Student Exhibit – SET UP, Day 1

Sandy and Carrie made their way over to the Kafka House to find all of their lockers, crates and platforming in the room where the Student Exhibit will be presented. What had to get in place first was the floor. The floor consists of platforms that take up the footprint of the floor in the room, so things had to be rearranged in order to place the floor.

Floor was then placed, and the next step of the process was to unpack another important feature of the exhibit: the lockers.  Heavier than you would expect, the lockers were not too bad to unpack from the plastic wrap and then move to their locations.  It takes about two people to move a pair of lockers.

 

Student Exhibit: Day One . Photo Credit: Sandy Everett

After the lockers were placed on top of their platforms, the student designers left to visit the National Exhibit to give space for Sandy and Carrie to get things situated.

Around this time, Sandy was informed that the crates had to be emptied in an hour. Fortunately a neighboring room is still empty so that helped having extra space.

After lunch, The lockers were placed except one side left open so the center “mirror courtyard” could be placed inside the lockers. After the mirrors were placed inside the courtyard, the last of the lockers could be placed.

Tomorrow, they will start with the technical elements of the exhibit, so Sandy and Carrie began finalizing the plan as the designers had some fun with the lockers. All of the props, artifacts and models were unpacked to be placed inside their assigned lockers.

 

Student Exhibit: Day 1, lockers. Photo Credit: Carrie Barton

 

Poland is setting up their exhibit at the same time in the room next door. With the limited space, communication was important between our team and theirs. Good thing their one and only English speaker was willing to collaborate on sharing some of each other’s space.

More pictures to come from the Student Exhibit! They also had a successful first day and got to a great spot in order to keep working tomorrow.

Katie Gruenhagen

Katie Gruenhagen is a lighting designer and photographer living in Denver, Colorado. She recently received her M.F.A. in Lighting Design from Indiana University. Katie is the photographer and blogger covering the USITT Student Build Team for the U.S.A. National and Student Exhibits at the Prague Quadrennial 2015. As a part of the Indiana University Student Build Team, she has also served as a carpenter and electrician for the National Exhibit. At Indiana University, she was the lighting designer for nine main stage productions including Romeo and Juliet (award winning design at the 2014 Southeastern Theater Conference) and Into The Woods. To see her work and contact information, see www.katiegruenhagen.com