Client: The Big Springs Museum
The Shaping a Community exhibit was the Big Springs Museum’s first major exhibit. Over a year of planning and two years of fundraising, I helped the museum staff understand the role of design, storytelling, and production standards to determine a budget and to produce an exhibit that would connect with their community.
The museum staff’s initial concept of focusing exclusively on service organizations was broaden to look at how all volunteers shape a community through individual projects, participation in service organizations, and military service.
A selection of 24 volunteer and service examples were chosen. I interviewed and photographed each person, where possible. I wrote the volunteer and service narratives and the introductory text for each section of the exhibit. Objects and graphics were selected for the volunteer stories, and then I completed panel layouts, exhibit design, and the final installation.
The exhibit is a testament to the museum’s voluntary staff, the board, and the many individuals who volunteered their time to raise money, work with me to select volunteers and objects, transcribe interviews, write object labels, edit the volunteer and service narratives and panel text, build the exhibit walls and furniture, paint, and prepare objects for installation.
Client: Ontario County Historical Society
The exhibit Desires, Opportunities, Change: the Shaping of Western New York, explores four periods of Western New York’s development through the experience of three historical characters in each period. Full-scale historical figures, a contemporary photograph and historical graphic of a related landscape, objects, text, and an interactive are used in each section to present the story. The exhibit is designed as a series of four “stages” plus an introduction and interactive concluding section.
Client: Archaeological & Historical Services, Inc.
Outdoor signage was installed in the newly renovate New Haven, Wallingford, Meriden, Berlin, and Harford railroad stations along the Hartford line in Connecticut. The Wallingford, Meriden, and Berlin stations had four panels each, the New Haven station two, and the Hartford station one. Panels present themes specific to each station and town and are installed in public corridors.
Client: Archaeological & Historical Services, Inc.
The 8000 Years of Life on the Green Harbor River exhibit presents outcomes from a federally mandated archaeology excavation conducted on airport land that was to be covered over by a runway expansion. Pre-Colonial artifacts recovered from two Native American sites dating from 8000 to 450 years ago and Colonial artifacts recovered from the 1630s Waterman House on the site tell the story of how environmental change effected life on the marsh and, in-turn, how people changed the landscape. The exhibit is installed in the airport lobby.
An accompanying web site was also completed: https://marshfieldarchaeological.com
Client: Lake Placid Olympic Museum
The Quest for Speed exhibit consist of fourteen panels in three groups with three interactive stations arrange to form an enclosed area within a large exhibit hall. The Inside Edge section looks at the mental and physical skills needed to be an Olympic level speed skater. It features two interactives: one presenting comments by an Olympic Gold medal speed skater and a Junior National level coach, and an interactive that challenges visitors to keep pace with Olympic level speed skaters.
Client: Archaeological and Historical Services, Inc.
The exhibit includes introductory panels in the airport lobby and a timeline of eight panels installed down the length of an adjoining hallway featuring historic people and events that contributed to the airport’s growth.
Client: Museum of Innovation & Science
The Chemical Innovations: Developing the Essentials exhibit introduces the idea that everything in our lives involves chemistry. The exhibit provides examples of chemicals used in products and asks visitors to consider the question of balancing product reliability, environmental safety, and costs in the use of chemicals.
Client: Sayre Historical Society
Two 1200 square foot permanent exhibits were completed for the Sayre Historical Society: A Great Place to Raise a Family and Sayre a Railroad Town. One exhibit looks at how the railroad industry shaped the community and the other at the people and processes used to maintain and construct railroad locomotives in the Sayre Yard.
Both exhibits were designed to accentuate views from the interior of the historic railroad station to the exterior rail lines and surrounding community.
Client: Walter Elwood Museum
The Discover! exhibit invites school age children to observe and explore the wide variety of ethnographic and natural history artifacts the museum founder, Walter Elwood, collected on his world travels. There are five interactive stations where visitors can study and categorize specific collections. Rotating installations of artifacts and large banners, showing a collage of artifacts, provides a rich, engaging environment for young visitors.