A contemporary view

Tegan Hammond helps students learn about artists of the past 40 years

Tegan Hammond Title: Education assistant Job: Arranges art-study programs for students visiting the Contemporary Musuem Honolulu

Tegan Hammond moved to Hawaii in 1999 to attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and before she knew it, she was majoring in Hawaiian language and fine arts.

"I didn't know I was going to (study Hawaiian language) when I got out here," she said. "But I was taking classes and found I loved the classes and the people in the classes I met. It was interesting and wonderful."

Hammond earned her bachelor's degree from UH with highest honors in those fields three years ago, and has since has put her knowledge to work as education assistant at the Contemporary Museum Honolulu, which is located at the historic former Spalding residence in Makiki Heights (with a satellite site at the First Hawaiian Center downtown).

Hammond's main responsibility at the museum is to create and administer art-study programs for visiting students, some of whom have never visited a museum before. Tegan, 26, moved to the islands from Santa Barbara, Calif., where she graduated from San Marcos High School.

Question: What is your job title?

Answer: Education assistant.

Q: What is it you do exactly?

A: I work in the education department up here (at the Contemporary Museum Honolulu, in Makiki Heights).

Q: What does the education department do?

A: The education department does all of the school tours and outreach for the museum. That's both adults' and children's education programs, as well as we coordinate all the docents and the docent-training programs that we have.

Q: So you're not a docent?

A: Sometimes I am. It's very casual though. If we need someone to take a group on a tour, I can walk little kids around.

Q: If you're the assistant, is there a director?

A: Yeah, we have the curator of education.

Q: Who's that?

A: Her name is Inger Tully. She's a wonderful person. I love to work with her. We have a lot of fun.

Q: How did you get the job?

A: I started working originally as an interim exhibitions coordinator, and just really liked working with the staff. We have about 30 people here. Then education opened up, and I love working with kids, and Inger is awesome, so it just worked out.

Q: Do you work a lot with school kids?

A: Yeah. We get about 3,000 school kids up here a year. And we do a lot of hands-on art activities with those kids. Some of them are funded through grants that we get up here, which bring kids up here for free. The buses are free, and the activities are free.

Q: Like what kind of activities?

A: We usually work with each school to do something that the kids maybe haven't worked on, like with a particular media, and they want to try that. Or if they have a particular theme in mind. We design the project around the particular school.

Q: How many kids tend to be in these groups?

A: Right now the museum doesn't have an official education space, so we can handle about 60 kids per field trip per school. But we are going to be expanding soon, and (the) education (department) will have its own space, actually.

Q: So you teach them art methods or something?

A: Mostly we just provide the rough outline of an art project, the materials and encouragement.

Q: They're not up there to get a tour of the museum?

A: Oh, no. That's definitely a part of what they'll come up here for. And like I said, we're coordinating with the docents as well, so most of the school tours that come up will have a docent assigned to them.

Q: Who are the docents, in general?

A: The docents are a really wonderful group of volunteers. Their ages are from 26 to 70, and they are an interesting group of very well educated and dedicated volunteers.

Q: How many are there?

A: We have around 60.

Q: And what type of art is up there mostly?

A: Well, we're a contemporary art museum, so we don't have anything that's not contemporary. (Laughter)

Q: How would you define that?

A: Contemporary art is anything that is made by an artist that has lived, I believe, in the last 40 years.

Q: So who's on display right now?

A: We have currently an exhibition of our collection, and some of the people in the collection are Georgia O'Keeffe; we have a (Robert) Motherwell, a print of his up; we have a (Robert) Rauschenberg; we also have visiting* artists, such as Jose Bedia and Robert Arneson.

Q: How big is the Contemporary Museum?

A: We're over three acres. We have a historic property, and it encompasses a few different buildings. We are going to be expanding soon to create a new gallery space, and to relocate the library and cafe, and create an education space -- an official space for all the kids.

Q: Do you teach the visiting students on your own?

A: Yeah. And sometimes we bring in teachers from the community. Like we have art classes coming up, and those will be taught (by teachers from the community).

Q: When will those be?

A: Our summer art classes start June 21, and for Art Spree -- that's our annual family day -- that's on July 14, and it's a free event. We're going to have six artists with performances and all kinds of activities, and a little bit of refreshments and music. It's a lot of fun for kids. We see about 2,000 people in that one day.

Q: Do you have hands-on work?

A: Yeah, I'm the art teacher.

Q: What were you working on today?

A: Today we had a group from Waipahu High School. There were about four of them. They were advanced drawing and painting students -- actually award-winning advanced drawing and painting students. They were great to work with. We did a collage project.

Q: Did they get to take it home?

A: Of course. Everything they do up here goes home with them.

Q: Do you plan on staying with the museum for awhile?

A: I do. I'm also very interested in returning to school and traveling at some point in the future. But in the meantime, I love being here.

CORRECTION Wednesday, June 13, 2007 » Jose Bedia and Robert Arneson are not local artists, as stated in Monday's "Hawaii at Work" column. Bedia lives in Florida and Arneson lived in California. Please see the applicable Corrections Page for more information.