My name is Zachery Young. I am a student at the University of the Arts majoring in sculpture. I will be working under Michele Kishita. She is an alumni of the University of the Arts and works professionally as a professor there but also as a proffesional artist. I will be helping Michele with putting up and taking down shows as well as helping her with day to day studio goals that she sets to achieve.


Prior to this summer fellows opportunity; Michele had asked me to come into her studio to help her prepare some panels before she's able to paint on them. So I brought my friend Gina Sylvester with me and we came and applied gac to 12 of her panels. We were instructed to gac the panels and then use sand paper on them and repeat. We had to use our sense of touch to feel the texture of the panels until there was no readable texture on them. The reason why Michele uses gac on her panels is to emphasize and enhance the wood grain within the work. The gac causes the grain to be more pronounced and "shinier". We have to sand down the gac once it's applied because it leaves an almost grainy feeling on the surface. This is a problem because Michele uses tape to create her images and if the tape is not flush against the surface there will be bleeding on the painting. Bleeding will just cause Michele to have to work on something that could have been avoided.


The following images are of the panels that Gina and I applied gac to.