My entire cohort with a few extra folks from interdisciplinary MFA programs, plus our leadership professor Beth Ryan on our last day.

Our last day of class was May 10, and I’m writing to you just after Memorial Day on May 29. It’s been roughly three weeks already since we finished the semester and got released into our summers—yowza. I can’t believe time has flown that quickly. We all finished the semester with a bang, as you can see in the perennial group shot above. I remember right before taking this picture I mentioned to my cohort member, Shauna Turnmire, that I just love a group photo in fluorescent lighting where I can’t really control my angles or my image. She laughed and said I had a succinct way of summing things up.

But enough about my narcissistic tendencies that lead to a hatred of group photos. On this last day of class in leadership we had a gallery setup where each of us displayed a project based on a zeitgeist leader in the creative industries for the 21st century. A zeitgeist leader is a person who we felt particularly caught the spirit of our times, in a way that is unique to 2018, and had to be in the creative fields. We had a wonderful array of points of view on the topic on the day.

Since the last day of class, I’ve been trying to stay busy on a number of projects including my work for the summer. I’ve taken over social media for Chicago Art Deco Society while we also work on finessing the marketing plan for the release of their book Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America in the fall. As it stands, I know more about Art Deco Chicago than I ever realized I would at this point in time—or at least, I’m getting there.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjXdF4iDp-l/?taken-by=chicagoartdeco

I’ve also had a drag show and two photoshoots. The first photoshoot was with Maurene Cooper, who is working on a series of historical process photography portraits of queer performers and drag queens. She wanted to shoot me with fellow drag queen Sigourney Beaver in her studio, which was a fabulous afternoon (although a bit harder to pose when you have to remember and hold the pose while the camera is getting set).

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi24f5dh222/?taken-by=kellyboner

The second photoshoot was by fellow drag queen and photographer Pamela Manderson, who was in town from Boston for IML weekend and Memorial Day. She has a series of photos of drag queens on rooftops, so I helped secure the shooting location on the rooftop of Spoke Apartments in River West through my good friends on the Associate Board of Links Hall. See how it’s all coming together? Below is  a little behind the scenes from my Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjTHL5HgOg6/?taken-by=kellyboner

The challenge so far this summer, which I wrote about somewhat for my post for winter break, is making sure that I continue the level of self initiative needed in order to accomplish all that I’m hoping to accomplish. It can be hard when you have the flexibility to work from home to make sure that everything gets done, because you have to keep a close eye on time management (and try to avoid the distractions of friends and roommates who might happen to have the day off).

The next time you’ll hear from me, I’ll be traveling in Iceland, so my writing will be taking a short break from the nature of work, and I’ll point more toward—you guessed it—all that I’m learning in Iceland. So see you next time from a latitude much further north.