(Liz Dobbins)
Art, ice cream and music made up the Westminster College Arts Festival on Sept. 26 where students joined together to unwind after a long week and let their artistic sides free.
Alyssa Appleman, ASW events president, said she planned the festival to connect the community and let everyone express their creative side.
“I started by planning the arts festival last year,” said Appleman, a junior studying biology. “The Arts Festival is a celebration of students marking their own creativity by making arts and crafts.”
The event began three years ago and evolves each year to bring out a new crowd, Appleman said. There were three different art stations – hydro-dipping coasters, fall collage making and scrabble quote board assembling – along with free ice cream sandwiches from the Penguin Brothers.
“This event’s main goal is to bring more light to students expressing their creativity,” Appleman said. “We want this to be all-encompassing so students can express themselves in a lot of different ways.”
The ice cream was the initial fascination for Ann Day, a first-year special education major, but she said her friends urged her to stay. As a result, she was able to create her own coaster with some of her friends and classmates.
(Liz Dobbins)
“I love seeing everyone I know from my classes that I don’t see normally outside of class,” Day said.
The hydro-dipping station was a major hit among students. Eden Dronoff, a first-year neuroscience major, made her own coaster, dipping it in a dark red paint with swirls of gold and black.
Dronoff said this was the perfect way for her to explore her new campus community.
“Art is very cool and it’s always good to explore and get out as much as possible,” she said. “As a science major, I don’t get to often have nail polish on my fingers.”
However, this event didn’t just attract the expected first-year students. Jake Tallman, a senior biology major, said he comes every year.
“I love interacting with everyone on campus and eating unhealthy food with friends,” Tallman said.
From free ice cream to expressing creativity, the Arts Festival connected the campus community and provided a way for students to start their weekends off on a fun, relaxing note.
