Andrew Shi

A student-led initiative to install monthly rotations of student art in the Lamarche Lounge of Smith Union was launched this month by co-founders Edwin Kim ’27 and Muzi Wei ’27. Javier Gallegos ’28 and Assistant Director of Student Activities Brandon Rogers-Reed also contributed to the initiative.

Kim, an aspiring museum professional with a long-held appreciation for the arts, wanted to provide Bowdoin artists with the opportunity to publicly showcase their work in a widely frequented campus space where a larger audience could experience it.

“The only time you really get to see your friends’ art is the fall or spring art show. I thought it’d be a cool idea to find a way to help student artists or just artists on campus,” Kim said.

Anyone who walks through Smith Union can stop by Lamarche Lounge and view visual artworks at their leisure that they might otherwise never see.

“I think this is just a push to try and get the campus more involved in the arts and more creative,” Kim said.

For Kim, participating in the creative sides of campus—from working at the Bowdoin Museum of Art to learning about his friends’ artistic projects—has had a significant impact on the shape of both his Bowdoin career and post-graduation plans.

“It’s very therapeutic being around art and being around creative people. I think that’s something the campus can benefit from,” Kim said.

Wei is a visual arts and economics double major. As an artist who deeply values making the art space accessible, bringing the gallery wall to fruition has been particularly meaningful to her.

“I think [the wall’s aim is] to tie the creative community together, give people who are maybe not a part of the art department a space to showcase their talents and for people who don’t participate in art to be able to enjoy it all times of the year,” Wei said.

In her personal exploration of the arts, Wei has found that, in some ways, the art realm can be gated off for those attempting to enter it.

“Art is usually such an elevated, gallery-exclusive [thing]. If you get it, you get it; if you don’t understand Pollock then you’re not into art. It can feel [like] somewhat of an exclusive space,” Wei said.

Through the gallery wall’s presence and its founding message of inclusivity in creative spaces, Wei hopes to inspire students with artistic aspirations.

“There’s no barrier to start trying. There’s no barrier to start creating,” Wei said.

In their efforts to find those interested in having their art featured, Kim and Wei have been reaching out to students, asking for and encouraging submissions through email, word-of-mouth and pitches in their classes.

To accompany their art piece, Kim requests that artists write a short, informal blurb briefly explaining their work.

“It’s just nice to get a peek into what this person was thinking…, what are they inspired by, what do they want the viewer to take away,” Kim said.

The two students featured on the gallery wall for the month of October are Milo Langdon ’27 and Paloma Hsiao-Shelton ’28. Hsiao-Shelton explained that her watercolor and ink paintings were inspired by a nine-week-long fellowship she participated in this past summer on Kent Island in Canada. Her assignment during the fellowship involved analyzing a long-term data set on tree swallows.

“I was really interested in absorbing the place I was in …  and just kind of allowing the presence of the place and my experience of that place to flow through my senses and into a creative outlet,” Hsiao-Shelton said.

The seclusion of Kent Island provided a unique opportunity for Hsiao-Shelton in her creative process.

“[I] was pretty removed from other distractions.… I was really focused on the being present and then letting that kind of fuel my creativity,” Hsiao-Shelton said.

Hsiao-Shelton’s watercolor paintings, now featured in Lamarche Lounge, were guided by this quality of presence she cultivated.

“I definitely hope [my paintings] are a call for more people to feel emotionally connected with their experience in a place,” Hsiao-Shelton said. “The residency of a place is a lot more important than oftentimes we make it.”

Hsiao-Shelton’s paintings also helped her hone in her artistic skills.

“[I was] trying to synthesize my own style and understand how I could work with watercolor and pen in more intentional ways,” Hsiao-Shelton said.

Hsiao-Shelton has been doing art her entire life but got into painting more recently at Bowdoin when she took her first oil painting class. Now, she is a visual arts and ecology, evolution and marine biology double major and is working on a three-book series for one of her art classes. The three books are dedicated to past, present and future ideas of home.