Anna Hall ’15 has been drawing for as long as she can remember. When most kids her age had already put down their pencils and paper, Hall stayed with art and has continued to pursue that passion throughout her impressive career at Bowdoin.

Hall is a student of many talents, not all of which are limited to the arts. She is an earth and oceanographic science and visual arts double major who is involved in the Bowdoin Outing Club, the Bowdoin Food Co-op and the Orient.

Hall is currently experimenting with different mediums of art, particularly watercolor and photography.

“I always have a roll of film going,” she said. “I love the physical process where you’re taking a picture and you can’t look at it right away. It’s always a surprise to develop the film, to watch what comes out and remember what you photographed.”

Hall’s most recent project, for her Senior Studio, has been with watercolors and is now on display at the Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance.

“I just finished up Senior Studio,” said Hall. “That was a figure painting watercolor project. You dive into a subject more so than in other classes and really work on developing the concepts throughout the semester. That’s a lot of fun because it requires a lot of trying something out and then if it doesn’t work, trying it again.”

Hall wanted to experiment with line drawings and the human form for her Senior Studio project.

“I hung up two paintings that are a little bit more literal and then some line drawing-style paintings where I was trying to minimize form and reduce the human body to a couple of lines,” she said. “I wanted to see how far I could push and have the image still be recognizable.”

Hall also finds the time to provide illustrations for Orient articles. Working for the Orient was her first time experimenting with illustrations, and said that it has been a fun way for her to work on art outside of Bowdoin art classes, which often fill up quickly.

“For me, working for the Orient has been a great way to do art in a social setting,” she said.Hall also uses art to relieve the stress from the heavy workload and busy life of a typical Bowdoin student.

“At Bowdoin, art is my sanity time,” said Hall. “It’s something that feels less academic and a lot more creative, which has definitely helped my stress levels.”

Drawing inspiration from the world around her, Hall is often excited by the random things she finds when she is outside.

“In Photo I, I was out taking pictures in the woods and I found a vacuum cleaner,” she said. “I really liked that, and ever since then I like to notice the random things that I find every time I’m walking. I love just seeing something interesting and asking myself why it’s interesting, and then exploring that through drawing or painting.”

Although Hall is sure that she will continue with her art after graduation, she is not entirely sure what the future holds.

“I don’t know if I’m going to make a career out of art. That would be great, to maybe do something like graphic design. However, I’m definitely excited to have more time to really pursue art for a while,” she said.

Diamond Walker ’17 tried out for an Irish dancing team though a program at her elementary school at age eight. She was accepted into the program, which turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong love of dance. Now a sophomore involved in many projects on campus, Walker still finds the time to pursue her passion.

Though Walker was an Irish dancer in her childhood, she switched to hip-hop when she was 15. Walker took dance classes as a first year, and has continued to be involved in dance through her choreography and leadership of Obvious Dance Crew.

Walker’s current project has been choreographing a piece for the Asian Students Association (ASA) Fashion Show, which is coming up in two weeks. However, she plans to do a more personal piece for the student show in May. 

“Usually my dances are more fun and I usually do my dances for other people,” said Walker. “I really want to do a dance that’s about identity and about race with all the events that have been happening this year, like Ferguson.”

Walker said her family inspired her to become a dancer.

“Dancing in my family is normal. My mom played music in the mornings while cooking or cleaning and music is always on in the house,” said Walker. 

“We would always be moving which was something that I loved. I love to move. It was a way that I enjoyed expressing myself and it was comfortable for me,” she added.

Walker recalls times when she would choreograph dances for her cousins to perform. “My male cousin was always the footstool. He hated it,” said Walker.

One of Walker’s sources of inspiration is Nappytabs, a husband and wife dance duo from the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance.” 

“They do the craziest isolations and choreography,” said Walker. “To this day I still watch some of my favorite pieces of theirs to get inspired in my own work.” 

Walker also finds inspiration in music of all kinds.

“I love listening to classical music when I’m doing my homework,” she said. “I’ll be sitting there and I’ll start dancing to a classical beat which is very unheard of.”

Walker is involved with many clubs and organizations outside of dance. She is currently a member of Residential Life, serving as a proctor in Osher, and is a student director for the Women’s Resource Center. Walker is also a staff member at the McKeen Center for the Common Good. She recently co-facilitated a four-week group discussion series about identity at Bowdoin for Undiscussed, a student group dedicated to discussing difficult issues.

In her spare time, Walker loves to learn about the science of hair and how to take care of it. She is passionate about social activism and loves to discuss issues surrounding race and diversity at Bowdoin. Walker wants to bring her love of dance into everything that she does and plans to incorporate her passion into whatever career path she chooses to go down. She uses dance as a method of expressing herself. 

“I love to be big when I’m dancing. I’m a small person, so in my dancing I like to do big expressive movements to show the big person I am on the inside,” she said.

To suggest an artist for Portrait of an Artist, email Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Weyrauch at eweyrauc@bowdoin.edu.

Jarred Kennedy-Loving ’15 was not always encouraged to embrace his body. It was only after he took his first dance class with former Visiting Professor Nya McCarthy-Brown his sophomore year that he felt inspired about  dancing. Now a senior, he is a gender and women’s studies major and dance minor who is completing an independent study in dance that explores identity, reflection and perception—thanks to and in spite of any and all of obstacles that stood in his way. 

Coming from a lower socioeconomic background, dance wasn’t on his radar when he was growing up. When one of his foster families put him in a church production as an angel, the pastor approached him and told him boys shouldn’t wear tight clothing like his. After that experience he became self-conscious and discouraged not only about his body, but how he moved it. 

“I didn’t dance that much,” said Kennedy-Loving. “But I always knew that I could.” 

At Bowdoin, working with McCarthy-Brown was a turning point for him.

“She changed my life; she believed in me,” he said. “She taught me how to isolate my rib cage—I could move it like Shakira.” 

In class, Kennedy-Loving liked observing how different people move and figuring out how they did it. 

“I got to the class and it was like food for me,” he said. “It’s so good to see what people are coming up with.” 

From these experiences, Kennedy-Loving started to think about the questions that would evolve into his independent study: How do others view us in our space? How do we interact? 

But before his independent study was completely underway, Kennedy-Loving had a setback.

On February 7, he started the day breaking records with the track and field team at the Maine State Track Meet, including his personal record of 23 seconds in the 200-meter dash. He ended the day, however, in the emergency in Lewiston, Maine. While running the 400 meter race, he suffered a compound fracture in his leg.

“It was an emotional time for me,” he said. “I was in my hospital room thinking, how am I going to finish my minor?”

For Kennedy-Loving, being an athlete and a dancer work together because both demand his attention and awareness of his body in space. 

“I listen to my body,” he said. “It’s more important than the beat itself.” 

In addition to his experiences on the dance floor and the track, Kennedy-Loving brings another level to his personal journey with identity, reflection and perception. While he has been supported at Bowdoin, he still finds it difficult to navigate his identity as a gay black man. 

“Whatever you may be, you have to find that creative truth,” said Kennedy-Loving. 

For his independent study, Kennedy-Loving is choreographing a piece based on his favorite poem, “And Yea...This is a Love Poem,” by Nikki Giovanni. He emphasizes that a lot of his work is about making choices and accepting them.When choosing dancers it was important for him to emphasize that no dance experience was necessary. 

“It’s ludicrous to say only certain people can move in space,” he said. Teresa Liu ’15, Adaiah Hudgins-Lopez ’18 and Christabel Fosu-Asare ’18 are dancing in this project.

When it comes to the actual choreography, Kennedy-Loving said he sees it as a collaborative effort. Throughout the process, Kennedy-Loving said he has felt inspired by his dancers and their energy. 

