Thank you and Farewell.

....And the award goes too... (me.. insert cheesy acceptance/thank you speech here)

....But really, I do want to take a moment to thank everyone who has made this summer so amazing for me.  First and foremost Jacob, the awesome Curator of Exhibits, who has been my mentor for the last five years, and will continue to be so in the exhibits world.  Also to David our amazing director for letting Jacob take me on as an intern, and then to the entire staff of the History Museum of Mobile who helped make my internship educational, enriching, and most importantly... fun!  (You guys rock!) Thank you also to everyone has kept up with my blog, I hope you all get a chance to visit the exhibit, it really is amazing!!

Now time for the shameless plug:  If anyone needs an enthusiastic, hard-working, exhibits developer/designer- I am looking for a job to start at the earliest June 2013.  I also have friends in all areas/concentrations of museum work looking for jobs.  Just send a message or leave a comment on this blog and I can send you the information you require (per usual internet security concerns I am not posting my direct contact info here).  Thanks a million!  

Ok now back to Up, Up, & Away!  I am going to just leave you with a few final pictures from my work this last week.  The main project were the interactives I posted about in the last blog and lighting.  We also had a few smaller projects we finished up.  Most notably the final wall of the exhibit, which I have taken to call my baby.  Except for the actual words themselves (drafted by Scotty our Curator of History) The design plan and text panel design was all me (basically this whole post is going to be a shameless plug). 

Here is a picture of the final product.  Note: I designed the text panel to be a "mirror image" of Thor.  "Mirror image" in quotes because that phrase is also in the text panel. (The fact that it is a mirror image of Thor has nothing to do with my obsession, honestly)  I hope you guys like the wall!

I also spent my final day burning about 300 matches for a display case.  Now that I had a lot of fun with. 

 The mannequins that go with the drawing interactive.  You can move them to inspire your drawing of your very own superhero.  This is the one interactive we were unable to complete before I left.  But I did get to do some prep-work by drilling holes in the bases of the mannequins for mounting.

Superman comic book case.  That is actually four comic books, which when aligned make out the "S" from his uniform.  We had to do some brainstorming of how to safely mount these without major obstructions to the design.  The final solution came in clear plastic mounts the books sit on, and a bar at the top of each.  You can barely see the mounts! I think it turned out great.

The result of my match burning venture from earlier that day.  300+ matches scattered on the display case to give emphasis to the fact comic books were burned back in the day.  This case is in our censorship section.

Well that is all folks!  I have really enjoyed my summer and also getting to share my adventures at HMOM with you guys!  Stay tuned later in the semester.  I hope to update you all on my work from my final year of graduate school.  In the meantime have a safe, wonderful time the rest of your summer and year!

-Christina

Interactives, Interactives, and more Interactives!!

Hello!  Exciting things have been going on the last two weeks.  Jacob and I have built two new interactives for Up, Up & Away.  The first one in pictures is a box for a glow in the dark comic book.  (Cool, huh?) 

We started by cutting the wood at an angle and assembling the box.  What you can't see is that we also installed an area inside to put the comic book at an angle for visitors to see it.  Here is the box prior gluing and hammering together.

Guess what! I wasn't done using new power tools!  Got to use a sander to round out the edges.  

We then stained the inside of the box black and then wrapped the outside with black vinyl to give it a more shiny surface.  After that we built the lid.  The picture below is pre-staining of the lid.  After we stained the lid we covered it with plexi-glass and installed the light and light switch. 

Testing out the box: it works!! We also decided to attach a hood to the wall to help shield the box from light.  When you come to visit the exhibit, here is how it will work.  You will have to flip the switch on the box to turn the light on for a few seconds to give the glow-in-the-dark elements some light, and then turn off the light to see the comic glow!  Unfortunately glow-in-the-dark does not show up well on camera :(.

Here is the box pre-hood installation in the Anti-Hero/True Villainy area of the exhibit.  Be sure to look for it when you visit the exhibit!

Next interactive!  This one will be in the True Villainy area of the exhibit.  It is a flip-rail.  We took an existing table element from the Gadgets exhibit that used to be in the room and converted it.  Jacob built in supports for each comic book and then covered it with plexi-glass.  Then installed the hinges for the flip covers.

Each flipcover will have a comic book with a villain in it, so the flip cover had to be built with supports as well.

After building the supports we cleaned it, installed the comic book , covered it with plexi, and then installed the knob.  Here is a sample of three villains.

Post-construction.  Isn't it pretty!?

The interactive in its final place in the True Villainy area of the exhibit.

Be sure to come and visit these interactives and more when the exhibit opens October 20!  And stay tuned for my last post!

-Christina

Hello!  I just realized I didn't update everyone on what went on last week! I am sorry you guys!
Last week:  The director, curatorial staff, a few helpers and I went to University of Mobile to accession the Caldwell Delaney collection.  I have never been apart of a collection acquisition before so it was interesting.  It took two full days to get most of the collection out of the library, packed, into our box truck, back to museum, and unpacked.  It is a massive collection with some really interesting stuff.
Here are a few pictures from the event:

Unloading the box-truck at University of Mobile

Packing up the awesome photos, maps, and pictures

Loading the box-truck

Least flattering picture ever, but gives a good idea of the room of documents we were working in.

