all things archival. Studious by nature, Nathan is also a research assistant and full-time student at the School of Art and Design at UIC. Nathan first joined the archiving effort as a student volunteer from Julia Fish’s seminar class, and we’re excited to have the Pittsburgh native continuing his work this spring.

Renner Larson, a Graphic Design Major at Columbia College, is the first Gallery 400 design intern. Originally from Urbana, IL, Renner was interested in developing and applying his design skills in a work environment. Although he doesn’t believe a designer should preference colors outside of their inter-relationships, Renner’s favorite Typeface is Futura and his favorite font is Avenir Black.