By ELLA DIERS
On Friday, September 22, students and faculty gathered downtown to show off the creative projects they had created over the course of 48 hours. The students participated in a Collab-a-thon, a two-day endeavor in which groups of three or four students were given a prompt and had to create an artistic project combining all their skills.
The given prompt was simple: Silver Lining. “Students were free to interpret this as they wished,” said Daniel Barolsky, Professor of Music and Department Chair, at the showing at Hendrick’s Center for the Arts on Friday. Barolsky facilitated the event and organized materials for the student’s projects, but left everything up to the artists.
“The only social engineering was to mix people,” he said. The five different groups of students varied in terms of artistic interest, ranging from singing and songwriting to painting and sculpting, to film production.
The first group did a combination of photography and music. The group took the prompt and created a “silver lining” photography project. They had frames set up around the room, each with a black and white picture of Marino Komai’26, taken by Ray Broad’27, looking sad or in pain, with phrases like “Stubbed your toe?” These photos were juxtaposed with cheery, colorful photos that showed the silver lining: Komai smiling and giving a thumbs up with the words “Your nervous system is working great!” The song, produced by the Ricky McGregory’27, tapped into the cliche of cheesy 50’s sounds.
The group was “being silly with it,” said Siona Shishak’27, the singer of the group. They “wanted to do it without playing into the cliche that is ‘silver lining,’” said Shishak.
The second group took a different approach, doing “a visual collage of sorts,” said group member Liam Peterson’27. The group donned all-black outfits with hints of silver, to visually demonstrate the theme. Their creation was an emotional display of creativity. Their mixed-media collage was full of personal sentiments relating to the idea of taking bad moments and finding the sweetness in them.
The next two groups did a combination of artwork and film, with one group creating a film based on their group’s artistic process of creating a sculpture that they also displayed. In the film, Frances Donis’24 spoke about the group bonding and getting closer through the process. She highlighted the idea that the Collab-a-thon wasn’t just about the art, it was about the artistic process and getting closer to other artists on campus.
The other film group created, as Ella Aizeki’25 said, an “accidentally silly” film. Their film took the silver lining prompt literally, using tin foil as armor to deflect against cardboard cut-out bullies. The group also created a painting of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon to further elaborate the idea of transformation and turning weaknesses into strengths.
The last group of the night created a song about mental health and normalizing reaching out and asking for help. “We started writing a song…figuring out the harmony…realized our theme,” said Sam Gomoll’24. After hours of work, the song “didn’t work,” and the group “scrapped it,” teaching everyone another valuable lesson about silver linings.
This was the first Collab-a-thon done at Beloit. “I have nothing profound to say other than tonight’s been marvelous,” Barolsky said at the end of the night.
Featured Image: stefa marin alarcon
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