“I have to watch these three [people] move in space to work through the choreography,” he explained. 

His piece is comprised of angular movements and fluid motions that focus on the upper body as a representation of the constrained identity. 

“Am I an artist? I don’t know if I’m an artist. I love movement and patterns and space and expression,” he said. “But I struggle to call myself a dancer, so I just call myself Jarred.” 

As a visual arts major, Molly Rider ’15 has pursued everything from film to making her own furniture. She dedicates much of her time at Bowdoin to the visual arts, and plans to pursue a career in this field after graduation.

In her sophomore year, Rider began to get involved in the arts as a part of Bowdoin Artist Activists, through which she did art projects with local elementary schools.

The next year, while taking her junior year off from Bowdoin on medical leave, Rider was able to take art classes in industrial design at the University of Minnesota. She is currently working on her senior studio project.

“I am doing woodworking and photography and printmaking for my senior studio,” she said. “I have really enjoyed printing photos on wood.”This project also includes making her own furniture.

“I just made a coffee table and some side tables,” she said. “I also made a lamp that hangs from the ceiling, which I definitely will include in my room in the future.”

Students in the senior studio class will present a project at the end of the semester.

“It is like an independent study because you make your own schedule and stick to it,” she said. “It’s great because the art department as well as local artists come critique your work so you get a lot of feedback.”

Rider has also been involved in film throughout her time at Bowdoin. She interned at a film company called By Kids the summer after her freshman year.

“They get filmmakers to go all over the world and make documentaries about kids’ lives,” she said. “They tell stories about their lives to bring relevant issues to the public that are not in the mainstream media. I did a lot of grant writing for them and met a lot of filmmakers.”

On campus, Rider is a leader of the Bowdoin Outing Club.

“I love kayaking, skiing, and rafting,” she said. Rider’s favorite art class at Bowdoin was landscape painting with Associate Professor of Art James Mullen.

“Our assignments were more open, which pushed my painting skills and encouraged me to paint a different way,” she said. “I also got to paint more of what I liked to do.”

The projects Rider is most proud of include her Landscape Painting final project and her senior studio project. 

“For Landscape Painting, I made fifteen paintings and they were fun because they were quick and very colorful,” she said. “What I am working on now, specifically bending wood, has also been really fun.”

Rider’s mother is a children’s book editor, and she loves the artwork of many illustrators her mother has worked with.

“Melissa Sweet is a local artist who is great,” she said.In addition, Rider finds inspiration in printmaker Rick Allen’s work.“I love his work because of the level of detail he puts into it,” she said. “He uses beautiful landscapes and includes the natural world, which I am drawn to.”  Rider plans to go abroad to New Zealand this summer to complete her last semester.“I am taking two industrial design classes there and then considering going to graduate school for industrial design after that,” she said. 

To suggest an artist for Portrait of an Artist, email Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Weyrauch at eweyrauc@bowdoin.edu.

Unlike most of today’s youth, junior Henry Austin has video skills that extend far beyond Snapchat and Vine. Austin, a visual arts and economics double major who hails from Lander, Wy., has been creating short films since his senior year of high school. Although inspired and assisted by others, Austinmostly taught himself.

Although videography is one of Austin’s most refined skills, he said that he is quite adept in multiple artistic areas. He focuses on printmaking in his academic studies at Bowdoin.

Austin spent this past fall  semester studying at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy. While there, Austin took courses in color photography, High Renaissance art history, creative writing  and of course printmaking. 

“I took a color photography class in Florence and am taking photography again this semester,” he said. “So this academic year has been an introduction to photography as a fine art as opposed to something that I just do.”

Austin’s favorite part of creating art is collaboration, which is why he is drawn especially to making films.

However, Austin said finding a common time that works for all involved parties has proved to be the most difficult aspect of completing a project. But he enjoys the challenge.

“Collaboration is the best part of art, in general,” he said. “Videography in particular requires working in teams—that’s why I’m so drawn to it.”

Austin says he approaches the process of photography and videography in the same way. “Almost everything depicted in my pieces is basically just me having fun with my friends,” said Austin. 

The themes of fun and friendship can be seen by watching a few of Austin’s short films. Austin’s short film created in his sophomore year, “Burnt Decks,” depicts his childhood friend woodburning a design onto a skateboard. This short film, as well others, reveal Austin’s ear for music.

“Music selection is always a critical decision,” he said. “I shuffle through my playlist and pick a song based on what type of mood I want to convey. Sometimes, though, I will have a song and make a video for that particular song.”

Although Austin is not focused on videography from an academic standpoint, he has still been able to intertwine videography with his life at Bowdoin. He has entered two campus film festivals in the past and was recently hired by the Career Planning Center as a video intern. Clubs and individuals often contact Austin to shoot footage. Some of Austin’s photograms are currently on display in the Blythe Bickle Edwards Center for Art and Dance. 

Austin said he draws inspiration from both renowned artists and his peers.“I like to view others’ work and try to imitate or capture what I liked about their method,” he said.

Austin cited Wes Anderson as his celebrity filmmaker inspiration, stating that Anderson’s refusal to compromise makes him a strong example to follow. 

As for long term plans, Austin said he intends to keep his art in the picture. 

“The ultimate goal is to fuse art and the process of creation with being active outdoors and exploration,” he said. “The dream job would be some sort of outdoor filmmaking.”

For now, Austin said he seems content with his focus on friends and fun. 

“Any time you hit the record button with your friends around, you have nothing to lose—but everything to gain,” said Austin. “Every moment is a special moment that can easily be forgotten.”

To suggest an artist for Portrait of an Artist, email Arts & Entertainment Editor Emily Weyrauch at eweyrauc@bowdoin.edu.

For Carly Berlin ’18, writing is not just an academic interest or a frivolous pastime. An aspiring creative writer, Berlin uses her words as a medium to better understand herself and the world.  

Berlin, a native of Atlanta, Ga., keeps a drawer of past journals and diaries by her bed which hold the history of her love for writing. Ever since she can remember, she has been writing and illustrating stories. 

“I’ve been writing my whole life,” she said. During high school, Berlin developed a more serious commitment to her craft. A month-long creative writing program the summer before her senior year crystallized her dedication to creating works of fiction. 

About a year ago, Berlin started her blog, “Endless Foolery,” where, she posts entries ranging from short stories to daily thoughts and streams-of-consciousness. 

Berlin’s inspiration for starting a blog came from a high school creative writing workshopping class.  

“I was really happy with the things I was coming out with and I felt like I just wanted other people to see them,” she said.

Several months ago Berlin committed to writing in a journal each night before she goes to bed. 

“When I write something I like, I type it up and put it on the blog,” she said. “That’s usually about once a week.” 

The front page of the blog includes a Shakespeare quote: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” After coming across this quote in a Shakespeare quote book, Berlin was struck by the word “fool” and found it expressive as a title for the blog. 

“I think no matter how seriously we want to take ourselves sometimes, we are all a little foolish,” she said.

For Berlin, the blog is as much for personal fulfillment as it is for sharing her work with a broader audience. 

“When I’m writing, I’m writing for myself. But I am hoping that other people feel something from it,” she said. 

As a first year, Berlin is in the midst of the transition from living at home to college life, and she has grappled with the transition in many recent blog posts. She hopes other students sharing this sentiment feel consoled when they read her posts and realize that someone else is feeling the same way. 

Berlin draws stylistic inspiration from Virginia Woolf. After reading a book by Woolf, she says she subconsciously adopted Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style, particularly in her blog entries.

As for her Bowdoin career, Berlin is on the staff of The Quill, where she will have work published later this semester. She is currently taking Visiting Assistant Professor of English’s Sarah Braunstein’s Advanced Fiction Workshop. Beyond Bowdoin, Berlin expressed her dreams of becoming a published fiction writer.  “I see myself writing for my whole life, and I would love to think I could be this aspiring novelist,” she said. 

