Ella Hannaford \u201926 of South Portland, Maine, designed the \u201cExit Through the Gift Shop\u201d punch cards. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cI liked the idea of activating student work, especially living artists in the Bates community. To celebrate studio practice and the department\u2019s studio was exciting, but it was also necessary to think about the responsibility and care that comes with dealing with student artwork,\u201d Nolan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of hands-on work would have to be done to make Nolan\u2019s vision into a reality. Though \u201cExit Through the Gift Shop\u201d was an art and visual culture course, she wanted it to function more like a scientific laboratory, where students leaned on knowledge gleaned from readings and classroom discussion to conduct successful experiments. The academic demographic of the class lent itself well to this; students represented three different class years and a variety of majors, including biology, psychology, music, physics, history, and theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nolan spent months organizing the logistics of the course, and when Short Term began, she and her students hit the ground running. They visited the senior thesis exhibition, dove into texts on museums and gift shops, and brainstormed a flurry of products based on student artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom left, Noah Skinner \u201926, Jacobo Garces-Ramirez \u201926, Rosina Makwabe \u201926, Randy Li \u201927, and Ella Hannaford \u201926 gather in the Coram Library lobby to brainstorm products for the pop-up gift shop. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThen they headed to the VizLab, a makerspace in Coram Library with technology like 3D printing and laser cutting, to bring their ideas to life. The VizLab\u2019s senior academic technology consultants, Branden Rush and Dale Rothenberg, supported their process, including helping students with computer-aided design and searching through online repositories for design templates. One of the VizLab\u2019s goals, Rush said, is to be open and accessible to anyone on campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of times they’re surprised about what’s even possible. \u2026 Even if they did 3D printing in a different institution or in high school or something, these are ways of modifying and getting creative that weren’t possible before,\u201d Rush said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The VizLab frequently collaborates with clubs and courses, especially during Short Term. Those collaborations sometimes result in students, like VizLab student worker Evan Boxer-Cook \u201926 of Scarborough, Maine, spending years developing their technical skills in the lab. A classical and medieval studies major, Boxer-Cook enrolled in \u201cExit Through the Gift Shop\u201d because he is interested in pursuing museum studies as a career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis just seemed like a really nice opportunity to gain some practice translating museum objects into consumer goods,\u201d Boxer-Cook said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perched in front of a computer in the back of a VizLab room filled with colorful 3D-printed objects, Boxer-Cook digitally traced the shape of ceramic works by Jeremy Felton \u201926 of Sebastopol, Calif. He then laser-cut stencils of the shapes onto thin sheets of wood, which students later used to spray-paint designs onto tote bags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the VizLab, from left, Noah Skinner \u201926, Randy Li \u201927, Evan Boxer-Cook \u201926, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture Erin Nolan huddle around a computer. Boxer-Cook is designing stencils based on ceramic works by Jeremy Felton \u201926 of Sebastopol, Calif. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nFor arts and visual culture major Audrey Esteves \u201926 of Cranford, N.J., 3D printing and laser cutting were new skills, though she had taken several courses with Nolan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI love her classes so much,\u201d Esteves said. \u201cI think they’re so engaging and make you think critically about so many different parts of the art world and institutions and education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Esteves was excited to explore the blending of digital technology with physical art, she was particularly looking forward to offering her perspective as one of two students in the course who also had artwork in the senior thesis exhibition \u2014 the other being Ella Hannaford \u201926 of South Portland, Maine, who designed the gift shop punch cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wanted to see how we could develop mine and Ella’s objects and others\u2019 into physical reproductions and see where that could stretch to because I’ve never really thought about that with my work,\u201d Esteves said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Esteves creates oil paintings inspired by ideas of sleep and rest, which are dark and subtly textured. She knew it would be difficult to reproduce them through 2D products such as posters. Instead, with Rush\u2019s help, she 3D-printed a miniature replica of a room in one of her paintings, featuring a bed, table, and lamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hannaford, a photographer, had previously 3D-printed with the VizLab for another art and visual culture course. She had an ambitious idea to create a 3D-printed stereoscope \u00e0 la the classic View-Master with miniature prints of her senior thesis photographs inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI’ve seen a lot of change in the time that I’ve been here in utilizing these spaces [like the Vizlab] for the purposes of art,\u201d Hannaford said. \u201cWhat can be created multiplies exponentially when you start thinking about the possibilities that are available to you in concert with these spaces. I think that it’s a really wonderful opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne of the VizLab’s 3D printers prints a test prototype of the stereoscope envisioned by Ella Hannaford \u201926 of South Portland, Maine. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe stereoscope would expand upon themes of viewership and tourism in Hannaford\u2019s senior thesis photography, which, inspired by her childhood growing up in coastal Maine, features a metal viewfinder at Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hannaford printed replicas of her photographs onto transparency paper and glued the paper onto a film sheet she laser cut. She worked with VizLab staff to find an online template for a 3D-printed stereoscope, which she then printed and manually glued together before placing the film sheet inside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She wasn\u2019t sure if it would work, but it did; she could place her face against the lens and, pushing the film sheet through the viewing device, watch her tiny photographs tick by. Hannaford ultimately printed six stereoscopes, which \u201csold\u201d for the most expensive price on the table: 10 stamps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt made me feel excited about my own art again because I had been so close to it,\u201d Hannaford said. \u201cThen suddenly, I was having to relinquish some control and let it take on a new identity and a life of its own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nStudents 3D-printed then hand-painted these Rubik\u2019s-like cube puzzles, inspired by a colorful design in a tunnel book by Grace Thomas \u201926 of Bethesda, Md. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nOther 3D-printed products included a Rubik\u2019s-like cube with colors pulled from a tunnel book by Grace Thomas \u201926 of Bethesda, Md.; kits to put together miniature chairs modeled after a piece by Qwynn Kobertz \u201926 of Framingham, Mass.; and LEGO-style sets modeled after a vase by Jeremy Felton \u201926. The gift shop also sold stickers, posters, and postcards of student artwork, printed on campus by Post and Print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought this was such an incredible opportunity that teaches so many different skills,\u201d said Abby Salkind-Foraker \u201929 of Washington, D.C. She designed a laser-cut wood puzzle based on an embroidered tapestry by Bissan Kablawi \u201926 of London. \u201cYou’re getting three-and-a-half dedicated weeks to devote yourself to the creation of this and working with the team and studying art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Operating on a tight deadline, the students had to carefully divide their time, especially because certain products, like the LEGO-style kit, took upward of five hours to 3D print and required some trial-and-error. But the gift shop opened successfully on May 19 without encountering any major logistical problems, said Caroline McCarthy \u201926, an English and Hispanic studies double major from New Haven, Conn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt’s honestly been a smashing success in that regard,\u201d McCarthy said as she worked at the shop. \u201cI also have been liking the wide range of attendees we’ve been getting. It has been students, staff, and faculty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nStudents 3D-printed prototypes of the Rubik’s-like cube’s sections. They weren’t sure if they were going to able to make a cube whose parts could actually twist and turn, but they pulled it off. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nStudents worked the gift shop in \u201cshifts\u201d with support from Nolan, who was always nearby to offer advice and support. Hoping to expand opportunities to connect with the senior thesis artwork, the students gave customers extra stamps if they arrived at the gift shop ready to share their thoughts on the exhibition. Making exhibition attendance the shop\u2019s currency \u201cwas a genius move,\u201d said Bates Museum of Art Director Carrie Cushman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMuseums can have a reputation for being unwelcoming and stuffy, which is the opposite of the environment that we are hoping to cultivate at the Bates Museum,\u201d Cushman said. \u201cThe students seemed to really understand the opportunity they had with this class to break down those barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The students were also in charge of publicity. They designed the mysterious, guerilla-style marketing campaign in the image of Banksy, known for sporadically creating public artwork under the cover of night. Students asked their Bates community members to show up for them, and they did, with friends like Whitney Moore \u201928 of South Lake, Texas, stopping by to shop or spray paint a tote bag with the stencils designed by Boxer-Cook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was super excited to see what they would come up with, and it definitely exceeded my expectations,\u201d Moore said. \u201cThey have a lot of beautiful stuff here for sale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn the back patio of Olin Arts Center, students \u2014 customers and those enrolled in “Exit Through the Gift Shop” alike \u2014design their own tote bags with paints and stencils created with the VizLab’s laser cutter. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nNolan\u2019s hope was that students would walk away with a new appreciation for what an art and visual culture course could be like. \u201cThis provided an alternative to a traditional course where students used the museum, the VizLab, and the campus, more broadly, as a classroom,\u201d she said. \u201cThe experiential and immersive nature of the class, hopefully, allows students to think about their own experience as consumers in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The students agreed: this course had a little bit of everything, teaching lessons in design, interpreting art history, working with a museum, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought this was such an incredible opportunity that teaches so many different skills,\u201d said Abby Salkind-Foraker \u201929 of Washington, D.C. She designed a laser-cut wood puzzle based on an embroidered tapestry by Bissan Kablawi \u201926 of London. \u201cYou’re getting three-and-a-half dedicated weeks to devote yourself to the creation of this and working with the team and studying art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAva Safir \u201927 of Silver Spring, Md., shows off the tote bag she made by spraying paint over laser-cut stencils of student thesis artwork. At center is the the “Exit Through the Gift Shop” logo, designed by Evan Boxer-Cook \u201926 of Scarborough, Maine. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nFor seniors in the course, designing the gift shop was their final hurrah at Bates. Hannaford \u2014 whose work as a photographer for the Portland Sea Dogs included an opportunity to photograph the Boston Red Sox \u2014 thought that the project was a fantastic blend of visual art and art history, her respective major and minor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis was the perfect way to wrap up my academic career at Bates and so cool too that I get to work with my own art and keep kind of interrogating it on so many levels,\u201d Hannaford said. \u201cI’m continuing to think about it and think of ways to work with it, which I think will serve me really well even after I graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This Short Term, students in \u201cExit Through the Gift Shop,\u201d a course taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture Erin Nolan, created and ran a pop-up gift shop featuring products inspired by art in the 2026 senior art thesis exhibition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1827,"featured_media":173469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":["erin-h-nolan"],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1363,10845],"class_list":["post-173490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-batesnews","tag-bates-college-museum-of-art","tag-short-term"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1827"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173490"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173605,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173490\/revisions\/173605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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