At the center of a liberal arts education is the intersection of athletics and academics. The cross-disciplinary nature of the liberal arts allows us a holistic learning experience, within which we experience how different branches of college experience complement each other. The liberal arts mandates students not just be focused on being either an athlete or an artist. In a school where a third of student body is involved in athletics, they are often not mutually exclusive.
Recently, the Voice took the chance to explore if and how students are making these connections outside of the classroom between two fields that are often perceived to exist on either side of an unbridgeable – or at least un-bridged – chasm: arts (specifically visual art), and athletics. The College Voice sat down with a couple of athlete-artists to talk about their experiences bridging, and hopefully thereby narrowing, the, at least perceived, gap between athletics and the arts.
Our first interviewee was Julia Byrne ‘14, who plays on the women’s soccer team and is a visual artist specializing in drawing.
TCV: How do soccer and art fit together for you? Do they influence each other in any way?
Julia Byrne ‘14: Well they’re definitely very different but I think that there are definitely overlapping values, and things that you need to be successful in both, like focusing on technique.
TCV: How do you see the culture between sports and art? Are they mutually exclusive? Or is there a lot of crossover?
JB: I feel like there’s not too much crossover. Maybe some people think that you either do one or the other, but I think that there’s actually a lot of students that are involved in both which is great. I mean, they are very different in terms of soccer being a team activity, while art is definitely more individual.
TCV: What medium do you work in?
JB: I draw, so I do different things with charcoal and pencil.
TCV: Why do you draw? What made you choose drawing versus another medium?
JB: I took a lot of drawing classes in high school, and I had an amazing art teacher. She inspired me, and kinda, not pushed me towards drawing, but that’s …what we worked on together, so that’s what I wanted to continue to do.
TCV: Do you think you’ll continue with art after school?
JB: Hopefully. I actually would like to be an art teacher so hopefully I will be able to continue.
TCV: What grade level? Do you know?
JB: Probably high school.
TCV: Do you think that different students working in different mediums in the art department influence each other? Do you learn something from each other’s pieces?
JB: Yeah, it’s nice because all the students do very different things, so talking to somebody else about either their work or your work, you can get different ideas, which helps you achieve a more well-rounded piece.
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Esther Mehesz ‘15 was our second interviewee. She’s a swimmer and a ceramics-based artist.
TCV: What do your art and your swimming have in common? Sometimes they’re seen as polar opposites, athletics and art, but you do both of them.
Esther Mehesz ‘15: I’m actually a double major with Art and Econ. – which is already seen as a complete polar opposite – and then I swim and play water polo, too, so to be completely honest, I couldn’t really say what they have in common. In the projects that I do, because their ceramics-based, I focus a lot on the Baroque style. But in a different aspect the whole time management and whatnot is definitely very helpful between sports and arts.
TCV: Obviously both require a lot of time to get good at.
EM: Yes, I mean, being in the studio while being in season is very difficult, and on Sundays, that’s where I am. [laughs]. Project-wise, swimming and art, I could not tell you what I see in common, but it’s more like, being an art major it is so time-consuming, and being in the ceramics studio it’s a lot of trial-and-error and hoping for the best. I do have a lot of pieces where the drying process will be fine but then you put it in the kiln and it might melt the wrong way. One of my pieces just now, the top of it literally collapsed into it. I wish there was a hidden camera in the kiln, but it was one of those things where it’s like, you kind of just have to accept what you’re gonna have from it. Where in swimming, you have to accept what happens at a meet. You can’t always have a good day. You have to be happy, even though it may not be your best day, you always learn from the day’s mistakes.
I’ve done ceramics since my freshman year of high school so I’m one of the more experienced people, because I have taken ceramics classes. It’s one of those things, like, you finally are able to be the leader in the classroom. People will come to you, just like with athletics. People come to you when you’re an upperclassman, and you’re the one that tries to calm them down if they’re nervous. It’s just like one of those captain kind of things or teamwork.
TCV: Despite them being, to some degree, solo activities.
EM: Swimming is such an individual sport too, and with ceramics too, it is so individual: you don’t have group projects. Both are such individual things. But in a sense they are both team-related, because to get an entire kiln and a firing process you all have to work together. It would be very time consuming and just horrible doing it alone. And for swimming too, even though it’s so individualized, you have your team behind you to support you, which is similar in the studio: we all support each other if anyone has a question; we’re always there helping each other and what-not. In a sense, they do come together.
TCV: What drew you to art?
EM: Both my parents are Hungarian. My mom actually has her Master’s in interior and fashion design from Hungary. She actually has her own business for jewelry, but she’s always done interior and fashion. And so I’ve always grown up with that sense. And they’re also very big antique people, so our house, there’s not a single white wall, like you can’t put a single picture up anymore. Every little bookcase is filled with intricate little things, so it was one of those where I’ve grown up into it and I I had the possibility in high school to take a ceramics class, so I thought I might as well try. I tried it and I loved my teacher so much. I’m more 3-D oriented, like I’ve always loved playing with Play-Doh when I was younger and I was never one to draw. I still to this day am not good at drawing. [laughs]
Here I have the chance to do both economics and art. I do want to go into the fashion industry on the marketing side or finance, but having an art background helps. I’m looking to trying to work at a company that is from America but that’s situated all around the world. I’d like to work in Hungary.
TCV: Do you see a boundary, or a clique, between athletics and art in general? I mean, obviously you cross that, but socially?
EM: Like athletic people having their clique? Yes, you definitely see it. Like even in Harris when you go in, it’s the athlete section and the non-athlete section. Which is, it’s horrible, but then again the team does try, like you try and build your team to the best advantage. So you do wanna have meals with your team. You don’t wanna just be in the water with your team, you do want to build the sense of a different relationship.
Even in the art studio, there are a couple of us that do other sports too. We see each other down at the trainers, we see each other in the studio all the time, so you can relate on so many things, which makes it nice. But it’s very nice to have a person that’s in the studio that’s also an athlete. But it’s a nice atmosphere in the studio. The classmates that you have, even though they might not be on athletic teams, you have such a good connection with them, a nice environment to be in, it’s very open. You’re working hands-on, but it’s like a social class. So you get to know a person a lot better, it’s very open. I know some of people’s backgrounds, like every-day things. You wouldn’t see that at a team event with athletics. So it’s two complete different things, and yes, they have there own cliques I guess you could say, but it’s nice seeing a couple of us that are in both situations, and how we connect even more sometimes. But it is unfortunate of the different cliques, and I wish people were more accepting of a lot of people. The art community is a team in itself definitely. So I enjoy that.
TCV: Do you think students from different media influence each other? Are you influenced in some way by people who aren’t doing ceramics?
EM: They definitely do influence you and give you a better outlook, an inspiration of different things to do. I did take a printmaking course, which was 2-D based, and it was a challenge for me because I have little exposure to 2-D work, but it did show me different outlook, and especially seeing everyone else’s works. It was very eye-opening, thinking, “Maybe I can experiment with this, but in a different sense.” I plan on taking a photography class just so that I can experiment taking photography of my own pieces.
TCV: 3-D objects in a 2-D frame kind of thing.
EM: Yeah. It is nice, inspirational, to see other people doing the 2-D works. I’ve really never thought of connecting swimming and ceramics together, but they are similar in a sense. •
