Works-to-Work Alumni, Carolyn Jervis, is the Director of the new John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery, a public gallery in MacEwan University’s new fine arts centre, Allard Hall.

Carolyn’s job now, in as simple words as possible, is to absorb works of art and the world they’re embedded in. This work can’t be contained in a nine-to-five work day, as any knowledge gained contributes to a richer context, informing and connecting all of Carolyn’s practices, like curating, programming, researching, and art writing.

I’m writing this on the eve of my last formal day of employment with The Works Art & Design Festival. I have been an employee for over four years, encompassing five festivals. I started on April 29, 2013. It was a blizzard outside, and I enjoyed the humour of walking to my summer job in the blowing snow. Little did I know how many times in the future I would walk to that office in the blowing snow.

As the former home of the Reuse Centre, the Vignettes building has provided a unique opportunity for art exhibits to be showcased as it constitutes the recycling (literally) of an otherwise empty space. In particular, the state of the building enhances the aesthetic effect and psychological impact of some works, particularly those that appear in the building’s basement as part of a pop-up exhibition entitled Self-Disclosures, which was curated separately from the Works festival.

What does Canada mean as a “nation” and what types of discourses are created and disseminated about our country? A number of exhibits in this year’s Works festival deal with this issue in different ways, which include those that the festival has curated and others that have been curated by its partner galleries.

The Works Festival of Art & Design is full of holes-in-pocket type secrets, the kind that are unexpected and sometimes sour, but at other times like finding out that the clanking in your dryer was a toonie all along.

Performance artists merge with patrons and viewers on Churchill Square, sometimes their performances are known and expected, other times their movements and spectacles are unknown and unannounced even to the staff.

How does the past signify and to what extent can this past be recaptured and made meaningful for the present moment? And to what extent can certain stories and perspectives be told or understood, given the inevitable distance between the past and present? The two exhibits Patrick Arès-Pilon and Sophie Arès-Pilon’s Le Salon Slideshow and Mitch Kern’s Upside Down and Backwards offer interesting and contrasting approaches to these issues, despite their seemingly different subject matter.

What choices does an artist make when creating a portrait and to what extent is a person’s portrait inherently political? At first glance, Carol Wylie’s series “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” in Manulife Place appears to be simply portraits of individual people standing or sitting against a backdrop of monochrome walls. However, the historical trajectory of the artistic portrait tradition has tended to focus on prominent subjects or famous people as a means to affirm their status by casting their likeness into art.

Being a Works to Work intern involves, well, work, but in that are invaluable experiences that teach, challenge and encourage the growth of emerging artists. Me and three other interns were given the opportunity to join in the creation of a sculpture for the festival behind the lead of local artist Kasie Campbell.