The Point-of-View from a Volunteer

As this is my first blog entry, I should introduce myself. My name is Brenton Pahl and I have been a Volunteer at SPACES since August 2010. I graduated from Cleveland State with a Bachelor's in Art History in the Fall of 2009. This coming Fall I will be attending grad school for Art History. After being an Intern at the Cleveland Museum of Art for a year before this, this is by far my favorite gig yet. Since there is such a small staff, everything I do has a sense of necessity and there is a great feeling of belonging and camaraderie amongst us. What I enjoy the most is all of the hands-on work that I get to do.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done during shows and even more so in between them. I have had the opportunity to do the lighting for the past few shows, helped Machine Project artist Nate Page find the couches for his couchbleachers as well as build the platform for them, and also assisted in hanging South African SWAP artist Nandipha Mntambo's paintings that were up from Nov. 2010 ? Jan. 2011. I don't know of another place that is as accessible as SPACES-where I get the chance to work with world artists and other experimental artists and still lend a very helping hand.

Hope the good times just keep on a rollin'.