This week’s Portrait is an enthusiastic and talented young man. Jacob Wiegmann is the business and program manager at Fresh Artists, an organization that does the much-needed work of ensuring all children have access to art by delivering art supplies and innovative art programs to severely under-funded public schools.
Where are you from? I grew up in a really small town called Avella about 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh and just really rural. I grew up on what used to be an orchard and [had] a pretty, farm pastoral upbringing.
Did you have any fruit left to pick? Yes, we had a smart amount of green apple trees. They weren’t cool like Granny Smith or anything like that. But every July, my brothers and I would pick them out and make applesauce and anything that could be made by pouring in a ton of sugar. On them because they were so acidic!
Good for you. I think my brothers would have used them for weapons! I mean, we did that too. I’ve got two older brothers and I have memories where one of us would be locked outside of the house and the other two would be up on the roof with the hard little apples, pelting them down.
So, it’s just the 3 guys? Yes, I am the youngest and my two older brothers are Elijah and Isaac. Elijah is about 10 years older than me and Isaac is about five years older.
With those names, dare I say you come from a devout family?Surprisingly, actually, not so much. My parents were very fond of biblical names. We were more concerned with the development of our local church, but as we were tweens and teens, we all lost the habit and routine. [Laughs] But I get it, I get it. Other people who say to me, “Are you Mennonites?”Or Amish with names like that?
What’s your favorite memory from your family? A component of throwing or baking apples?Well, as I mentioned, we grew up in rural areas. The total back of the heritage was made up of beautiful wooded valleys and coves and everything. So my favorite family memories were of I was playing outdoors in the woods with my brothers. We were all in the Boy Scouts. My father was truly the scout leader for my two brothers and was active in my troop, although he was not the leader. And so we were building forts, rope swings and all kinds of things in the woods. Some structures we’ve done there now!
That’s amazing. And where do you think you got your artistic bent from? I think about that sometimes because my parents are not really in creative professions. My mom was a nurse at a local hospital for her entire career, and then went into the insurance side of things and traveled for a bit. My dad had his own greenhouse and landscaping business for a while that my brothers and I all worked in for a minute growing up. But then as the economic problems started developing and things like that, it just wasn’t worth all the time and upkeep to keep open. So, he ended up being a manager at a local hardware store. But long story short, though, his mother was an art teacher and she definitely instilled in my brothers and me a love for the arts and for being creative. I have a lot of fond memories growing up where she would babysit us and we’d be out on her back patio and she’d be teaching us the basics of drawing or about painting. She had all sorts of art materials around, like chalk pastels and oil pastels and paints. So those were my first lessons in art and all of that.
And my parents have talents in the arts. My dad carves in wood as a little artistic outlet and my mom has been making crystal jewelry for two decades. Now that she’s retired, she does it as an effort to keep busy and has recently put in a lot more time and effort. in the leather jewelry she makes. He participated in all those fairs and craft fairs. And it’s even sold in some places in Pittsburgh. My boyfriend and I went out in August for the second year in a row to help her with the Shaker Woods festival in Ohio, which is a very large craft fair.
So you’ve figured it out on both sides. Yes, I definitely grew up with art, but it wasn’t something I did on my own until school, where I took an introductory design course.
So what did you need to be when you grew up? I have been and still am interested and fascinated by science. I’ve been pretty smart about that. So I was passing to pass the pre-med route. I was reading biology, but then I found out that this required a lot of time and study. And then I went to Pitt for a year and took this introductory design course, and it just fell into place for me.
My older brother went to the University of Philadelphia to examine commercial design, where I also finished elementary school. So after that semester, where I took this introductory design course, I called him and said, “Hey, I don’t think I need Elementary in biology and pass this pre-med route. But I literally like the concept of going into design. What are you doing now that you’re out of college?And that’s how it all started.
Is that what brought you to Philadelphia? Yes, I did a semester at the University of Pittsburgh and before that, a semester at my local network school. Pitt is a wonderful school, but one thing they lack is commercial design. So when I made the decision to replace my elementary, after hearing how much my brother enjoyed the program here and after growing up in a very rural domain where I had dreamed of moving to a big city, [I had] a weird mindset like, “Okay, I’d like to be in a city where there are other things, opportunities, and people. “So moving to Philly didn’t scare me at all. I liked the concept of a new city and new experiences.
