My role in the group is the research director, and so I've been collecting a lot of different things such as images of art work from people in New Paltz, artist statements and statements about work from artists in New Paltz as well as conducting interviews some contributors.
To collect these different forms of information, I approached each differently. For photos, I posted a broader post on Facebook asking for New Paltz artists to send me some images of their art work. From that, I got around 25-30 images, which was awesome! Of course since that was for general content I made it more general. For the statements, I directly asked some friends and peers that I knew and asked for a statement about a piece of art, as well as an artist statement. I asked them to describe their work based on their medium, perhaps and process, as well as what the piece or their art work means to them. I tried to prompt them to respond as personally as possible, and I think everyone gave pretty great responses. I wanted it to be what they wanted to say, because the point of the website is that artists upload their own content.
For the interviews, both myself and Jenny have reached out to artists that we know in the community to answer some questions that we constructed. As of now I've had one with my Painting TA, and plan to conduct another interview with a friend of mine who is not an art major, but would identify as an artist. I think getting input and ideas from different people in the New Paltz art community is important because it also shows how many people could be using this app. A foundation student, an art minor, a BFA student, or someone who makes art in New Paltz (or doesnt!) and wants to be connected with the art community, and happenings in the area.
