Welcome back artists! (Opportunities, normalcy, and whatnot)

Hey, Hope College! It’s your friendly Arts Editor, Katy!

Artists: welcome back! This first week of classes at Hope College has felt… normal. Entirely, genuinely, refreshingly normal. It almost feels too good to be true. Dancers are beginning to imagine a maskless, in-person Dance 48. Actors are crossing their fingers for audiences in DeWitt once more. Painters are wishing on stars for their Senior Show in the spring. Musicians are finally back to a full orchestra. We’re all feeling an almost sour mix of relief and fear for what’s ahead. Words like “Delta,” “super-spreader” and “variant” seem to bring a lot of uncertainty to the wins we should be celebrating.

We all get it. But for now, we’ll take our small victories where we can get them! 

The beginning of the school year has been met with a lot of optimism for artists on campus. Auditions for the Theatre productions are underway. Dancers are in studios stretching and being their bubbly selves. Artists are picking up tools and getting to work. Musicians are tuning and warming up. It’s exciting!

Ballet Club, Vanderprov, Fashion Club, Hip Hop Club, Hope Crafters, Latinx Rhythms, Luminescence, Opus and more! All of these student clubs were at the involvement fair awaiting new members to join their ranks. This means that now more than ever, you don’t have to be a Studio Art major to be a student artist at Hope. 

Nykerk is tentatively planning to conduct their operations in person and as normally as we all remember the event pre-pandemic. Opportunities for Oration, Play and Song are available to underclassmen. 

Upcoming auditions (most with dates and times are still TBA) include, but are not limited to Vanderprov, Hip Hop Anonymous, Luminescence, 12th Street Harmony, and Dance 48. Submissions for Opus are open now until September 24. Opus is also currently hiring an Art Editor! Be on the lookout for posters and emails. 

We have a big semester ahead of us. I can practically feel the wheels turning in all of our heads. What projects will come out of your poetry class? What projects will you dive into in your own time, if any? New clubs, new students and new energy lead to a whole new well of inspiration just waiting to be dipped into. 

No matter where you are in your creative process, think of now as a new beginning rather than a continuation of all that has come so far. I was talking to one of my professors this week and they asked how my summer went. I told her I started the summer with the goal to start and finish the first drafts of two plays. Unfortunately… that didn’t happen. Summer got away from me and I now walk into this semester empty-handed, save for the measly monies I made with my summer job. She turned to me with kindness and said, “I think we all need to be thankful we even made it out of bed this summer.”

And she’s right. Lucky for us, we’re now coming back to schedules and structure which means a kind of a fresh start.

Every semester, I get together with my lovely Arts team and we talk about our goals for the section. In the past, it has been making sure that we don’t just feature the sectors of art on campus that we ourselves like or participate in and trying to branch out as far as what kinds of articles we write. Our goal this semester is to continue all that and to make our section one that warrants reading by our art students! 

As the Arts Editor, I want to make sure our Arts section is representing YOU: the Artists of Hope College. I encourage each of you, should you: have a piece of creative writing you want published, want to guest write an article of your own, have an event or artist you’d like featured, etcetera to reach out to us. What do you like to read? Movie or music reviews? Features of student artwork? Highlights of art circles around the world? Let us know! Email me (kathryn.smith@hope.edu), I’d like to give you a spotlight!

Hope is brimming with opportunities for all of us and the best thing an artist can do is take advantage of easy opportunities when they come. So let’s get out there and make some wonderful art this year! I’m sending you good luck and blessings in your endeavors, lovely student artists!