Students of the art department have banded together to relaunch Oregon State University’s only art club, Montage, during this spring term.

Montage had its relaunch meeting on April 3 with an impressive turnout of students from various majors all looking for a community where they can create. The meeting consisted of new and old club members introducing themselves while working on Montage’s new poster. The poster was filled with a collage of drawings, paintings and magazine cutouts to create an eye-catching representation of what the club is all about.

While the club isn’t new to OSU, according to Montage’s leadership, it hasn’t been around for the majority of last term. The club temporarily stopped due to the old leadership stepping down for personal reasons. 

After this announcement, five members reached out to Felix Oliveros, the academic advisor for the art and music departments, to take on the challenge of relaunching the club, which includes Avery McDowell, Elle Stephenson, Holly Smith, Maxwell Romero and Juniper Johnson. 

“We realized that nobody had taken up this responsibility in a while, and it was something that we really love to see flourish,” the club’s publicist Stephenson said.

“Because of the change of leadership, we kind of had nothing to work with going forward,” said Romero, the Discord moderator in charge of club communication. “There were remnants of things that were there from the previous leadership, but we’ve pretty much been on our own for the most part, besides Felix, who’s been helping us out.”

While there isn’t a set time and place yet for Montage’s meetings, leadership has been working hard on developing plans for different activities and events, as well as fundraising and sponsorships. For upcoming plans, they let members vote on Discord to decide on the best times for meetings and events to ensure they are flexible for its members. 

“We are trying to consolidate our ideas more, especially moving forward,” Romero said. “Just figuring out some art-related things that we can do for the club to keep people more involved and interested while at the same time not just being like, ‘Okay, we are just going to show up and draw something,’ we want to keep it fresh and unique.” 

When asked what kind of people should join Montage, he explained that they want to keep it open to everyone. 

“We don’t want to limit the people who can join,” Romero said. “We want to be able to be that place where artists just come to have fun, build a community of people who have similar interests and be a safe place to express themselves freely — honestly you don’t even have to be an artist; just be someone who enjoys or appreciates art.” 

Stephenson said they want anyone and everyone to join. 

“Whether people are casual artists or hard-core and professional-bound, anyone looking for a welcoming artistic community will find a place here!” she added.

If anyone is interested in learning more about Montage or being a part of the community, follow @montageosu on Instagram and join the Discord linked in their bio for updates. Maxwell explained that Discord is the best way to ask questions and seek specific information.