Interview: Helen Johnson (4am Hourly Update)

Helen Johnson is the co-founder of CreateHere, an innovative non-profit based in Chattanooga. She does amazing things through CreateHere and is here tonight as an incredible volunteer and partner. She is rocking it out with us and we are so happy to have her!

Why do I love the doc team?

I may be a bit biased, but the documentation group has the best job of CreateAthon! We get to see each group and the projects they are planning and creating. Kelsey and I spent a few hours this evening getting first-person interviews with the leaders of CreateAthon as well as a few mentors and UTC design students. It was eye-opening to listen to these people talk about their expectations for CreateAthon, for UTC students, for Dalewood, and even larger, the Chattanooga community. There were multiple times I got goosebumps just listening to them discuss their hopes for CreateAthon and for Chattanooga. One can be skeptical about accomplishing greatness in a mere 24 hours, but more than greatness is happening as we speak.

 

Check out this quick video with mentor, Kent Callison from Williams Web.

 

 

Guest post: Victoria M. Bryan

Tonight I’ve found myself in a situation in which I never thought I would find myself as a graduate student in English: I’m in the UTC Fine Arts Center at 10:00 pm writing a guest blog post for CreateAthon onCampus Chattanooga. To make this experience seem even more surreal, I’m accompanied by design students performing the rap they just wrote about this fantastic project. We’re all full of caffeine, Red Bull, pizza, and beautifully decorated cupcakes, and despite the sugar overload, the impromptu dance parties, and the impending sense of delirium, I’m amazed by how much excellent work these students have been able to put together in such a short amount of time.

The work that is being done here is providing the design students with a lot of valuable experience and it will provide excellent learning opportunities and an improved sense of community for the students at Dalewood Middle School. This entire experience has been beautiful to witness. The videos of the pep rally this morning show students who genuinely want to improve their situation, a principal dedicated to making that happen, and college students invested in their community enough to come together to help. I’ll admit that they made me tear up a little.

While Dalewood Middle will surely be improved by the completion of this project, I think it’s important for these design students to realize just how much their student community is being strengthened by this experience. I was impressed when Leslie Jensen-Inman ended our first big meeting this afternoon by asking someone to say something positive about the experience at hand; I’m fairly certain this is something I want to implement in my classroom in the future.

The camaraderie within this department is something I hope these students appreciate and will continue to cherish as they move onward and upward in the design world.

Featured Mentor: Matt Greenwell

Matt Greenwell has taught Graphic Design at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 1997, and has served as Head of the Department of Art since 2004. In 2005, he transitioned his freelance practice into a collaborative partnership with the Widgets & Stone studio where he works as a strategist and creative design director on much of the studio’s client work. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa.

His primary interest as a designer and as a design educator has been to synthesize form and idea in service to communication – promoting formal sensitivity in response to the conceptual issues shaped by contemporary culture and current critical theory. He has a particular interest in work that promotes the public interest and underscores the ethical responsibility of the designer.

Featured Mentor: Helen Johnson

Helen co-founded CreateHere in 2007 and has served since its inception as co-president and creative strategist.  Under the combined leadership of she and her co-president, CreateHere has strategically focused on utilizing creativity and innovation as tools to spur local development in arts, economy and culture. CreateHere works to animate and inspire Chattanooga’s people by promoting “big picture” vision.

Active in local environmental issues, Helen is a founding member of Take Root, a non-profit project that organizes urban tree plantings throughout Chattanooga to double the existing tree canopy. This effort fosters environmental health while inspiring residents to invest in the livelihood of their communities. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga and the Women’s Fund of Greater Chattanooga.

Prior to co-founding CreateHere, Helen spent a dozen years in non-profit and arts administration, building the nationally-ranked 4 Bridges Arts Festival, coordinating innovative museum education programs at the Hunter Museum of American Art, as well as designing and launching community focused arts initiatives at Allied Arts.  She holds a BFA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

 

Featured Mentor: Leslie Jensen-Inman

Leslie Jensen-Inman, assistant professor at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, acts on her passion to improve web education through initiatives such as Teach the Web, the Open Web Education Alliance, the WE Rock Summit and Tour, and InterACT. Leslie is co-author and creative director of the book InterACT with Web Standards: A holistic approach to Web design.

Featured Mentor: Stephanie Tate

STATE designs, takes photos, makes art, blogs, chats, collaborates, conducts research, plays video games, takes long rides through the country, and enjoys life just over the mountain and through the woods.

 

Featured Mentor: Grant Dotson

After completing his design education at the UTC, Grant worked with area design firms as both a designer and art director. In these roles, he provided design expertise and project management to both national and regional clients, for assignments ranging from identity and web design to trade shows and environmental graphics.

Today, he exercises his passion for photography as owner of Dotson Studios, providing original photography for private and commercial clients. He also collaborates regularly with Widgets & Stone, lending his design talent to client creative projects and creating original photography. In addition, he instructs today’s UTC design students in Typography, and serves on the board of Chattanooga’s chapter of the AIGA.

Featured Mentor: Carla Guerra

Carla Guerra is a “downtowneer” who works, lives, and plays between the Southside and the riverfront. Carla makes art everyday for a living at the corner of Market and Main Street at Battle Academy. Through her partnerships with local arts venues, she promotes art education through student-made public art displays in the community.

Battle Academy Art Studio
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Battle-Academy-Art-Studio/159125102658

Featured Mentor: Dawn Skowronnek

Dawn Skowronnek is the Director of Client Engagement at Moss Media Labs, a position that came to her via social media. She is a native of Chicago and used social media to integrate herself into the Chattanooga community when she moved here in 2009. In her spare time, she coordinated the first ever St. Baldrick’s shaving event. Along with her son, she raised over $3000 for the fight against childhood cancer.