You can’t rush art. But you can make it easier to learn.
Jaclyn Pham, ’25, is trying to make art more accessible through her Allegheny Lab for Innovation and Creativity workshop series.
The project began as a collaboration between Pham and her faculty mentor for the project, Eila V. Bush Endowed Professor of Art Heather Brand.
Pham and Brand both noticed a desire from students and faculty to learn basic photography and photo editing skills. They also knew that teaching many of these skills is a lengthier process than many realize.
“Truthfully, I’d been asked many, many times by faculty outside of art: ‘Hey, could you really quick come teach me how to use photography as a tool in my class, or could you teach me how to use Photoshop?’” Brand said. “I would try to, as kindly as possible, say that’s a lot of stuff to deliver on the fly.”
So Pham and Brand came up with an idea. As a double-major in art, design and innovation and software engineering, Pham thought to combine her skills into an easily-digestible workshop series open to all students and faculty, in and out of the art department.
“Our goal is just so people don’t view art as intimidating and so inaccessible,” Pham said. “It’s more like if you want to take good pictures, attend the session for like an hour and then you leave feeling more confident.”
After spending the summer developing the syllabus, course materials and structure of the sessions with an Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities grant, the series was ready for a test run.
Round one of the sessions includes “A Guide to Cell Phone Photography” on Oct. 18 and 25 and “Photoshop Comes to the Rescue” on Nov. 1 and 8. The Oct. 18 session went well in Pham’s opinion, and the feedback she received from participants proved that even brief lessons in the ALIC lab can make the space less intimidating.
“I love that people come into the workshop and they don’t feel intimidated,” Pham said.
The cell phone photography workshop helped participants understand cell phone camera tools, apply composition principles and analyze their pictures for a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of photography, according to the handouts for the session designed by Pham.

The last session of the series will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 8, and will focus on Adobe Photoshop. This session is designed to build on the first and will “equip participants with essential techniques in image post-production including editing, retouching, and composition using Adobe Photoshop,” according to the handouts for the session. As for the future of the series, both Pham and Brand have big dreams in mind. Brand would like to see more students bring their ideas to the art department for more skill-sharing opportunities.
“My goal is to have a few student employees and be able to expand these,” Brand said. “Maybe intro to video editing, some sort of more design-based stuff and print layout, things like that.”
Pham echoed the same kind of hope, adding that the ability to save the sessions for future use could be even more beneficial.
“We believe that everybody has something to teach and something to share,” Pham said. “And then we can just build up gradually like a library of the knowledge of art, and that would be very cool.”
By the time they leave the sessions, participants will have a free Adobe account, the comprehensive handout for their session and the start of a new project.
“Every session we’re gonna work to complete a project that they can take home with them, so it’s something that motivates them to come,” Pham said.
Overall, Pham and Brand emphasized that getting students into the ALIC lab and creating whatever they’d like is a priority for them, especially given that many students don’t know that the lab is open to them.
“You can just use this lab,” Brand said. “It’s a campus thing, it’s not an art department thing.”