Berlin’s greatest satisfaction comes from hearing that people are reading and appreciating her blog, and she hopes to get more readers interested in the blog in the future. Yet her writing also serves a personal purpose, forming a framework for how she navigates the world.

“I know that for me it’s such a therapeutic thing to write; it helps me stay sane and self-aware,” she said. 

Visit Berlin's blog here.

To suggest an artist for Portrait of an Artist, email Arts & Entertainment editor Emily Weyrauch at eweyrauc@bowdoin.edu.

For most, doodling represents absentminded gibberish. For Isaac Jaegerman ’16, it has always been a passion. 

“I’ve loved art for as long as I can remember,” Jaegerman said. “I was always doodling.”

Jaegerman, a visual arts major from Portland, Maine, decided in high school that he wanted to pursue art in college. It was not until he began classes at Bowdoin that he realized he wanted a degree in visual arts. Jaegerman’s portfolio includes drawings, paintings and printmaking. “I’ve found paintings to be the most intellectually intensive [art form] and I really enjoy [that] process,” he said. “But I have the most fun with printmaking.”

Jaegerman spent this past summer interning at Pickwick Press, a print studio in Portland. There, he was able to learn woodblock printing and use presses not available at Bowdoin.

Although Jaegerman said that there is not a consistent theme throughout his portfolio, most of his pieces fall into the genre of realism. 

“I’ve been most inspired by realism so far. Claudio Bravo is one of my favorite painters. I also did a copy of one of Richard Estes’ paintings just this year,” Jaegerman said. “It’s easy to fall back on realism, but I’m still trying to figure out what my style is.” 

Bowdoin’s art department is allowing Jaegerman to expand his artistic horizons. This semester, he is taking Landscape Painting with Associate Professor of Art James Mullen. He’s currently working on an oil-on-canvas painting of a forest setting. He’s also working on his own self-guided projects, as he is a teaching assistant for Printmaking and is always in the studio.

As for his creative process, Jaegerman sticks to a calculated, organized method. 

“I usually have a good sense of what I want my project to look like before I begin,” he said. “I move very logically, step-by-step. I work progressively from area to area. There’s a lot of planning involved.”

Jaegerman is a prominent artistic figure on campus. His art is featured both in the Visual Arts Center (VAC) and in the Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance. His panorama painting of the Quad is on display in the fishbowl in the VAC, and one of his landscape paintings hangs in Edwards. His work was also on display in Bowdoin Art Society’s fall show “340 Miles North.”

While Jaegerman’s pieces remain on display for the enjoyment of students, faculty and visitors alike, the artist himself will be taking his talents overseas. Next semester, Jaegerman will travel to Florence, Italy, where he will study etching, drawing and art history at SACI, the Studio Art Centers International.

This summer, following his semester abroad, Jaegerman will hike across Iceland with Adeline Browne ’16 and Matthew Goroff ’16, thanks to a fellowship from the Bowdoin Outing Club. Jaegerman is planning an independent study using photos from his Icelandic journey to create landscape paintings. 

“It’s exciting because I’ve never really done a series before,” he said. 

Jaegerman feels that the Bowdoin arts community has something special.

“You can go into Edwards at any time of night, like two or three in the morning, and there will be several people there working on their projects,” he said. “It’s really nice.”

Jaegerman’s multimedia portfolio can be accessed online through his Weebly account.

Amina Ben Ismail, a sophomore from Tunisia, is a passionate dancer and visual artist working to integrate the arts on campus through a collaborative project involving dancers, slam poets and musicians. 

Ben Ismail’s inspiration for the project came from a French dance video.

“I was watching a French slam poet and the video clip was of two dancers dancing to the words,” she said. “Plus, I’m sad I’m not taking any dance classes this semester, so I thought maybe I could work on something myself.”

Ben Ismail assembled a group of students for the project by reaching out to dance groups, the Slam Poet Society and musicians on campus.The project will include a recording of slam poetry with music and choreography.

“We call it the DANM Project because it combines dance and music,” said Ben Ismail. “There are two slam poets involved, dancers and one musician who plays the piano.”

The group has recorded the slam poetry performance already.

“The original idea was to write about identity and coming of age,” she said. “They wrote two parts, one about a girl and one about a guy. I want it to be a story.”

Ben Ismail hopes to debut this new project in the spring dance performance.

“It is hard to organize with that many people from different art backgrounds,” she said. “It was a very spontaneous idea, so I am not sure yet if it will be a club or a dance group.”

Ben Ismail has been dancing—as well as drawing and painting—since she was young and has continued to pursue these interests at Bowdoin.

“I have done seven years of ballet, and then when I was a teenager I turned to modern,” she said. “I also drew a lot from ages 10 to 15 and then I stopped for a while. Then I took Drawing I with [Professor of Art] Mark Wethli and I loved it. I have also done a few dance classes.”

Last year, Ben Ismail took Interdisciplinary Performance Making, a class that combined all types of artists. At the end of the semester, the class performed “Harrison Bergeron Escapes From the Zoo,” combining silks, music, singing and acting.

“It was such a great experience; it was very different from anything I’ve done before,” she said. “Learning silks was so tiring, and we had rehearsal every day. The performance was so fun and crazy and the group of people that participated was great and we bonded so much.”

In addition to the arts, Ben Ismail runs the Arabic table, tutors in French and is a member of Safe Space and an inter-race dialogue group.

She hopes to include the arts in her academic study as well.

“I think I will be an anthropology major and a visual arts minor, but that could change,” she said. “I am taking Ordinary Ethics right now. I really like how we start from case studies and then generalize, and we talk a lot about relationships between people on a humanitarian level.”

This past summer, Ben Ismail traveled to Rome for an Italian program, and then completed an internship in social business at home in Tunisia.

In the future, she hopes to do more with the visual arts.

“I was thinking about a senior studio project that could connect what I do here to Tunisia,” Ben Ismail said. “It would be great to paint Tunisian faces and incorporate the struggles of the revolution.” 

Miranda Hall ’18 began writing music at the age of 13 and has since become an accomplished and passionate singer-songwriter. 

“Some people need to play sports. Some people need to paint. I need to sing,” she said. “I wouldn’t be completely living if I weren’t singing.” 

When she was younger, Hall also taught herself to play the acoustic guitar with help from her father.

While Hall has been writing for a long time, she has always been nervous to perform her music.

This summer, however, Hall tested her courage by performing on the streets of Seattle. 

“When I first started writing I would show [my songs] to my friends, but I was too nervous to perform in front of people,” she said.

 “Performing on the street this summer was a challenge that I gave to myself. I wanted to see if I was brave enough to perform for people who had never met me.” 

Hall stood on the streets and opened her case, hoping to pique the interest of those passing by.

“It was never to make money, it was just to be brave,” she said. “If you are genuinely pouring your heart out to someone with words you wrote, there is no way people won’t stop and listen.” 

One of the most memorable moments of her summer came in the form of a gift from a young fan.

“I was singing “Alice”—a song that I wrote about “Alice in Wonderland”—to a little girl, and I could tell that she was really listening to me,” she said. “Afterwards, she came up to me a gave me the stuffed animal she was holding, and I still have it.”

Another one of Hall’s favorite memories is when a man asked to join her performance. “I was singing ‘No Diggity’ and a jazz musician came up to me and started playing with me,” she said.

Hall loves to write music, whether she is writing a song for herself, for someone else, or is just inspired randomly. She said she tries to capture and show a feeling through her words.

“Singing allows me to capture the beautiful moments in life. The first song I wrote was when I was looking out the window in California and it was raining. I just wanted to capture how calm that moment was,” she said.