The awesome box maker: Daniela.

all unloaded at the museum waiting to go to its storage room.  That is a lot of boxes! (and that is only half of them)

Loading boxes into the room we will use for processing.

Update on this week to come in the next post!

-Christina

We are in the Paper!

Well we are at least in the internet version of the paper!  Here is a link to the Press-Register at al.com.  Enjoy the beautiful photos! (the lighting is way better than what my camera takes)

http://photos.al.com/mobile-press-register/2012/07/history_museum_of_mobile_comic_6.html

(If it doesn't work, just go to al.com, click on entertainment, and then scroll down for at least today July 24.  After that I am sure you can just search by typing in history museum of mobile, comic.)

Enjoy!

-Christina

Good Afternoon,
I want to start this particular post off on a slightly more somber note, since my adoptive state is Colorado.  This past Friday morning, July 20, there was a massacre in a theater in Aurora, Colorado, during the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.  Waking up to this news was terrible as I have or have had friends live in Aurora (roughly 1.5 hours from Boulder where I live).  Thankfully none were in the theater during the incident.  But regardless of where I have lived or currently live, this was a terrible incident and my heart grieves for the families and community of Aurora.  This comes on the heels of all the wildfires in Colorado that have destroyed a lot of houses and communities (also coming close to entering Boulder and impacting my friends and I personally), and so I grieve for the state of Colorado.  But the people of Colorado are resilient, and just like the amazing people of our state and Gulf Coast who have to pick up after so many tornadoes and hurricanes, we will ban together and heal our communities one day at a time.  Please keep Colorado in your thoughts during this time.


And now to turn back to a topic that I hope will liven everyone's day = Thor Themed Day!!

There are only 4 more days left in my internship, and the exhibit is really coming together.  And what do we do when we are finishing an exhibit?  Put the finishing touches on with finishing nails! (Yes, I do think I am clever).  But finishing nails require a hammer - thus Thor Themed Day!

Here are some clever pictures from my morning assignment- putting up white blocks to connect the only spaced out portion of our exhibit.  The white blocks help to create "shadows" to give an illusion of a filled and connected space.  This is a deliberate design move, and an excellent idea by our Curator of Exhibits Jacob.

Pictures of installation:

Taking a break mid project to have a bit of fun posing as my favorite Thor poster:

(Not a very good impression I know, but we had fun.)

Also this morning we had a photographer from the Mobile Register, Mike Kittrell, come to take pictures of the exhibit, and of us installing the exhibit.  So keep an eye out for us in the Register some time soon Mobilians!

Picture of Mike Kittrell taking pictures (once again, yes I think I am very clever today):

  That is all for today!  I hope everyone has a great day!

** Note: In an earlier post on interactives, I had said an interactive element was called "extending the exhibit"- I meant to put "extending the experience" (not exhibit, but still same concept).  Sorry about the mis-post, I guess my brain was reading one thing and fingers typing another!  The post is now fixed!

-Christina

Good Afternoon!
Time to catch everyone up on work from last week.
Last week we installed the interactive I talked about in my last post. We also installed the Black & White and Mythos rooms. But even more exciting is that the superhero cutouts we made came in! We had a lot of fun installing those.

Here are some pictures from the week's work:

Cleaning more cases for comic books:

We took some time before installation to test the cutouts:

Several members of the staff wanted to help us test the cutouts. Here is our awesome PR officer, Daniela:

The gallery is really coming together!  Don't forget it opens October 20, 2012. Have a great week!

-Christina

Good Morning!  It has been a while since my last post, but that means we have been very busy installing the exhibit. (yay!)

The project I will be posting about in this post is unique from what we have been doing in the past few weeks.  This week we began work on an awesome interactive in the exhibit.  In my Masters program I learned there are basically two general forms of interactives: self-guided and guided.  In a guided interactive there is often a docent/volunteer or staff member who leads the visitor through the interactive, activity, or experience.  These are very popular in larger museums, with large exhibit space. My personal favorite is at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the Prehistoric Journey exhibit.  At the end of the exhibit there is a window into a large room where paleontology volunteers are clearing/cleaning fossils.  There is always something being done because the Colorado region is an excellent place to find fossils.

In Up, Up, & Away we do not have enough space to do guided interactives, so we have several self-guided interactives, which also very successful and effective in all sizes of museums.  A self-guided interactive is when instructions or a prompt is present at an activity/interactive, allowing the visitor to become engaged in the exhibit at their leisure.  I honestly love this type of interactive, so I was very excited when I got to pitch an idea for one of the interactives in the exhibit.

This particular interactive allows the visitor to have their own superheroes to become part of the exhibit.  (This method is called extending the experience)  The idea came from a mixture of my mom's first grade class room and a dry-erase board interactive we have in the CU Museum of Natural History (the museum my masters program is based out of).

In the interactive prior to this one the visitor will be able to make their own superhero.  Then the visitor can take their superhero to this interactive and attach it to a chalkboard we have set up. Kids and grown-ups of all ages can participate and draw out their own comic strip using magnetic props and their own superhero.  Afterwards the visitor can leave their superhero for others to see or take it home.

Example of what it will look like.

Stay tuned!  Pictures of construction and installation coming soon!

-Christina