While many forms of art can be done alone and have one creator, art can also bring connection between artists as they create in the same spaces. A sense of connection can often inspire greater creativity. Unfortunately, throughout quarantine and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this connectivity was stripped away and completely halted the many art forms that require connection.
While some artists have found ways to continue their creative process, it has still been difficult to bring collaboration back to the art community. Musician Sam Flores ’23 noticed the lack of connection within the Lewis & Clark campus and thought that technology could revitalize artistic endeavors.
“Not everybody that you meet is gonna possibly be someone that will be good for you creatively but if you just have a giant list of people you can kind of go through — I mean, just ask them out to coffee and have a conversation about art,” Flores said.
As a former manager for the Platteau, an on campus creative space to practice the arts, Flores was able to create the Artist Roster Project last spring in a move to strengthen the LC art community, which felt separated.
“Everybody was doing art, for sure, you know if we’ve learned anything about the pandemic it’s really brought out a lot of artists,” Flores said. “It’s just that everybody was doing it individually. Our mission was to make the Platteau not just a space but also an organization. And I think we were really emphasizing organization last semester because we couldn’t really use the space.”
Flores wanted to use the trend of bringing technology to human affairs to craft a smoother art network on campus, which would allow students to connect with one another in order to converse about art.
“The idea with the Artist Roster Project was to take all of the networking and all of those interactions you usually have in person and try and make those happen digitally. It was to bring all of those connections into the internet because that’s where all the artists were,” Flores said.
The work that the managers put into this project was mostly organizational, trying to make a space to bring back artistic interactivity. The roster is a list of artists, their pronouns, interests, style, aesthetics and mediums as well as a way to contact them if you wish to collaborate.
To access the roster you must sign up for it through the Linktree link on the Platteau Instagram page, and it is meant to work like an introduction. Once you have completed the linked form and been approved by the managers to ensure privacy, you gain access to the roster.
According to Flores, there had not been much use of the roster before the end of last year, but that can be attributed to the roster only being completed last April. With only a month to collaborate, it is understandable that few people have used it. However, Flores pointed out that many people have sent in forms to be processed by its new managers since the start of this year.
Flores has wanted to create this roster for a while, and hopes it will last past the pandemic. Within any school, especially one growing in size, it can be difficult to contact others. This year’s large class of first-years is an example of the important role the roster could play at LC.
“It would be so awesome if all of the artists knew each other,” Flores said. “Like you can’t even manage that at a networking event here. Because not everyone is going to meet each other, that
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