The Interns - Where Are They Now?
My motivation for initiating a college intern program is simple. I felt it was a duty to honor the four valued mentors I fortunately experienced early in my career – John Lunsford, Robert Plant Armstrong, Roy Sieber, and Ray Wielgus. Within that commitment, we have learned a lot. People in their 20’s have a different perspective on many things. And, sometimes, their way of doing things really is better.
We feel very fortunate to have been able to work with so many great college interns over the past twelve years; though, we have never gone back to take a look at what they are doing now. For this Christmas newsletter, we have selected a few interns to profile. This journey into our past has proven to be so interesting, that we have decided to feature a long interview of one of our former interns as part of our future newsletters. Our future Winter newsletter will include a fascinating profile of Valerie Thompson, with whom I am certain I must share some distant DNA. She, too, likes to walk to the beat of her own drummer.
Valerie Thompson (Shango Gallery 2017 intern)
Valerie Thompson - Photographer.
Valerie was an intern at Shango Galleries in 2017. Her chosen career as a Dallas wedding photographer has been very fulfilling. After completing her undergrad studies, she completed a 3-year graduate program at the San Francisco Art Institute, earning her MFA. She then headed back to Dallas where she was a graphic designer for various companies while building her photography business in her own time, with a dream to be her own boss. Her photography clearly has a point-of-view, and she has become very popular especially for those that want to memorialize their special event with an edge. For the past several years, Valerie has been running her own wedding photography business. Visit her at www.valeriethompsonphoto.com
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul
Ana Norman (Shango Gallery 2019 intern)
After completing her masters degree in Art History at SMU, Ana Norman moved to Chicago to pursue a career in the arts, where she worked as a gallery associate at the Joel Oppenheimer Gallery. There, she sold antique natural-history art, wrote articles about the material, appraised artwork and prescribed restoration and conservation solutions for damaged artwork. After a couple of years working at the Oppenheimer Gallery, Ana started a side gig making and selling jewelry, which quickly became her main focus. Her self-assigned job title at Lucky Banana Nugget is “trinket maker” (www.luckybanananugget.etsy.com) . Her jewelry is fresh, young, elegant, and beautifully made. Ana is traveling In Istanbul contact her through Instagram.
“ Working at Shango Galleries was fun and informative”, says Ana. “The most resounding lesson I learned from John is to stay curious”.
Emily Duffy (Shango Gallery 2018 intern)
Emily Duffy - Fine Arts Cataloger
After working at Shango Galleries and graduating with a degree in printmaking, Emily was able to obtain an internship with Heritage Foundations as an operations assistant in their Dallas warehouse. Since then, she has moved up the ranks from Consignment Coordinator to Fine Arts Cataloger, focusing on photographing, designing and managing the fine-art inventory catalog, and interacting with potential buyers during busy auction days. She has found that her experience interning under John applies extensively in her present-day career….from noting small details in antique pieces and photographing each piece for cataloging, to managing clients and their various concerns.
If Emily was ever asked to do anything, you knew it was going to happen. In fact, it is my opinion that no one on planet Earth takes more notes and pays more attention to detail than Emily Duffy. I cannot say with certainty, but I suspect if I said “hello”, she wrote it down. Her attention to detail is truly a lost art in the workforce today.
