I need your help. I need a job. Optimally, I would like to find a competitive job, specifically in the arts, it could be a writing position, illustration position, anything involving painting or even promotion. I could easily fill a gallery position—but it would need to be more-- as the Public Relations Officer for the University of California, Davis Graduate Student Association—I put together a monthly newsletter, brought in students from all over the United States for multi-day symposia all at the same time that I ran the Graduate Student Art Gallery. I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree (The terminal degree) in Painting and Sculpture from the University of California, Davis, where I also worked toward an M.A. in Art History writing my thesis on Matthew Barney and his relation to the then-current theories of masculinity. As an artist and painter, my work has appeared in Catapult Magazine, Vex Digest, Dark Beauty Magazine, Mad Magazine, Hi-Fructose Magazine, many books and so on! I have spent the last several years working in the Seattle art scene and I currently co-run and co-curate an art gallery at the Greenwood Collective in an unpaid position. It is time for the unpaid part of my career to make some room for some paid positions.
Before this, I had spent several years living abroad--in England, France and Germany, and taught English at the Guttenberg University and spent several months as an assistant curator at the Upkeep Museum in London.
I have a long history if working in the arts, in galleries and museums. I worked my way through university at several art-associated venues, spending two years working at the Hermitage Gallery in Reno, the slide library at my undergrad University and of course—the requisite number of art supply stores. At the Hermitage, a small art gallery, I was officially known as gallery director, but the truth is that I did a bit of everything, from creating and maintaining their first website, organizing and installing monthly exhibitions of local Nevada Artists and Folk Artists, framing and always coming up with new and interesting ways of generating sales--because this is what keeps a gallery, any gallery going.
Over the years, I have been the curator for several small galleries in Reno and California, often working multiple jobs while also taking classes and pursuing my dreams. I have also been an art critic and reporter at several newspapers, online and off at the national, local and college/university levels. I have a very active, current, artistic and critical vocabulary from which to draw upon.
For the last three years of my university study, I was the Public Relations Officer for the UCDavis Graduate Student Association. Amid many other duties, I am especially proud of having been responsible for organizing and implementing the last three Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Symposia and the Graduate Student Association Art Gallery.
In London, England, I was Museum Director for Upkeep: The Architectural Museum; whose oversight is the architectural history of the “built environment”—essentially all of the historical buildings in London. Here, I was responsible for planning, creating, and publicizing exhibitions. During my time there, I also redesigned their primary public relations materials, including several flyers and their Winter Catalogue. I kept track of the different presentations and conferences that we had on site—this often included making travel arrangements and hotel reservations for our long-distance visitors. However, I am most proud of being responsible for planning, creating and implementing a long-term, mixed media/video/large-scale and miniature exhibition covering the long history of Covent Garden in London.
For 3 ½ years, after teaching art history and art classes at Davis, I also had the unique and exciting experience of teaching university English and high school classes in France and Germany. And for the last several years, I have been extremely active in the Seattle Art Scene in a multitude of different positions and have enjoyed painting several murals, doing lots of live painting events and being in many, many exhibitions.
What I offer is a very strong understanding of art and art history, especially in the areas of education, commerce and hands-on art praxis at every level of gallery and museum practice and sales. As an active artist, art historian and lover of art, I have knowledge of the museum/gallery experience from three important perspectives—the curator’s view, that of the active artist and the visitor’s point of view. At UCDavis, I also took courses on gallery and museum management and am very comfortable dealing with very precious historical, artistic and anthropological artifacts.
I have a lot to offer—please contact me at xavierlopezjr@gmail.com, if you are interested in setting up an interview or requesting a resume! Cheers! Xavier Lopez Jr.
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