One week into her first co-​​op at North­eastern, Jacque­line Fer­rante knew she’d chosen the per­fect one for her. In fact, she already had a strong feeling that it was what she’d been looking for in a career.

It was Jan­uary 2011, and Fer­rante, AMD’13, was begin­ning her co-​​op as oper­a­tions design man­ager at Northeastern’s Gallery 360. She was an artist her­self, but this was her first time working on the man­age­rial side of the industry. Her job involved over­seeing the gallery’s staff and working closely with artists to make sure the exhi­bi­tions ran smoothly.

“I recall being pretty ner­vous because I wasn’t really used to man­aging,” said Fer­rante, whose co-​​op also included over­seeing the infor­ma­tion desk staff at the Curry Stu­dent  Center. “But after the first week, I loved it so much and I could see myself doing that kind of a job every day. It’s weird how my first co-​​op made me feel like this was exactly what I wanted to do.”

Co-​​op expe­ri­ence in action

Fer­rante earned a bachelor’s degree in art and now resides in New York City, where she is asso­ciate director at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn and con­tin­uing to live out her dream that began on co-​​op. After col­lege she moved back home to Long Island and took three simul­ta­neous intern­ships at dif­ferent art gal­leries. One of them was at A.I.R., where she ulti­mately landed a full-​​time gallery assis­tant posi­tion. Last summer she was pro­moted to her cur­rent role.

“I’m orga­nized and I’m a really strong multi-​​tasker, thanks in large part to my co-​​op at Gallery 360,” she said. “Here at the gallery in Brooklyn, I have a mil­lion things to do all the time, and it’s been really helpful to have that expe­ri­ence knowing I can focus on a few minor tasks, get those done, and get straight to the impor­tant tasks.”

Now she’s curating a Gallery 360 show

When Fer­rante was on co-​​op at Gallery 360, she never envi­sioned curating a show of her own there. But that’s exactly what’s hap­pening now. Her new show, titled “Stratum” and open until mid-​​September, fea­tures the work of four New York artists—including Ferrante—who “explore the impact of color, lay­ering, and visual abstract­ness within their works.”

As Fer­rante put it, “I’m inter­ested in tex­ture, color, and the nat­ural decay of things, and that’s what my paint­ings are about.” In fact, a series of four paint­ings in the show are pieces she com­pleted while on a Dia­logue of Civ­i­liza­tions pro­gram in Ire­land at Burren Col­lege of Art, where she and her fellow stu­dent artists immersed them­selves in the local culture.

Another artist in the show, Laura Petrovich-​​Cheney, designed sev­eral pieces fea­turing dis­carded wood that she col­lects, cuts up, and then pieces together into what Fer­rante described as “sculp­tural paint­ings.” The other two artists fea­tured in the exhibit are Rhia Hurt and Ann Schaumburger.

Fer­rante said it’s been a thrill to lead the direc­tion of the show, work closely with the other three artists, and col­lab­o­rate with Bruce Ployer, Northeastern’s campus curator who over­sees Gallery 360.

“When you get all the work and it comes together, it’s just so exciting,” she said.

Stratum presents diverse approaches to abstract visu­al­iza­tion by exper­i­menting with color place­ment, col­lage tex­ture, and func­tions to psy­cho­log­i­cally take the viewer back to the foun­da­tions of art making.

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