Bowdoin studies can sometimes induce a change of heart. Students arrive ready to declare economics majors and instead end up taking all their courses in French. Something similar happened to Nick Riker '12, but instead of trading problem sets for "Parlez-vous?" he exchanged music for visual arts.
Passionate about singing since he was young, Riker joined a children's choir in his northern California town in only first grade. In middle school, he joined a traveling choir that toured all over the globe, collaborating with choirs in eight different countries, ranging from Mexico to Slovenia.
"Traveling with my choir was pretty memorable," recalled Riker. "In Cuba, we sang with the national children's choir and the concert was televised. Cuba doesn't have many TV channels though, so the next day when we were walking around in the market, everyone was saying, 'You're the kids on TV!' It was pretty neat. In Estonia, we participated in the Singing Revolution festival and sang with 25,000 other people in front of a 150,000 person audience, which was such a cool experience."
Riker arrived at Bowdoin with a desire to continue this musical passion, but after taking Photo I his sophomore fall, he decided to give visual art a try. A part of the yearbook staff in high school, Riker had always entertained a passion for photography. Photo I developed his preference for taking pictures of objects and he found the open-endedness of his final project to be liberating.
"I was taking a second-level theory course for my music requirement at the same time I was taking Photo I," Riker explained. "For the music class, our final project was to write a song, and for photography we did something that was self-designed."
"I ended up enjoying the photo project much more and decided then that I would declare visual art[s] as my major," he added.
Since that sophomore spring, Riker has taken classes in printmaking, drawing and sculpture. He has managed to keep in touch with his musical roots, however, by singing with the Longfellows. Riker said he finds the group a fun means by which to continue his passion for singing in a lively, team-oriented atmosphere.
"I'm kind of a geek and used to go to a cappella concerts with my group in high school," he said. "I knew I wanted to try singing in a group at Bowdoin, and the Longfellows were a great choice. We've done some pretty cool stuff this year and won best all-male a cappella group in New England at the [International Collegiate Championship of A Cappella] competition."
"It's been a really fun part of my college experience and neat to have it as an extracurricular," he continued.
Riker also made his mark on Professor of Art Mark Wethli's Public Art course. The class invites students to design three art projects that could be placed in the surrounding Brunswick community. Having completed an initial design for a project near the train tracks, Riker is currently working on a plan for the under-construction Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School.
"My first project consisted of rows of flags next to the train tracks near Hannaford," explained Riker. "The idea was that when trains went by, they would create a force and the flags would wave with the wind."
"Right now, we're working on projects for the new elementary school and I'd like to do something with simple Rube Goldberg machines," he continued. "It's nice to be making art for other people and to incorporate everyone else rather than just doing it for yourself."
Riker finds this outreach aspect of art refreshing and rewarding, and he hopes to continue exploring its interactive potential by working for a public art non-profit organization this summer. He will also continue fulfilling his visual art major at Bowdoin next fall by participating in the mandatory Senior Seminar class, a course he has been looking forward to for quite some time. When asked why he remains so passionate about the arts, however, Riker's response is simple: he does it for sheer enjoyment.