Hall’s favorite musician is Ed Sheeran because she said he completely enchants his listeners. “Whenever he sings you can tell he is just sharing himself with the listeners.” she said. “I went to his concert when I was 16 and I waited for four hours after the concert to meet him. He signed my purse and I made friends with his security guard while I waited.” 

At Bowdoin, Hall is involved with the Bowdoin Music Collective (BMC) and is interested in bringing singer-songwriters together. 

“The BMC puts on music events and performances,” she said. “I have performed at Unplugged and pop-up open mic nights, as well as the Baxter Coffee House.” 

In addition to the BMC, Miranda is a part of the Bowdoin Outing Club, the Salsa Club and the Bowdoin Art Society. 

Hall is releasing a new single on November 1 called “White Car.” She has already released an EP named “Kingdom” that can be found on iTunes and Spotify. 

“I’m not signed with any label, but I think that if you have a passion, the only thing holding you back is self-doubt,” she said.

Hall ran a Kickstarter to raise money for her musical endeavor. She promised to write songs for people if they donated.  

“I got an email from a man in Afghanistan asking me to write a song for his wife, and I was so excited,” she said. “There was a great response.” 

Hall said she truly believes in following her passions and sharing them with others. “If you love something and you are genuine, people will respond,” she said.  “I’m going to keep singing and putting myself out there. If all else fails, this is something I’ll do in my dorm room on Monday nights.” 

Check out Hall’s EP “Kingdom” on iTunes and look out for her new single “White Car,” which will bereleased November 1.        

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It’s hard to believe that simple loops of metal wire can be transformed into complex forms like hands and feet, but Stevie Lane ’15 makes it possible. She is exploring the twists and turns of wire sculpture through an independent study with Sculptor-in-Residence John Bisbee.

Lane is using this semester to make a self-portrait out of black annealed rebar wire, playing off a similar project that she enjoyed in Sculpture II.

“Bowdoin doesn’t have [a sculpture course] after Sculpture II, so I spoke with Bisbee and asked if I could do an independent study with him in wire, since that was something I really loved when I did it in Sculpture II,” said Lane.

“Bisbee was really encouraging in terms of what I made [for that assignment], so that was really my kind of reason for wanting to continue to explore my ability to articulate shapes with wire and work with realism instead of the abstract,” she said.

The personal power of a self-portrait interested Lane.

“Self-portraits are so much a part of the tradition of drawing...I can’t draw well, but I see this as my own interpretation of the self-portrait assignment—just that it’s three dimensional and my “graphite” is the wire itself!” she added in an email to the Orient.

Lane hopes that this self-portrait—set in heroic scale, which is about one and a half times the size of her own body—will ultimately be free-standing. However, making a large structures like a full-body self-portrait and having it support itself will be a challenging task.

Since she doesn’t weld or solder the wire, “There’s potential for [the sculpture] to be a lot weaker,” said Lane. “You also have to come up with creative ways to attach things.”

Therefore, her final project, which will go on display in the beginning of December, may not end up being a fully-formed figure but instead a series of body parts like hands. To Lane, the final product is not her only goal for the independent study.

“You really get to learn...about your material,” she said. “By narrowing your focus, you have to push yourself to dig deeper...and [to see] what comes out of that.”

Lane is more familiar with the “hot” connections created by glue or soldering than the type of work she is currently pushing herself to explore.

“Ever since I was really young…[my mom and I] used to put down newspaper and get hardware like nuts and bolts and s-hooks…I used to make these little animals by hot gluing hardware together,” she said.

Lane is a Government and Legal Studies major with an English minor and hasn’t taken any visual arts courses outside of sculpture. However, she said Bisbee is one of her favorite professors.

“This independent study is just an excuse to get to work closely with him,” she said.“He, I think, is somehow able to get everybody to produce the best work that they possibly could and I don’t even know how he does it,” said Lane.

While she has at times considered a career in art, it seems that sculpting and metal-working will remain a serious hobby.

“I don’t really know how far I could pursue art. I don’t even know how I’d begin, but it’s definitely something that I’m always going to do on the side, something I do do all the time when I’m at home,” she said.

Lane’s involvement on campus extends beyond her sculpture. She also hosts a radio show, co-leads the volunteer program Book Buddies where students work with ESL students at local schools, contributes to the literary magazine The Quill, and pole vaulted on the varsity track team up until this year. Next semester, she will be pursuing an independent study in creative writing, her other artistic interest.

There’s more to Nikhil Dasgupta ’16 than blazers, khaki pants and barber shop tunes. A member of Bowdoin’s oldest a cappella group, the Meddiebempsters, Dasgupta has recently released an extended play (EP) recording.“It might be a little precocious to call it that,” said Dasgupta.Instead, he called the recording “more [of] just a collection of thoughts over the past years, so it’s not like anything specific. It’s more like what’s been going on in my head.”This summer Dasgupta and his roommate Zach Albert ’16 decided to get into the studio together and record an alternative folk EP, which they plan to share with people who are interested in their music. Albert played the drums and Dasgupta played all the other instruments for the recordings.The Circus, Dasgupta’s band at Bowdoin, mostly covers other bands, but also writes and performs some of its own original songs.  The band consists of Dasgupta and Albert, as well as juniors Harry Rube, Chris MacDonald, Simon Moushabeck, and Shan Nagar.It all started two years ago with a group of friends who lived in same first-year dorm. “We got together and started playing,” said Dasgupta.The band likes “doing [its] own interpretation of songs…like old rock [and] songs that are upbeat and would work at a party,” said Dasgupta.Dasgupta has lived in many different places and went to high school at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, but now calls Dover, Mass. his home.Currently a mathematics major, he plays guitar and has played piano since age eight.He decided to continue his musical journey all the way into college, and auditioned for the Meddiebempsters as a first year. Dasgupta said he likes the different approach the Meddiebempsters take to collegiate a cappella, which tends to be very pop-oriented. The Meddiebempsters instead incorporate old-fashioned barbershop arrangements, and Dasgupta said he enjoys getting to take a break from the music he hears elsewhere every day.His participation in the Meddiebempsters has defined his Bowdoin experience. All of his closest friends are from the Meddies, and Dasgupta finds it “musically very fulfilling as well.”In the future, Dasgupta hopes to continue with music by working as a sound engineer or by working for a record label.“I always wanted to go somewhere with it, [but] that probably doesn’t mean playing in a band on stage,” he said.Dasgupta said he loves the feeling he gets when performing on stage with his band.“It’s easy to feed off the audience getting really excited,” he said.“Some of the most fun I’ve had at Bowdoin has been on stage.” Dasgupta says that performing with the Meddiebempsters is different because of the dynamic of the large group. “We are all sort of supporting each other in a sense,” he said.“It’s like we are just hanging out and making jokes with ourselves and singing.”Although Dasgupta’s schedule can be hectic—with mathematics and computer science courses taking up much of his time—he enjoys keeping busy.“It’s dangerous for me to not have something to do,” he said.

“Just like a late-night conversation that you would have with friends—you know, when you have those life talks. Let’s just model that on stage,” said Tyrelle Johnson ’15.

Thus began the task of writing and directing “Perspectives,” a play performed during Orientation that portrays the diversity of experiences and backgrounds in the first year class. The show is based on short essays first years write before entering Bowdoin, describing their life experiences through challenges.

Taking on “Perspectives,” a Bowdoin Orientation tradition, was a new endeavor for Johnson. He has not been heavily involved in theater groups since high school and the job was one of many that Johnson applied for on campus this summer. Luckily, he said, the experience was a positive one.

 Johnson said that condensing the life experiences of 505 individual students into one play with only six actors was not an easy task. It was a balancing act of representing everyone and avoiding repetition of similar stories.

