Studio Assistant // Painting Internship

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Katie Pumphrey Studio Assistant Internship

Katie Pumphrey is an American interdisciplinary artist and ultramarathon open water swimmer. Pulling from her experiences in the water, her paintings, sculptures, and installations use abstraction and imagery to investigate our anxieties, fears, and how our imagination plays tricks on us. Incorporating a bit of humor, Pumphrey explores these tensions and the connectedness between human instincts and play. She has a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

I have known Katie since my sophomore year when my professor invited us to his studio for a studio visit; we ended up also visiting the neighboring studios, including Katie’s. We stayed in touch over the years until I was working as an intern at the creative alliance where she helps coordinate events. When I was looking to work a studio assistant role, I reached out to her wondering if she knew anyone interested, and there was, it was her!

Katie was my direct supervisor, as she was the artist in her own studio. I helped Katie organize some of her annual events, like the Cake Race; helped build a number of canvases; helped build her paper lantern sculpture for the festival of lights; helped her build an infallible sculpture for one of her upcoming exhibitions; and helped with everyday studio tasks.

I am proud that I found the opportunity to work with Katie. To begin with, it’s really exciting to see your networking play out in front of your eyes.

The most important thing I learned during this internship was strategies for being a working rating and how I could try to start my career post grad. Some new skills I strengthened or learned were networking, canvas building, studio managing, art packing and handles, professional development skills, and paper lantern making.

Working with Katie not only gave me so much inspiration but also gave me an understanding of what goes into a working studio, how to seek out opportunities, and how to spruce up reliable materials. In the future I hope I can be like her and have my own studio space to connect with other artists and create works that gets seen by the community!

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