Students for the Arts invited students of all disciplines to fold origami lotus flowers for the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Thursday.
The paper flowers produced by the students and many others across the state will all become part of the AMoFA’s collaborative “Art Garden,” an installation commemorating the grand reopening of the museum happening in April.
According to arkmfa.org, this collaborative art installation is going to be the biggest art installation in Little Rock history with an estimated participation of 11,000.
The museum called for participation in December of 2022, providing video tutorials on their website on how to fold the lotus flower as well as how to make your own origami paper using sun printing and cyanotype methods.
Students who participated in Thursday’s event were provided with their own paper and watched the AMoFA’s provided tutorial videos for guidance as they folded away.
Joe Hughes, a freshman fine arts major, said that once he got the hang of the steps from the video, he really enjoyed himself, especially when he got to experiment with the big paper to try and make the biggest flower.
“I always like being part of exhibitions that do something with the community … So it’s super fun to get to do this with something I haven’t done before, like origami,” Hughes said.
As an inexpensive, fairly easy activity, Dr. Gayle Seymour, associate dean of fine arts and communications at UCA, said that the origami event was a great way to get students involved in the organization. Seymour also expressed a desire for students of all disciplines to see they were welcome to attend the event and join the organization’s art advocacy cause.
“You might not be a painter to be an artist. You can be a culinary artist, you can be an architect, you can be a landscape designer, you can do any of these things … They are all essential to this creative economy and this quality of life that we really think art is …” Seymour said. “Our real goal for Students for the Arts is that you don’t have to be an art major, you just have to want the arts to be a focus in people’s lives,” Seymour said.
Seymour also expressed her excitement in future collaboration with the AMoFA, whose opening is fast approaching.
“I firmly believe that you can’t just hope it happens, you gotta make it happen, so we need to be a little more aggressive in our outreach with them,” Seymour said.
“Even though it’s a museum that’s already been established, this is going to be a real game changer for Little Rock, for Arkansas, and for a kind of art tourism that is becoming more and more possible. I mean how beautiful is it? You go to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, you stop at UCA to see the Baum Gallery, the Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts, you keep going and you end up at Crystal Bridges. It’s a beautiful kind of art extravaganza!” Seymour said.
“That’s what we really need to think about. How can we really put ourselves, this city of colleges, on the arts map?” said Seymour.
The next event for Students for the Arts is Feb. 16 and will involve students making art advocacy zines.
