Their Art Club: Giving a voice to artists outside the art world
Artwork by Kaylee Smith
IMAGE COURTESY OF THEIR ART CLUB
By Shreya Wankhade CONTRIBUTING WRITER
During quarantine, everybody took up a hobby or interest they wouldn’t have normally had the time for. Some people stuck with it; others quickly lost interest. For CAS senior Ivy Lee, founder and president of Their Art Club, an idea was born that did not burn out. In their sophomore year at NYU, Lee decided they needed something to strive for. With plenty of time to figure out what they wanted to pursue as a result of COVID-19, they started thinking about how best to develop a community of like-minded artists. “My main goal in life is to be a cute little grandma living in their hometown in Korea hosting art residencies,” Lee said. “It makes me so happy. My dream’s end goal is to ultimately watch people make art.” While numerous art-oriented student clubs and groups exist at NYU, Lee noted that many are associated with NYU’s art or art-adjacent schools — Tisch, Gallatin and Steinhardt — which, as a psychology major in CAS, Lee wasn’t associated with. This ultimately led Lee to create their own art club, the fittingly named Their Art Club. “I want to create a general art club that was helping students that were not in the art track but were still interested in art,” Lee said.
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Artwork by Ivy Lee, founder and president of Their Art Club.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THEIR ART CLUB-
“I always loved creating art, so I wanted to make sure I had a space to do that.” It was difficult to get the club going at first. According to Lee, the process of validating a student club at NYU is unnecessarily lengthy; they refer to this period as “the probation era,” since the beginning of their junior year was spent trying to validate the club. On top of that, with the ongoing pandemic, it was hard to recruit people remotely across different time zones. Because of all these constraints, Their Art Club wasn’t able to create any large-scale projects during the probation era. Instead, they engaged in lively discussion via Zoom to make the most of their time. “We talked about the movies we were watching and the art we’d been into recently,” Lee said. “It was just kinda like talking about art for a while.” Discussing different art mediums allowed them to set the stage for what was to come: actually producing art in a variety of different mediums. Club members spend meetings sharing ideas for pieces they are interested in creating and listening to the advice of others on how to improve their artwork. “Through past experiences, I found that art really crosses over