 “They were pretty much similar in that they asked the same questions to all the students. I had to be really creative to figure out ways to not make it so monotonous.”

Johnson wanted to highlight not only the similarities between students but also the differences.

“I was very serious about having it about class issues. The only way to do that is to pull out things that would signify what social-economic status people come from,” said Johnson. “I would look for things about trips that people who are poor couldn’t afford—things of that nature.”

These anecdotes were harder for Johnson to find than stories from the other end of the spectrum.

“It was much easier to find stories based on poverty than those of privilege,” he said. “Nobody who has a lot of money is going to sit there and talk about how much money they have, especially in a college essay.”

Choosing quotes was a process of digging below the surface.

“I had to really examine what these people were talking about and if that took money, and what resources it took to do that,” he said. “I had to really question certain stories.”

Johnson said he was more nervous presenting his own writing than he was performing.

“I had such a huge stake in it. I didn’t want anyone to feel like their story was represented in the wrong way. I hoped that people would laugh at the parts that I meant to be funny—which wound up happening. It worked.”

The goal of the production was to give an accurate overview of all the backgrounds that make up a typical class at Bowdoin. Johnson hopes the show made first years more aware of the other students they will be spending the next four years with.

“The show is really about developing a foundation—sort of a commonality among people—so they can actually discuss issues,” he said. “I hope that the show impacted them enough so that they might actually want to learn about their peers and figure out things that they may not have thought of. I want people to be connected.”

Outside of this project, Johnson’s main artistic outlet is singing in the Meddiebempsters and his band, The Jboard. But it was performing in theater productions in high school that gave Johnson the confidence on stage he has now.

“Over time I just developed natural ways of being on stage. It just works for me. I just try to use my natural self-taught methods in this process—which has actually worked out because singing on stage is not that different from acting on stage.”

Johnson feels that his main contribution to the Meddiebempsters is bringing character to the performances.

“When I get on stage, I just know how to interact with people. I just get really goofy,” he said.

Like many students, Johnson’s artistic pursuits have been a part of his education, but ultimately Johnson would like to use his Government and Legal Studies major to become a judge. For now, singing is just a hobby.

“It just makes life around here a little nicer,” he said. “That’s all.”

Christiana Whitcomb ’14 is an accomplished squash player, musician and writer who also has a longstanding interest in architecture. 

“I’ve always been surrounded by it; my mom is a designer,” she said. “I took art my freshman year and knew I couldn’t do anything else.”

Whitcomb said she has been able to pursue her interest in architecture at Bowdoin. She is a government and visual arts double major, and for her Senior Studio project she is building an architectural sculpture.

“It’s a combination between a chair and a pod,” said Whitcomb. “It’s looking at the intersection between sculpture and architecture.”

Whitcomb said Drawing I was her favorite class.

“It’s probably one of the most well-taught classes at Bowdoin, and it is so important to be able to draw,” said Whitcomb. “I don’t think anyone should be going into the art or design world without knowing how to draw.” 

Whitcomb’s experience studying abroad in Denmark allowed her to gain the necessary skills to further pursue architecture.

“It was a very intense studio program,” said Whitcomb. “All the advanced skills I have come from [it]. I was in the studio all the time and we traveled around to look at art all around Scandinavia.”

In addition to her architecture project, Whitcomb is also working on two oil paintings for another class.

“I have my own studio space; I use the woodshop and I have another space where I am assembling my piece, plus the painting studio,” said Whitcomb.

Whitcomb said she balances art with squash and cello as well.

“I’m a multitasker—I get bored easily and I usually don’t feel like I am doing too much,” said Whitcomb. “I can’t really give up anything I like, so when I came to college I didn’t want to quit anything. It’s hard, I have very little downtime. Being a visual arts and government major is very time consuming, but I love being in the studio.”

Whitcomb, who is also an editor of the Globalist, recently won the Elie Wiesel Essay Prize for her essay titled “The Ethics of Intrusion,” which describes the time she spent on a Native American reservation in South Dakota during the past three summers.

“I wrote about my experience with race and identity and the way that can potentially affect the people I am working with,” said Whitcomb. “It never occurred to me that I would win, but I love to write, and it is a topic I really care about.”

After graduation, Whitcomb will be interning with the New York Department of City Planning.“I’ll be working on urban planning,” said Whitcomb. “The division I will be with looks at the land review process for new buildings. I’m deciding between getting my masters in architecture and urban design, so I wanted to get a job after graduation that would give me more exposure to the urban design world.”   

When Chelsea Shaffer ’14 arrived on campus her freshman year, she planned on joining the Craft Center and taking a few art classes. Luckily for the visual arts department, a few classes turned into many classes, and many classes turned into a major.

Currently taking the Senior Studio capstone course, Shaffer’s project uses footage from recent home videos and digitized old home videos to visually represent memory. 

“It’s sort of predicated on the idea that oftentimes our memories are not actually memories but just recollections that we have of images we’ve seen of ourselves growing up,” said Shaffer of her work. 

Shaffer says she is interested in the power of public art and its influence on passers-by. For her Public Art class last semester, she flipped all the posters in the union so that people only saw the blank backs of fliers. 

“I feel like we see those every day and that space is so familiar to us that sometimes we don’t even see those posters,” she said. “I wanted to break that routine of knowing exactly what was going to be there.”

Shaffer studied abroad in Florence, Italy where she got a taste of what life would have been like at a studio art school. After considering the pros and cons, she says she’s still glad she has her liberal arts background.

“What we lack in studio space or technical instruction, we make up for in the way Bowdoin professors teach their students how to think about art and how to talk about their art,” she said. “I noticed a lot of people could make these beautiful things but they didn’t really know how to explain them or didn’t know the art historical context for what they were making.”

While abroad, Shaffer produced a piece titled “Rising” that was displayed during the Bowdoin Art Society student show.

“It was a video that superimposed images of riots onto flowing water—like a rushing river—to talk about how that impulse to violence or the mob mentality is a natural impulse and that things will gain momentum and rise up,” said Shaffer.

While Shaffer has always been interested in art, she made her decision to major in it after her experience in Sculpture II, taught by Sculptor in Residence John Bisbee.

“I really liked the experience of getting the time and space to work on one major project and really thinking about it, and having a lot of autonomy over what it was going to look like,” she said. “It also got me really interested in the idea of studio practice.”

Shaffer’s first concern when producing a new piece is its aesthetic quality.

“Very often, the actual production of the art is driven by what I find aesthetically and formally interesting. That’s the most important thing to me—what something ends up looking like,” she said. “What it means is a little bit more of a perk.”

Shaffer starts by deciding what medium to use, and says the process of creating inspires what comes after. For example, painting from photographs makes her think about what the photographs mean to her.

“For video it’s usually a little more conceptual,” said Shaffer. “I’ll have a sort of idea or sentence that I find interesting, and I’ll try to reproduce that idea in the video work.”

Recently Shaffer has become interested in community art projects and art therapy. Since she plans to teach after graduation, she hopes she can incorporate art into her job.

“I see it as a really good way to connect people, a good way to bring people together in a community and a good way to beautify a community. I think that that is a really important role of art—making a place worthwhile and a good place to live in,” said Shaffer.

For Citizenship and Religion, a course being taught at the Maine Correctional Center, Shaffer has been working on a group project with other Bowdoin students and an incarcerated student. They have been asking people to answer the question of what citizenship means to them by writing or drawing on an index card. 

“There are a lot of people who are incarcerated at that facility who have been participating in the project—drawing on the cards, writing things down. It’s been really great to get that perspective,” she said. “I’m really interested to see what Bowdoin people have to say, but it’s also interesting to see this whole other group of people who have a lot at stake in their own citizenship and how they would respond to that.”

