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Jackie Bingham ’03 (Lunenburg, Mass.) collaborated with New York artist Wopo Holup and launched a marketing campaign to clean up downtown Easton this semester. A double major in art and economics and business, she participated in an independent study with Lew Minter, visiting lecturer in art and media lab director at the Williams Visual Arts Building.
“I’m being exposed to so many different things every day,” Bingham said during the semester. “I have no idea where else I would be able to get this type of experience without traveling into New York City as an intern. Even then, I think I have a wider range of materials and people to work with here at Lafayette than in the city.”
An award-winning designer, Minter has guided more than 70 students in independent studies in graphic design. He has mounted five solo shows of his paintings and sculpture and participated in a dozen group exhibitions. His work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Rome and dozens of private and corporate collections.
“Lew is fantastic,” Bingham says. “I like the fact that he is there when I have any questions and we are able to work together on projects side by side. I feel like it’s a completely different relationship and it isn’t the typical classroom environment. We’re learning together.”
Bingham spent the summer working under the direction of Jim Toia, director of the Community-Based Teaching Program and Lafayette’s Grossman Gallery, both based in the Williams Visual Arts Building. During her summer experience, she was responsible for gallery operations, such as coordinating shows.
Holup, who is working on a city commission to create a monumental, unique roadside sculpture on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, is creating related artwork at the Williams Visual Arts Building for a New York exhibition.
Bingham collaborated with Holup on the project, exchanging ideas and helping her manipulate images using the art department’s state-of-the-art computers and printers. She and several other students took a trip to The Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, the foundry where granite panels for the expressway project are cut.
“Wopo is great. She’s very friendly and extremely interested in what we can do with the computers,” says Bingham. “I am definitely looking forward to working with her more.”
Holup, who is a proponent of collaboration in art, says that she finds Bingham and other Lafayette students she’s encountered to be “very bright, friendly, and outgoing, and realistic at the same time.”
Minter echoes Holup’s sentiments. “Jackie’s fabulous. She’s very grounded, extremely bright, and a hard worker. She thinks a couple of steps ahead — you tell her what ‘A’ is, and by the time you turn around she’s already done ‘C’.”
Bingham’s second project entailed creation of an ad campaign designed to promote the clean-up of downtown Easton.
The idea arose through the brainstorming efforts of Downtown Neighborhood Association, which received a grant from Coalition for Better Neighborhoods to run a Clean-Up Easton Campaign. The purpose of the project is to develop and implement a program to clean up trash and beautify the environment of downtown Easton with plantings and art. It also aims to educate the leaders, residents, and visitors of Easton.
“We are anxious to make this a high-visibility project with benefit to both Lafayette College and the Downtown Neighborhood Association, and most importantly, the residents, tourists, and merchants of Easton,” explains Rachel Hogan, co-chair of DNA and community mobilizer for Northampton County Communities That Care. “We recognize the importance of citizen awareness of the need not to litter and to participate in the active cleanliness of our town.”
Bingham and another senior, Kristin Harpine, a psychology major from Dumont, N.J., were responsible for creating an “attractive, eye-catching logo that easily reflects the clean-up mission.” The logo must be easily reproduced for various media. In connection, the students were also charged with developing a marketing campaign to educate and raise awareness of trash issues in Easton.
Bingham says the project is a perfect example of what she wants to do when she graduates. “I want to work at an advertising company that has numerous clients. This particular group wants to get an idea across, so they have come to us looking for help. It’s similar to the issues faced by Della Femina Rothschild Jeary & Partners (NYC), with whom I did an externship in January 2002.”
However, Bingham finds more value in the campaign than just career experience. “It’s good practice for my career in ‘real life’, but I also think it’s a great way to get the college involved with the downtown area. Many students travel down the hill (into downtown Easton), so it makes sense that we help out to keep the area clean. I look forward to being creative and presenting them with different possibilities,” she says.
A member of the track and field team, Bingham has been on the Patriot League Sports Academic Honor Roll and was voted “Most Improved Athlete” by track team coaches. She works in Lafayette’s Bailey Health Center on “Perception is not Reality,” a social norms campaign to improve campus health and decrease harmful behaviors. Bingham has also done volunteer work through Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach Center.