{"id":150124,"date":"2022-12-02T10:19:16","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T15:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=150124"},"modified":"2022-12-06T18:03:16","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T23:03:16","slug":"paint-and-sip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/12\/02\/paint-and-sip\/","title":{"rendered":"Color these Bates students grateful"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s a mid-November night at the Ronj, the student-run cafe in Ross House on Frye Street<\/a>, and in one part of the homey space, students are draped across couches and splayed out in chairs, sipping tea, munching on snacks, while they study, relax, and just hang out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another part of the house, in a performance space known as the Thunderdome, the furniture has been shoved to the perimeter, creating an open area for an evening of visual art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the ready are watercolor paint kits, cups of water, and lots of paint brushes, and the students, around 20 of them, quickly get going. Over here, a student paints a tree in late autumn. Over there, another creates a fantasy garden, and another makes a rainbow, all conjured from the mind\u2019s eye or pulled from a smartphone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Watercolors
Deep concentration on a painting provides a break from studying stress, as colorful blobs, an orange haze, or bananas are painted onto the cards. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no instruction and no still-life subject to sketch, just one goal: Create a piece of art for someone you care about. The students are making watercolor postcards, which, when finished, will be mailed to a loved one along with hand-written words of gratitude from the sender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea for the event came from Phoebe Stern \u201924, a religious studies major from Nashville, Tenn. As the student arts and spirituality coordinator for the Multifaith Chaplaincy, she wanted to create a time and a space before Thanksgiving for students to \u201ctake a deep breath and ask, \u2018Who are the people in my life who have really impacted me? And who made a change? How can I give back to them?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, giving back means giving a bit of one\u2019s self, \u201csomething tangible,\u201d Stern says, \u201cwhatever art you’re feeling, and that can be just drawing a very abstract piece or like drawing some trees or mountains, but whatever you want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"(Isabella
From left, Alana Margerum \u201923 of Wyncote, Pa., and Isabella Phillips \u201923 of Durham, N.C., work together on their paintings; Margerum is painting a detailed, lush garden scene, and Phillips is mimicking a botanical-illustration style with different kinds of flowers. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First-year students Audrey Esteves \u201926 of Cranford, N.J., and Riley Baker \u201926 of Northfield, Ill., are creating postcards to send to friends from high school as a little \u201chello\u201d before they reunite during the holiday break. Before long, the two will head across the street to WRBC, the Bates student radio studio, where Baker co-hosts a music-and-chat show, Gin and Toxic<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maddy Ewell \u201924, a neuroscience major from Ridgewood, N.J., is using the time to stretch one creative muscle and give another a break. For her English class, \u201cEarly Modern Sex and Sexuality,\u201d taught by Assistant Professor of English Katie Adkison, she\u2019s composing a musical score as her final paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Watercolors
Mikayla Burse \u201926 of Rumford, Maine, paints a watercolor rainbow on her postcard, and begins to add a bright yellow sun in the corner. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The class has read Shakespeares\u2019s As You Like It<\/em>, whose opening scene, in the forest of Arden, presents a \u201cmystical land of make believe, a fantastical environment.\u201d For the final assignment, Ewell challenged herself to express the scene through classical music \u2014 a genre she hasn’t composed for before, though she loves composing and playing jazz. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she has the chops for it. An accomplished violinist, Ewell is the founder and president of the student Small Ensembles Club<\/a>. Creating the score has been \u201cdifficult but fun,\u201d she says. \u201cI’m exploring what I can do with music.\u201d (Last spring, she and fellow club member Riley Gramley ’25 performed classical music for the canine residents of the local animal shelter.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Riley
Riley Baker \u201926 of Northfield, Ill., paints a tree and colorful leaves strewn on the ground. The autumn theme pairs nicely with the treats provided: an assortment of cookies. “I was just kind of thinking of like one of the easier things to watercolor around campus, and so I thought about the tree by the library,” Baker said. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Stern, the event organizer, experiencing the Ronj for the first time fit perfectly with the vibe she hoped to create, a getaway from \u201cthe stresses of the rest of campus, like we’re just coming together and making some art, eating some cookies, drinking some chai and talking and laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what the space is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bates students held their own version of a paint and sip night at the Ronj to paint postcards to express gratitude to someone special in their lives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1422,"featured_media":150127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"On a mid-November night at the Ronj, students create art for loved ones.","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":150138,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"summary_large_image"},"categories":[133,11012],"tags":[6111,8628],"class_list":["post-150124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creativity","category-student-life","tag-multifaith-chaplaincy","tag-the-ronj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150124"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150224,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150124\/revisions\/150224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}