When you moved here, were you already in touch with your circle of relatives?So, they gave you Ouais. Je after you graduated from high school. And that summer and during my freshman year of college, I talked to my full circle of family about it. .
Was your brother able to show you around the town when you got here? Point out Woody’s for you? [Laughing] No, both my brothers are married to women and straight. They’re great. They were absolutely fantastic about it. But my brother actually moved back to Pittsburgh, just as I was moving here. He wanted to be closer to Mom and Dad and wanted to settle down in that region.
So he wasn’t their excursion advisor for a long time. No, however, I visited several times while living here.
I read you did some study abroad. Tell me a little bit about that. In 2013, I was fortunate enough to get to study abroad in Milan, Italy from about January to June. It was just an incredible experience. Milan is such a capital for design and art and creativity. We got to go to the Salone, which is a huge furniture design festival that they hold every year in the city. And since we were in the design program, our professors got to take us to different studios of the artists exhibiting their works and introduce us to them.
To have the freedom to do it was incredible. It was just glorious to be able to tour Italy. But then I was also able to move on to Germany and celebrate Carnival in Cologne, which was a lot of fun.
And the first week, when we landed there in January, I found out that Venice Carnival was happening that weekend. All of my classmates were like, “We’re just gonna stay in Milan and settle in.” Ever since I was in the eighth grade, and read a National Geographic piece about Venice (it featured Venice Carnival), I wanted to go there; to see the city, especially at carnival time. So everyone stayed in Milan and I took the first train out to Venice to catch the carnival and cross off something from my bucket list.
Well done! When I was in South Korea for their film festival, there were only about 20 non-Asian filmmakers there and they all stayed together. They didn’t go anywhere. I was the one who was with all the Asian managers and filmmakers from all the countries at the local bar at 4 in the morning, drinking out of steel pots. During our spring break, while reading abroad, when everyone else was moving on to the beach, I decided to travel as far north as possible and back. So I ended up spending three days in Stockholm and then I took a trip to Hamburg, Germany, and I spent three days there because that’s my family line and my dad is a big history buff. I was able to tell him that I had been able to see the village of his ancestors.
And then I went to Amsterdam and spent another 4 days surfing on a couch with a group of amazing hosts who were all gay men adorable enough to invite me to their house to stay. There is a wonderful photo in this historic Swedish city. outdoors in Stockholm: me with my host and some friends, whom I also met sailing on the couch. [There is] a woman from China; an Indian boy who now lives in Sweden; a boy from the UK; then some other Middle Eastern woman; And that’s all of us, in this little foreign group. And one of my classmates asked me, “How do you know all those people?Well, I don’t stay in my dorm room with my classmates. I faint to communicate with people.
Yeah, it’s amazing what you can do when you open up just a little bit. So what did you do after graduation? So as I was wrapping up college, I had a few internships and I wrote for art and design websites throughout college. I worked as a model maker for Lasko Products, running these big 3D printers they had on site. That was hands on and a lot of fun. Then I worked for a company called Remedy Simulation Group in Perkasie. We were building and fabricating anatomy and simulation models for nursing, medical and veterinary schools. It was a really cool job but the commute was awful.
Ha! I also paint at Drexel with medical academics and we use mannequins and SIM parts. It makes me laugh when they mark boxes of buttocks, or breasts and other anatomical parts. Yes! I walked in and my workplace had a box of catheter education templates. So there’s only one box of silicone penises and vaginas. You hook them up to a fake bladder. And yes, it was an attractive job. So I did it a little bit. And after that, I took a little break from the design world, probably exhausted from traveling.
I lived in East Falls at the time. I worked for a store called Vault and Vine. I worked in the retail side, and was a greenhouse manager there. I had a pretty good knowledge base from working with my father’s landscaping business. It was nice to interact more with the community and get engaged in a local neighborhood. After that, I transitioned into tech a bit and did some UX design and research for some companies here in Philly. And then after that, COVID happened.
What does UX design mean? User experience. It requires a lot of thought, research, and design about how other people interact with virtual interfaces, as well as workflows and systems. This sparked in me a new interest in data architecture. How do you make sense of it in a quick and understandable way?That’s an important component of what I’m doing now with Fresh Artists.
