Turbine Hall within the Tate Modern Gallery
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Merchandising and Visitor Engagement Assistant
Tate Modern Gallery April 2023 - October 2023 After moving to London in 2023, Mariana had the opportunity to work in the Tate Modern Gallery. Responsibilities while working with the Retail and Visitor Engagement teams included visual merchandising within multiple Tate gift shops, facilitating workshops, ordering products based on visitor data, and providing education about the history, collection, and exhibitions. Mariana also had the opportunity to work with other teams within the Tate to find solutions for problems they had come across. One of these was taking a poll of which languages were spoken within the teams and creating badges to indicate these so as to make visitors feel more welcome in the galleries. Visit the Tate website here and the Tate shop here. |
Ruby City in San Antonio, Texas
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Visitor Services Assistant
Ruby City, Linda Pace Foundation August 2022 - December 2022 For the latter half of 2022, Mariana worked as a Visitor Services Associate for Ruby City, a contemporary art space in San Antonio created by Linda Pace and founded by the Linda Pace Foundation. Ruby City's mission to make contemporary art accessible to the public deeply aligned with Flores's values as an artist and as a person. Giving tours of the galleries, assisting with public programs like artist workshops, and aiding with general upkeep of the galleries were all things Mariana did enthusiastically. Visit the Ruby City website here. |
A middle school student painting their paper maché project
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Middle School Art Teacher
San Antonio Independent School District August 2021 - June 2022 Mariana taught art full-time at Poe Middle School in San Antonio Independent School District for the 2021/2022 school year. As a first-year teacher, Flores developed an art-centered curriculum from the ground up for 100+ students, most of whom were low income and Mexican American. Based on student interests and the elements and principles of art, lesson plans included the history, techniques, and artist examples of different art mediums. Among these were watercolor, paper maché, clay, and sewing. Students were encouraged to express themselves using the TAB (Teaching Artful Behavior) model and analyzed art with critical thinking using VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies). At the end of her first year teaching, Mariana received the New Teacher of the Year award from SAISD and had students participate in the SAISD group show held in downtown San Antonio. |
A sculpture student's work-in-progress on the Lost and Found Factory piece
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Clinical Art Educator
Denton Independent School District Spring 2020 In Spring 2020, Mariana completed her full-time student teaching in Denton ISD at both a high school and elementary school. Her lesson plans revolved around "Big Ideas"; core concepts, principles, theories, and processes that serve as the focal point of curricula, instruction, and assessment. One of her recent lesson plans was based off of M. Michelle Illuminato's Lost and Found Factory, a community-based art project in which a group of artists recreated things that visitors had previously lost. Along with this example, Mariana formed the lesson around the Big Ideas of "memory" and "loss". Her Sculpture 1 students recreated things that they had lost with their newly-learned sewing skills. |
Pulling prints at a screen printing workshop
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Fine Arts Series Assistant
University of North Texas Union August 2018 - December 2019 From August 2018 to December 2019, Mariana worked as an Arts Assistant for UNT's Mary Jo and V.Lane Rawlins Fine Arts Series. Mariana helped manage the UNT Union Gallery by working one-on-one with students artists, designing exhibition posters and online promotion images, repairing gallery walls, curating shows, organizing exhibition receptions, and handling artwork. The UNT Union Gallery can be viewed here. She also organized and set up art workshops for UNT students held bi-monthly in the UNT Student Union. Scouting local artists to lead workshops, ordering art materials from wholesale companies, and set up and break down of facilities are a few of the responsibilities that this portion of the job entailed. These workshops can be viewed here. Additionally, she assisted professional artists such as Wayne White and Alison Saar when visiting UNT campus for artist lectures and workshops. These events can be viewed here. |
P.A.N.T.S. informational poster
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Printmaking Association of North Texas Students
UNT College of Visual Arts and Design 2017 - 2019 Inspired by her Intro to Printmaking class, Mariana joined the Printmaking Association of North Texas Students. Since then, she has held the positions of club member (Fall 2017), Secretary (Spring 2018-Fall 2018), and President (Spring 2019). The Printmaking Association of North Texas Students (P.A.N.T.S.) is a UNT club in Denton, TX brings together UNT artists interested in printmaking as a fine arts media. Members create tight social bonds while working projects such as collaborative prints, print exchanges, and fund raising for printmaking conferences. Since joining, Mariana has helped direct and manage fundraising sales, club exhibitions, workshops, printmaking convention trips, and more. |
