Art Lab fosters creativity with art talks, projects and a thrift shop

By Ellen Trinklein     11/29/12 6:00pm

In the past month, students may have heard talk of an art panel, a new thrift store in the Rice University Memorial Center, or even a fabled "zine." Hipsters may not be infiltrating Rice, but Art Lab is. 

Martel College junior and economics major Melissa Teng and Wiess College junior and architecture major Austin Jarvis have just launched a new club, Art Lab, with the hope of becoming a resource for Rice's budding art community. 

The idea first came about as a response to the success of 2012's CelebrateART festival, an event which featured student creativity of all kinds.

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"Essentially, what we realized after CelebrateART was that there is a lot of unmet [artistic] potential at Rice, that there is a ton of talent and interest on campus for the arts," Teng said. 

After maintaining contact over the summer and working out how they could help expand the arts at Rice, the duo received an Envision Grant for an art residency program, according to Teng, but since then, plans have changed. 

"We realized that even if we created an art residency program, it wouldn't have been very well-accepted because campus culture isn't primed for it," Teng said. "The problem is not resources, but the culture surrounding creativity and arts [at Rice]."

According to Teng, Art Lab is now focusing on a workshop- and events-heavy model. In workshops, students will be able to work with locals and other artists and have opportunities for hands-on experience. Meanwhile, events will focus on field trips and artist talks or panels. 

Part of the purpose of such a structure is to bring Rice's art community together. 

"These are ways to help build the community," Jarvis said. "There's no other outlet for people to find people with these same interests."

One of the key aspects of Art Lab is its availability to Rice students of all majors, not just those studying art or art-related fields.

"At our first meeting, we didn't have any art majors, so it was immediately obvious that even though art is a school within Rice, a lot of people do art in their spare time," Jarvis said. "We think that art can help anybody. Research or [engineering] design requires creativity, so art can help [science and engineering students] with their major. Some people don't always see the direct relation of their majors to art."

Although still in its beginning stages, Art Lab already has a series of projects in mind, according to Jarvis. 

Nov. 18 marked the opening of BALTRA, a thrift store in the RMC basement that will be the club's hot spot for fashion along with a fashion blog.  

Other projects include a "Zine," short for magazine, which will showcase art, art events and lectures in the Houston community. Ideas for accessible art and recording studio spaces are also in the works. 

In addition to these projects, Art Lab has a newly launched website, riceartlab.org, which features all the projects the club is working on and a link to subscribe to the Listserv, which will send out regular email updates.

Students interested in joining should get on the Listserv and start attending meetings. 

"That's where spontaneous things happen," Jarvis said. 

Both Teng and Jarvis emphasize that Art Lab is a resource to help everyone explore their creativity.

"We're trying to broaden the idea that art is not just drawing and to promote more creative experimentation on campus," Teng said. 

Currently, Art Lab is calling for art submissions for its second CelebrateART festival in January. The submissions may come from students of any major and in media ranging from fashion to photography, music to performance art.

"Art is not the kind of thing you have to compromise for your studies," Jarvis said. "Art doesn't mean creating masterpieces or going to museums every day. We want to make the act of creativity accessible for students, dissolve the boundaries around art and help people realize that you can blend art with chemistry or nanotechnology."

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