Art Lab makes art available to all

By Kaylen Strench     2/20/13 6:00pm

Last Sunday, students from all majors gathered in the Sewall Hall sculpture room to participate in the first-ever Art Lab workshop.  In this event, students learned collage technique and were given the opportunity to create their own scenes with a  variety of graphical materials.

  Organized by Lovett College freshman Sophie Eichner, Wiess College sophomore Sam Calvetti, Baker College freshman Claire O'Malley and other creative students, Art Lab is a collaborative effort developed to support and promote the arts at Rice through projects and media. Its mission is to use programs like the collage workshop to make art accessible to all Rice students, regardless of their skill level or academic interest.

O'Malley, a double major in mechanical engineering and visual arts, said she thinks it is important to create a campus culture that embraces and values art, especially at a university with such strong engineering and natural science programs.  

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"We need to realize we have a lot of really cool artists here and people who want to express themselves," O'Malley said.  "That's the point of the workshops - to not just talk about art, but [also] to make it and make that present."

Eichner, Calvetti and O'Malley said they hope to organize several more workshops for the rest of the semester. They plan to focus their next program on documentation, giving students an opportunity to preserve past works and learn how to document future projects. 

O'Malley emphasized the potential for Art Lab to make art more prevalent at Rice by increasing its presence and accessibility on campus.

"This is a place where anyone - an engineer, architect, academ - can come and honestly just do whatever they want," O' Malley said, "[We just] want everyone to have a good time and make the arts known at Rice."

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