To Shaffer, the beauty of this project is that it provides people in the facility with an outlet for creativity.

“Maybe people don’t get to see their drawings or read their poetry or read their writing because they are incarcerated, but this way they have a chance to sort of express themselves and have it reach a broad audience,” she said.

Shaffer’s video work can be seen in the Senior Studio show on May 2, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Her citizenship project will also be displayed in the Fishbowl Gallery in the Visual Arts Center next weekend.

Both athlete and artist, Ben Woo Ching ’16 is combining his interests into a photography project showcasing nude athletes in a celebration of the body.

Woo Ching was inspired by the annual ESPN “Body Issue” which focuses on the forms of world-class athletes.

Woo Ching, a member of the football and track teams, wants to celebrate the effort Bowdoin athletes—approximately 30 percent of the student body—put into building their bodies. 

“Knowing how much work it is to put in between practice, film, lifting, conditioning in the mornings, games on the weekends and then school and or work on top of that—knowing all of that, I thought why not try to capture that in an image and really give credit,” said Woo Ching.The photo shoot will be produced entirely in black and white film. In Woo Ching’s opinion, the style is perfect for capturing the details of the human body.

“I thought that aimed more to the shadows that are cast from every muscle. You can really see the definition—not as precisely as a brand-new Canon, but I like that as well,” he said. 

Visiting Artist-in-Residence Accra Shepp encouraged the idea for the project and allowed Woo Ching to make it into a semester-long study.

Working with film instead of digitals is a new creative challenge for Woo Ching, because the conditions for the photo must be set before the photographer pushes any buttons.

“You have 36 photos in a whole reel. I just developed four rolls of film, and I found 11 photos that I like,” he said. “It makes you more humble and makes you think more about what you’re taking an image of.”

The fact that Woo Ching is an athlete and knows his subjects personally helps to make the process easier. While he said it was initially uncomfortable to photograph his friends naked, Woo Ching has gotten the hang of it.

“We shower together at practice and at games, but when it’s just the two of you, music helps enormously,” he said. “The first shoot was completely silent, and that was so awkward.”

In general, students have been open to being photographed, but Woo Ching has been very sensitive to the comfort level of his subjects.

“That’s why I haven’t shot any girls yet. I wanted them to feel the most comfortable,” he said. “This is completely artistic and academic.”

Woo Ching has enjoyed photography so much that he is now considering a visual arts major or minor—something he never would have predicted when he came to Bowdoin from Colorado. 

“The thing I like about art and especially about photography is that you have something tangible afterwards,” he said. “I get a photo to look at. I can give it away to someone and it means something to me.”

He hopes to compile photos of 12 athletes to represent the athlete population as a whole.“I’ve chosen people from all different sports for the most part,” said Woo Ching. “Hopefully it’ll turn out to be a fair snapshot of the Bowdoin athlete.”

Although Woo Ching does not currently have plans to exhibit the photos, the Department of Athletics has expressed interest in using the photos in its offices. He hopes the photos could be displayed with biographies, since the subjects’ stories are the focus of his project.

If dancing were a varsity sport, Laura Keller ’15 would be the captain. As a member of Vague (jazz) and Obvious (hip-hop) and the lead choreographer of Arabesque (ballet), Keller’s life on campus revolves around dance.

“It’s a large commitment. I’m spending like 10 or 11 hours [a week] in the studio at rehearsal and then I have to spend time outside of that to choreograph as well,” said Keller. “My friends always know that I have to run off to dance in the evening.”

She said that as big a commitment as dance is for her, it’s also an escape from the rest of her day. “I can do homework in the afternoon and then take a break doing something that I love and then go back to doing homework,” she said. 

Although she is a classically trained ballet dancer, Keller has been trying different types of dance her whole life. 

“I’ve been dancing since I was three, just like every other girl, except I actually stuck with it,” said Keller. 

“I started out doing jazz and then had to switch to ballet because I needed the ballet technique to advance in jazz and then just fell in love with ballet,” she added.

In high school, she picked up ballroom dancing when ballet became too much of a commitment.However, she added, “ballet has always been my one true love.”

At Bowdoin, Keller joined Arabesque at the beginning of her first year and Vague  during the spring. She was also involved in the Salsa club during her first two years. Keller was was worried about the amount of time she was spending on dance, but she could not resist joining Obvious.   

“The hip-hop group just looked like so much fun so I decided to audition and join that one as well,” said Keller. 

Keller is not the only student involved in all three groups. 

“There is a lot of overlap, especially this year,” said Keller. “I would say two-thirds of people in all of the groups are in at least two of the different dance groups. There are a five of us that are in all three.”

Keller added that there is a growing partnership between the  dance groups. 

“We’re doing a collaborative piece between those three groups. We’re doing a dance to ‘Same Love’ so it’s a little bit more of a political piece but it’s been a lot of fun,” said Keller. 

“The main challenge is trying to come up with choreography that seams together all of the styles, but also is something that everyone can do,” said Keller. “So, for example, the people in the hip-hop group who don’t have any ballet training, how can we add the ballet without having it be too technically difficult?”

The piece will be performed on April 30 at the student groups performance and at the Vague show at the beginning of May.

Danae Hirsch ’14, who was the leader of Vague last semester, came up with the idea for the project. Keller mentioned that the leaders of various dance groups all liked the song and were interested in working on the piece.

“We didn’t want it to be associated with any one dance group in particular, but thought it would be a really cool thing to show the union of all of the dance groups,” Keller said. 

Keller said that due to the project the groups are more connected now than ever.

“We would never have been able to pull off this collaborative piece before hand, because there were people who did each different style and that was all that they did. It is really nice to see that change happening now, from the dance community being more segmented to being more cohesive.”

She also noted the positive atmopshere the dance groups provide. 

“[The dance community is] definitely a smaller group of people, but we are all very tight-knit. It’s like having my own family. I love everyone that I dance with,” said Keller.

Not only is it a small community, but it does not always get as much publicity as other groups on campus, likely because of the complexities of performing.

“For dance we need a special kind of stage, and it needs to be big enough, it takes a long time for us to prepare just one dance because it’s all choreographed by us and then we need to teach it and clean it,” said Keller. 

“It’s not as popular a thing for people to see but it is definitely on the rise,” she said.

Yowon Yoon '14 stumbled unexpectedly upon his music major and honors project. Yoon came to Bowdoin thinking he would major in Biology and Computer Science but after thoroughly enjoying his piano lessons and music theory classes, he declared a music major and is now composing a three part piano concerto.

“I didn’t start doing any music theory until I came to Bowdoin,” said Yoon. “I played piano, and in order to take lessons for credit, I had to take a course, so I took intro to music theory.”

His concerto is a part of a year-long honors independent study, advised by Professor of Music Robert Greenlee in the fall and Associate Professor of Music Vineet Shende this semester. It will be performed by the Bowdoin Orchestra at the end of April.

Yoon said that he enjoys composing despite the difficulties it poses.  

“The biggest challenge has been trying to write for instruments that I don’t really play…I’m trying to make sure that I don’t write boring parts for people,” said Yoon. “Each instrument is so unique in terms of its timbral quality that being able to internalize all the different characteristics and combine them—there are infinite combinations.’

His inspiration for the piece came mostly from Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and Polish composer Witold Lutosławski.

“My goal is to emulate Lutosławski’s use of texture and textural differences as well as Rachmaninoff’s ability to incorporate a singable melody in a more complex harmonic context,” said Yoon.

Yoon, who has been playing piano since he was five, has stopped solo performances for now to focus on his project, although he still continues working with the Bowdoin chamber ensemble. He has found that composing has shifted his attitude when it comes to playing music written by others.

