By Ryan O’Connell
Associate Editor
As the years have passed at Framingham State, a lot of clubs have been created and forgotten. And the nature of a four-year university makes it easy for student organizations to quietly fall apart.
Whether it’s because of the original creator graduating, a lack of interest in maintaining a full eBoard, or even an unprepared successor, there are dozens of reasons why a club might disband.
And once it has been disbanded, it’s hard to start back up.
Renewed clubs must navigate the extra hurdles of hashing out administrative work with the Student Experience office and no reserved financial budget, all the while clawing for the attention of the student body - because without attendees, it is doomed to fizzle out again.
This is to say that maintaining a club is difficult and often thankless work. And restarting a club is even harder.
Paige Rainville did it anyway.
This semester, the Art Club has been revitalized by its three new eBoard members - President Paige Rainville, Vice President Miranda Allicon, and Secretary David Abe - and has had great success at their events this year, with 50 students attending their latest gathering.
Rainville, a studio art major with a concentration in education, attributes the success of the club this year to the work of her and her vice president.
Rainville said the both of them are RAMs Peer Mentors, and get to advertise their events to their classes often.
She added she was also an orientation leader and was able to both advertise the Art Club and field ideas for events to incoming freshmen during the summer.
Rainville said this is her first semester as the president of the Art Club, but started work on the club last spring.
She said last year the Art Club held simple meetings, but did not have strong attendance. The last active Instagram account for the Art Club posted in 2020.
This means while Art Club wasn’t technically inactive, it was unknown to most students due to its low activity.
The first step, Rainville said, was learning how to be on an eBoard.
“There’s a lot of work, there are a lot of forms - especially in a club with so few members in eBoard, everyone has their fair share of work to get through, especially the president and vice president,” she said.
“There’s just a lot to learn, and then on top of that it’s a constant ask,” Rainville added. “You have to constantly be making something to keep [giving] entertainment and attention to those around you.” Rainville added some of the other roadblocks include the fact that they receive no funding due to their status as a restarting club, and the number of dead FSU Art Club Instagram accounts making it hard to identify up-to-date information. The correct handle, she clarified, is @fsu.artclub. “I’ve been sending my vice president Miranda to go to those meetings. Thankfully, SGA has everything,” she said. She said some of the events on the horizon for the Art Club include a Bob Ross paint night, a second collage night, and ornament painting around the holiday season. Rainville said the goal of the Art Club is to “bring art into our community and bring our community into art. “[We] work with what we have, who we have, any ideas - any artistic imagination that anyone has is fully accepted,” she added. Rainville said the size of the eBoard is “small but mighty.” She added a long term goal of hers for the club is to provide a community “kick-off to spring” art event, which will aim to provide materials and hopefully become an all-day activity that all members of campus can participate in. Art Club’s events and general board meetings are held at the same times, 6 p.m. on select Thursdays, and all students are welcome to attend regardless of experience or major, Rainville said. She said Art Club does help sponsor an “artistic creativity event” monthly or bimonthly in cooperation with the Henry Whittemore Library, which allows students, faculty, and staff the space to create. The event is held in Red Barn Cafe, she added. Miranda Allicon, the club’s vice president and a sophomore studio art major with a concentration in graphic design, also joined the eBoard at Rainville’s request. “Paige and I were in a bunch of classes together last year and we became friends. … And they were telling me about how they were looking for a vice president, and I said I can be available,” she said. Allicon said she’s been helping with all parts of the club based on Rainville’s request, and has most importantly been working with Student Government Association (SGA) to get event funding. The Art Club currently doesn’t have any funding, Allicon said, so whenever they want to host an event, they must prepare and present a plan for spending to SGA, who will grant or deny them the money. Allicon said thankfully the experience with SGA has been great so far, and the Art Club eBoard has a group chat to easily facilitate planning for these requests. She added the communal Club Room I and Paul T. Murphy Room on the fourth floor of the McCarthy Center sometimes contain the supplies they need, such as markers, pencils, and paper. “I mean, surprisingly we don't have scissors, so we just had to request for scissors. Things like that as well,” she said. She added a goal of hers is to breathe new life into the Art Club. “We don’t want people to think it’s only for art majors either. Just go and have fun. Paige plays music - we just want everyone to have a good time.” Allicon said she’s always been interested in art, but didn’t know what path to choose until she took a Digital Tools for Art and Design class with Art Professor Jennifer Dowling. She added the club has been off to a great start, and thinks the eBoard has achieved their goal of reviving the club. “The three of us, we communicate really well, we do what we can - both Paige and I are art majors so we do have the long classes and trying to find out who can do what at what times is difficult, but our communication is great. We try our best,” she said. “I think we’re just doing good overall,” she added. David Abe, the Art Club secretary and a senior Business & IT major, said he joined the club at the end of the last semester after Rainville asked him to be the secretary. “I had always wanted to join the Art Club and I was initially hesitant with having so many clubs I’m a part of, but she ended up convincing me,” he said. Abe said the job of secretary hasn’t been too challenging, thankfully, and that Rainville and Allicon do most of the hard work. He added he’s there to support Rainville, explaining he helped pick up the pumpkins for the painting event, takes notes on budget decisions she makes, and helps with event promotion. Abe said the recent Pumpkin Painting has been his favorite event so far, but that a mixup with Stop & Shop left them with fewer pumpkins than there were attendees. “There were a limited amount, but people ended up painting and it was a good time,” he added. Abe said he wanted to be an art major when he first came to FSU. “My parents didn’t want that for me - they said that I’ll just get stuck doing somebody else’s work, which they were right,” he said. Abe said he then became a Business & IT major with the end goal of opening his own art business. Becoming the Art Club secretary, he added, was the natural next step to both improve his art and get experience with management. He added he was not always interested in art, however. “I was a hater of art before 2020, and then - this sounds really stupid - I found Studio Ghibli,” he said. “It found me right at the right time, and I was like, ‘Woah, art is an expression of self, what?! It’s not all nonsense!’” Rainville said she’s always been interested in art. “Everyone has sort of a story how they’re an artistic child and whether or not they kept going - I was one of those few who kept going,” she said. Rainville said art is what piqued her interest, although not only the art itself but also the psychology and science involved in the creative process and the science behind the materials and how they interact with each other. She added this interest in all areas of art is why she decided to go into the education field, so she can learn how these concepts behave in a range of young ages. Rainville said it still wasn’t an easy decision to pursue art in college. She said she knew she wanted to be a teacher in her junior year of high school after getting hands-on experience teaching welding to freshmen at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, but couldn’t decide on what subject. “I thought maybe I wanted to teach history or English, but then I really evaluated myself … and I really felt as though art has been one of my persisting interests that has never gone away,” she said. When Rainville was asked what made her interested in art in the first place, she had a quick answer: “Construction paper. “I remember very very vividly when I was much younger, I had this book of construction paper and every time I looked at it, it would just spark inspiration,” she said. “Wow, that was a memory I did not expect to have,” she added. Rainville said restarting a club is difficult work, but can be done. “It takes a lot of pride, a lot of passion, a lot of energy to really jump over those hurdles, talk to who you need to talk to, and make a fool of yourself, really. “And advertise, advertise, advertise!” [ Editor’s Note: David Abe is an Assistant Illustrations Editor for The Gatepost. ]