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2012 marked the fifth anniversary of Chalk the Block, an annual weekend-long arts festival held in downtown El Paso that attracts over 30,000 visitors. The pop-up galleries portion of the festival takes empty, for-lease spaces and turns them into art exhibition venues for the duration of the weekend. I was asked by the event organizers to curate my own pop-up gallery. For my gallery, I assigned students from my Spring 2012 Graphic Design 4: Typography class to design posters for the event. These posters were judged by the other UTEP graphic design faculty and the best 15 selected were screenprinted by the local Proper Printshop. UTEP University Relations paid the cost of the printing so that all profits made from selling the posters in the gallery space went directly to the students. Students prepped, decorated, and staffed the gallery space, in addition to chalking the ground on campus to drum up publicity prior to the event. All was done with a budget of close to nothing using recycled cardboard, spray paint, and stencils. Bags to hold the rolled posters were sewn by the UTEP Dept. of Theatre & Dance's costume shop out of scraps of fabric they had on hand from both past productions and fabric the art students donated. The Dept. of art students spray painted the fabric with stencils of the 'DoArt' (Department of Art) logo. T-shirts were "upcycled" with the same stenciled and spray painted logos and also sold in the gallery.
- Anne M. Giangiulio,
- Chalk the Block 2012,
- El Paso,
- Texas
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/anne_giangiulio/56/