Caroline Kuhlmeier Interns as Artist Assistant for Clint Sleeper

from FSU ART BFA ’21 Caroline Kuhlmeier:

At the beginning of Summer, I didn’t know what to expect from my internship with Assistant Professor Clint Sleeper. All I knew was that my mom was more excited about me having an internship than I was. A few zoom calls later and all of his passwords in hand, I could get to work. Due to COVID, I was working independently and we would only communicate through email or meet in Zoom. This separation allowed me to create my own schedule around my job and other classes.

My main job for the summer was to submit Prof. Sleeper’s recently finished film Teaching Capitalism to Nature to various film festivals. During the semester, I submitted to over 50 different festivals from all over the world. After a lot of no’s and even more undecided’s, we finally got accepted to FROSTBITE International Indie Festival. I learned that it is one thing to make art, but then a whole other battle to get said work out there. Having an interest in animation and film myself, working with Prof. Sleeper gave me valuable insight into independent film making.

Clint Sleeper teaching capitalism to nature

After film submissions, I was given the task to update his website. Nervous at first about somehow messing up, I got to work adding his latest projects to his portfolio. I had some difficulty with the website at first, but everything fell into place in the end. Through this project, I learned that having a professional looking artist website is not that difficult to do with the right software and enough patience. I would recommend this internship to other students who have a lot on their plate, but are still looking for a valuable experience as an artist assistant. Prof. Sleeper was very understanding of my limited time, and set my work load accordingly. I would also recommend this internship to anyone who has a special interest in either film or code and would like to enter those fields.