It’s a very productive transition to ask questions about Fresh Artists and what attracted you to them. During the pandemic, I was fortunate enough to work remotely with many giant corporate clients, but they didn’t have the best PR experience. to a point where it was getting a little daunting and I looked for a change. I was looking to go through something a little more mission-driven. I reached out to a former instructor and smart friend, Elaine Godley, for whom I also interned. I lived in the same building as Fresh Artists and knew there was a position to fill there, and that’s what started it all.
It looks like they’re doing a wonderful job. Yes, our number one project is to provide education, programs, and art supplies to underfunded public schools. This ranges from offering lesson plans to our teachers and their art categories to wonderful teachers with donations of art sources, either through donations and corporate partnerships. We run an annual giveaway and giveaway campaign with BLICK Art materials, where consumers purchase more products to donate to network schools across the country.
We also work in those underfunded schools through our corporate art program, where we take students’ art and print it for them. We take the high-resolution scan, enlarge it, reproduce it on a very high-quality cardboard, and then install it in other interiors or other exhibitions, such as the flower exhibition. The donations we get from those corporate partners and clients are used to fund programming and schools that help create artists. We also manage other design labs and art summer camps. Actually, it’s special because that’s when we paint directly and care about the students.
Just seeing a group of kids go to town on blank paper and just create is really special, especially when we get to do things like our wallpaper design lab. We had a famous wallpaper designer and artist from New York. The kids got a whole intro into designing wallpaper and on the last day, we invited the parents to come. We printed off large scale sheets and tacked them up in our print studio so that parents could see their kid’s patterns blown up. We got to give each of those kids the sheets to take home. It’s cute seeing the kids react to their artwork, but it’s even more heartwarming seeing the parents react to the kids’ artwork and seeing the kids react to the parents. Just like “Oh my God! You’re so talented!”
Do you have any students or assignments that stand out to you?As far as allocation goes, I’d say the Philadelphia Flower Show in 2022. We were an important exhibitor. That’s when I was outside at FDR Park. I was still relatively new, but I helped oversee and manage more than 1,700 works of art we earned from scholars in Philadelphia. Actually, it was special for those who had been selected to take part in such an important occasion for Philadelphia. All the children made artistic statements about their paintings that we can quote and communicate, and providing tickets for the children and their families to come and see the exhibition was really special. I’m amazed at what kids can create. We have children in our collection from kindergarten through 12th grade, and it’s special when you can find the child who doesn’t even consider themselves to be artistically inclined or necessarily creative, yet this program makes them see themselves in another light.
We hear that schools are cutting art programs. Do you consider this to be the case? Certainly, although I expected it, I was surprised to notice how serious it was. Even at the best school my dad went to, they eliminated all the music categories, the art categories; they all disappeared. All arts are under the fire of criticism. And it’s a shame because they locate cash for football and sports programs, and don’t get me wrong, I played sports and I know the importance of it, but if you think about it, which one has the maximum longevity? How long can you play soccer? Even among professionals, the lifespan is short, but you can paint up to 80 years. You may be told to explain yourself through art, poetry, song or art. It is anything that can be used in all facets of life. We give out grants for art kits and I get a ton of emails from teachers talking about wishes at their schools and it’s heartbreaking. They spend so much of their own money it’s ridiculous. On the other hand, I get a lot of emails expressing gratitude, sometimes with photos of the art the kids have made with our art kits!
So let’s get personal. You said you had a boyfriend. . . Yes, Brett. She just graduated this summer from cosmetology school. He worked for Wells Fargo but was laid off after the pandemic and to pursue a new path. And exciting news: since New Year’s Eve, he’s now my fiancé. I’ve been engaged!
Congratulations!What was the last movie you saw in the cinema?We saw “Napoleon” during the winter break.
More possession? We have an antique whaling harpoon that was given to us by a friend. We love sweets!
What’s your favorite quote? The first one that comes to mind is that of designer Charles Eames. I don’t give the exact quote, but it tells the story of how in the end everything connects people, ideas, moments. It’s just a matter of looking for the ones you connect. It’s amazing how true that is.
For more information or to make a donation to Fresh Artists, visit freshartists. org.
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