“I don’t really feel sad about not performing now,” said Yoon. “The biggest difference now is when I’m playing something I am much more aware of the composition itself, having spent hours and hours myself writing 30 seconds of music. When I was playing before I would just play through it...but now I’m trying to understand what the composer was intending, and then if I mess up I feel really bad.”

The faculty at Bowdoin have been instrumental in Yoon’s learning process.

“The music department in general is really strong, especially since the faculty outnumber the number of honors students,” said Yoon. “Vineet Shende, Robert Greenlee, Mary Hunter, and George Lopez--who is not a professor but teaches piano and gives concerts… They are all really supportive and they are all really good.”

Yoon argued that the strength of the department and student instrumentalists is sometimes overlooked.

​“There’s a whole slew of musicians who aren’t involved with the Bowdoin Music Collective who are phenomenally talented,” said Yoon. “You’d be surprised how many instrumentalists there are at Bowdoin.”

Although Ben Cumings ’15 believes he peaked a decade ago, his late-night talk show (as well as his forthcoming involvement with theater and improvisation) would suggest otherwise.

“The funniest I’ve ever been or ever will be was in middle school at the cafeteria table when I was making my buddies laugh and making the dumbest jokes and people were just dying around me,” said Cumings. “And that’s the best feeling in the world.” 

It was that feeling that prompted Cumings to join the Improvabilites, Bowdoin’s improvisation group, and then to create “Don’t Sleep with Ben Cumings,” a live late-night talk show that will debut later this semester at Jack Magee’s Pub. 

What performances are you involved in on campus?My friend Alex Pensavalle and I are trying to make an electronic equivalent to Bowdoin Music Collective’s (BMC) Unplugged. We act as a sort of subgroup of BMC. We are going to try, at least once a week, to perform either at Chase Barn—maybe the Pub—and then some of our friends’ parties. We just want to get out there on campus. 

How would you describe the Electronic Dance Music(EDM) scene on campus?Well, I don’t hear a lot of it. When I was a freshman and sophomore and I went to social house parties, it was mostly just top 40. I wouldn’t even categorize what I play as EDM—it’s almost a weird electronic genre. How would you describe the music you play?I think the easiest way to describe it is trip-hop. It was basically this underground movement in the early ’90s that followed hip-hop and the introduction of electronic music into the industry.  So that’s kind of resurfacing now on the West Coast, which I am really excited about. I would say dub-step, hip-hop and jazz. How did you get started DJing in general?So basically I got really lucky and all of my freshmen roommates loved music as much as I did, so I got the old school hip-hop, and I got introduced to a lot of new stuff when I got to Bowdoin. My friend Alex Pensavalle—who I work with most of the time—he first started using Ableton (the software we use) his sophomore year. He got really into that and I just sort of jumped on the bandwagon.  What is your DJ name?It’s in the works right now. I am kind of just going with DJ ViraJ because I never really use my real name. People just call me VJ, so it’s nice that I have that. How are you trying to get your music out there?Every Thursday I want to get at least an hour set in. If there are even more people in line, we would start having a sign-up sheet that is called Open Decks, which is what we want to call our event. We could get some EDM, and all sorts of electronic music. The way I see it, electronic music is like the jazz of now because there are so many categories of where it’s going. We really want to push people to join.  How do you plan on incorporating your work with electronic music into your life after graduation?This summer I plan to drive to Los Angeles after graduation. I’m going to set up shop there, get an internship at a talent agency or casting agency. Then, at night, Alex Pensavalle and I are going to try to get some DJ gigs in L.A. Eventually the dream is a performance at the Low End Theory club. That would be awesome.   And for the more serious questions…Who is your celebrity crush?I’m going to have to go with Keira Knightley. It’s always been Keira.  What is your guilty pleasure song?I’m a big Nine Inch Nails fan. That’s kind of a guilty pleasure, because that’s not exactly the type of person I am.  What is the song everyone must listen to before they die?“Hell is Around the Corner” by Tricky.

Anything to add?I would just say, for people kind of looking for new groups, come check out what we’re doing. 

Tim Sowa ’14 does not just write poetry, he lives it. For Sowa—an economics major and music minor from Connecticut—written and performance poetry is more than just a creative outlet, it is a lens through which he interacts with the world. 

Although Sowa did not become involved in Bowdoin Slam Poets’ Society until midway through his sophomore year, he began writing before college. He said that in his senior year of high school, he was somewhat of an “American cliché of suburban three sport athlete.” 

Sowa described himself as a “closet poet” and mentioned that, “I didn’t attach myself to my creative side.” However, that all changed once he arrived at Bowdoin.

If you ask Mik Cooper ’14 how she got into photography, she’ll tell you it was mostly by chance. At age 13, her father gave her his 35 mm film camera—a relic from the ’70s. 

“From there I just started… developing photos and printing,” she said. 

She started printing in her high school’s darkroom, working exclusively with black and white film. Then, she began to take darkroom classes at school, and later spent a few summers taking courses at the International Center for Photography in New York. 

Daniel Eloy ’15 is the type of person who will tell you his opinion about pretty much anything. When he met me in Smith Union, he had just rushed from the art studio; half-wearing a scarf, he immediately slumped into an armchair. His voice was barely audible over the rambunctious conversations in the Union, but his words had weight (and marked lack of pettiness) so I leaned in to catch everything.

Most recently, Eloy proposed and executed the much-discussed “We Stand With You” photo-installation in response to this fall’s bias incidents. His work involved taking and editing portraits of 544 students.

“I just wanted people to look at them and feel like there was a sense of community here even in the face of bias and hate,” said Eloy.

For sophomore Gibson Hartley, music is not just a hobby, but an ongoing conversation. Though he started playing saxophone in fourth grade, he didn’t start taking it seriously until he arrived at Bowdoin and began taking lessons with Frank Mauceri, the director of his jazz band. This year, he formed a quartet with friends Molly Ridley ’14, Simon Moushabeck ’16 and Sam Eley ’15. 

In addition to playing the saxophone, he composes music and sings baritone in The Longfellows. Because there are so few senior members, Hartley and a fellow sophomore have taken on the leadership of the group.

“It’s rewarding to work with the younger members and an amazing feeling to arrange a piece and have a group sing it back to you,” he said.

It’s not every day you see a student and her professor lowering a 14-foot painting out of a third-story window, but that’s exactly what Lucy Walker ’14 and Mark Wethli, professor of art, did this summer with an oil paint mural of the Brunswick Town Green—the product of Walker’s years here at Bowdoin. It will be unveiled on November 16 in the waiting room of the Brunswick Mid Coast Primary Care and Walk-In Clinic.

“I came up with it the spring of my first year in a course called Public Art, and I was contacted that following summer asking if I wanted to actually make it,” said Walker.

“The Brunswick Downtown Association came to our class...and said that we could choose to work with any space in town. They were soliciting our ideas,” she added.

In first grade, Tim Hunt  ’14 joined a boys’ choir, telling his mom, who was concerned over his supposed tone-deafness, “I am going to do this and you are not going to stop me!” Ever since that defiant act, music has been a huge part of Hunt’s life. At Bowdoin, Hunt is co-musical director of BOKA—one of the two co-ed a capella groups—as well as a trombonist in the Jazz Combo. 

Hunt, a neuroscience and French double major from Oakland, Calif., has been constantly expanding his musical interests and talents. Hunt’s early experience in the boys’ choir was formative in his passion for music and was heavily influenced by the choir instructor. Hunt said his teacher was “really talented at instructing and he had a great knowledge of the male voice.” 

In fourth grade, Hunt decided to pick up the trombone,  “partially because it looked like a lot of fun and it made a lot of noise and I liked the idea of moving around,” he said.

At the first Open Mic Night of the year, Esther Nunoo ’17 took the stage and silenced the audience with the words from her slam poetry piece, “Shalom.” Other than being “super nervous,” what she remembers most about the experience is what people commented on afterwards: her lack of shoes. 

“I don’t like to perform with shoes on,” explained Nunoo, “I feel like spitting—that’s what I call [speaking my poetry]—is very therapeutic. It’s kind of ritualistic. One artist put it perfectly, he said, ‘Performing poetry is kind of like performing open heart surgery, in front of an audience, with no anesthesia.’ That’s how I feel.” 

Nunoo has been performing her poetry for several years now. In eighth grade Nunoo starting doing rap battles with a friend, but it wasn’t until he introduced her to the Writer’s Collective in ninth grade that she truly began to take to slam poetry. The Writer’s Collective is a group of young people from New York City who gather on a weekly basis and write about social justice issues.  

Gilgamesh, Humbaba and Enkidu might sound like gibberish to most, but to Mark Hansen ’14, those words are automatic. Hansen’s eyes light up when he talk about the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” a poem about Mesopotamian mythology. Hansen, an Earth and Oceanographic Science (EOS) major, is currently working on a visual arts independent study with the classics department in which he will recreate the epic through a series of annotated illustrations. 

Hansen is a storyteller at heart. He learned about the poem in a classics mythology course with Classics Lecturer Michael Nerdahl, his current advisor on the project. After his class, he was hooked on the story and wanted to explore it further as well as examine it through a visual arts lens. Hansen said his passion for the project “came from a scholarly interest and a love for myth.” 

Hansen has always been interested in writing and illustrating. He has taken numerous art classes both on and off campus, and interned this past summer at the art museum in his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska where he learned more about the curatorial side of art. He hopes to someday write and illustrate his own books.

Mollie Friedlander ’14 has been dancing since she was nine years old. What she describes as “terrible feet and an imperfect sense of balance” has helped her find a creative outlet within an ambitious Bowdoin career. 

Actively involved in her high school dance teams—including lyrical, jazz, and hip hop—dance was her most important extracurricular activity before Bowdoin. She performed in multiple competitions, took ballet to keep up the basic techniques of dance, and practiced in a local studio. Friedlander said that when she made the high school teams she “felt accomplished...I soon found I was really passionate about it and wanted to continue.

“Coming to Bowdoin I made a conscious decision to prioritize academics, but I knew I wanted to dance. I loved it so much that I knew it wasn’t something I could just drop after high school,” she explained.

Dressed in maroon corduroys cuffed at the ankle, strappy suede sandals and an oversized sweater, Emily Hochman ’15 exudes the aura of an artist—as she rightly should. Hochman spent the summer living in rustic Canada as an artist-in-residence on Kent Island, a research outpost owned by the College. 

While most people go to Kent Island to pursue biology research, Hochman, set out to film a documentary. 

Hochman observed several other Bowdoin students doing field research projects based out of the Kent Island facility.  She is working this semester on an independent study with Sarah Childress, visiting assistant professor in film studies, to compile the footage she collected. 

If there’s one performing arts group at the College that everyone has heard shaking the Union—drawing ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ from prospective students on tours—it’s the Bowdoin Taiko drumming team. And that’s just how leader Adam Eichenwald ’14 likes it.

Eichenwald joined Taiko as a first year while exploring his passion for kung fu and jiu-jitsu. Eichenwald is also a member of the College’s break dancing club, Broken, an activity he also attributes to his love of martial arts.

Six years ago during a summer in Spain, Eichenwald, who hails from Dallas, met a peer from New York who was studying kung fu. Eichenwald fell in love with the art immediately.

Sarah Liu ’13 discovered the piano at age six and has been playing music ever since. 

 A native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Liu grew up experimenting on her elementary school’s piano and—with encouragement from teachers and parents—decided to take lessons. 

“I guess I never quit,” said Liu. 

Dave Raskin ’13Dave Raskin’s life has always been colored by music.

Raskin was raised in a musical family and was introduced to the piano and clarinet at a young age. He claims, however, that he didn’t become serious about music until late in high school when he first picked up the bass guitar.

Upon his arrival at Bowdoin, it was only a matter of days before he found others with whom to share his music.

Molly Ridley ’14 has been playing the piano since she was five years old. 

A native of Westbrook, Maine, she is now a jazz pianist and began playing gigs around southern and midcoast Maine in high school. 

Until middle school she had played all forms of piano music with no particular focus. In the seventh grade, Ridley turned to  jazz, and her interest in the genre has never abated. 

Arhea Marshall ’15 received her first 35-millimeter camera when she was 11 years old. She had just moved to New York City from San Juan, Trinidad and Tobago, and saw photography as one of her new hobbies.    

“When I was 11, I really liked going to the playground and taking shots of smiling people,” said Marshall. However, “it didn’t really become a passion until towards the end of my high school career.”

During her junior year in high school, Marshall participated in the Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics—a youth program organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—to encourage academic and cultural achievement across the United States. Participants attended workshops for three months and submitted their final projects at regional and national competitions. 

For most students, it is enough to go to class, do work, and try to spend time with clubs and friends. Zara Bowden ’13 manages to fit a whole lot more into her day-to-day life. Bowden is a biochemistry major and sociology minor who kayaks, hikes, skis, meditates, and devotes time to her artistic passion, photography. 

Bowden received her first digital camera in middle school and remembers taking it everywhere with her. 

“It kind of just evolved,” said Bowden. “I almost didn’t realize it was happening, but suddenly I just realized how much I enjoy photography and wanted to pursue it.” 

George Ellzey ’13 was at first unsure where he was going to fit in at Bowdoin, but he found a welcoming home in dance.

Unlike many arts students at Bowdoin, Ellzey inadvertently stumbled onstage. He did not even know he was a talented singer until his host family suggested that he audition for a cappella. Now he sings with the Meddiebempsters. 

“I went to a high school that focused strictly on academics or athletics, so I didn’t have any creative outlets at all,” said Ellzey. “Coming to Bowdoin opened up a lot of opportunities for me.”

Since stumbling upon her calling, Audrey Blood ’13, visual arts major and music minor, has fallen head over heels for the visual arts.

Until taking her first visual arts course at Bowdoin, Blood had not even considered taking up art. 

“In high school I wanted to pursue music,” she said. “I always thought that I would go into the performing arts.”

Michael Hendrickson ’13 has always been a fan of the stage. In high school he was heavily involved in theater and sang in several choirs, but it was not until he came to Bowdoin that his a cappella career took flight. Hendrickson is a busy man. A psychology major with a minor in education, he is a member of two a cappella groups—Ursus Verses and the Longfellows. As a first year, Hendrickson was immediately drawn to a cappella as a creative outlet, but he was not originally planning on singing in two groups. “I picked the Longfellows first,” he said. “It was a tough decision.” It wasn’t until the second semester of his first year that he joined Ursus Verses.

Sarah Haimes ’15 first became interested in photography when she was in eighth grade. One lazy summer afternoon in the country, her mother suggested she get up, go outside, and do something. “I took my father’s point-and shoot-camera and I went around taking pictures of my mom’s flowers,” said Haimes. “I uploaded them and was like, ‘I’m actually really good at this!’ That summer I asked for a DSLR camera for my birthday, and the rest is history.”

As liberal arts students tune into their passions, some might find that what began as an extracurricular interest might become their life’s mission, as Natalie Johnson ’13, an English major and dance minor, quickly discovered. Hailing from rural Colorado, Johnson originally planned on going into law but changed her mind after taking Choreography 270. “I was a ballet and jazz teacher in high school at a studio for children, ages six through eleven, and I made pieces for them,” said Johnson. “I had never made a piece for my peer age, or considered the amazing thought of making a piece for other people who are better dancers than me. It totally opened up my world and made me think, ‘This is what I want to do.’”