On Wednesday, March 12, students from the “Issues and Contemporary Art” course at Augustana College brought the “Let’s bARTer” pop-up show to life in the quad, allowing students to trade physical items for art pieces. “Let’s bARTer” is an initiative that combines creativity, sustainability and the desire to make art accessible to all, breaking traditional barriers and turning art into something tangible to be lived and shared.
Senior India Torres, studio art major, described the event as the result of a social project assigned in the class taught by Anne Heide.
This particular project aimed to engage the Augustana community through art, using recycled materials like cardboard to make art more accessible and environmentally friendly.
“The assignment was to form groups and come up with something that would involve the public,” Torres said. “This is the first time everyone has participated in this project as a whole.”
After the class was divided into groups, each one was assigned different tasks, such as adding paintings to the museum on the first floor of Centennial Hall or creating a box where people could leave written thoughts, which would later be used to create a piece of art.
Senior Peyton Richard, a student in the class, explained this project as an example of a social practice, prioritizing community engagement and interaction over aesthetics or money. This initiative involved trading art for everyday objects, like simple rocks or pens.
We live in a society where art is often considered a luxury for a few, but this project seeks to make art accessible to all, hoping it will truly become so one day. This project brought together different personalities who have managed, for the first time, to organize such an initiative.
Junior Phoebe Fuller, majoring in creative writing with a minor in studio art, highlighted the possibility of creating an Art Club with goals similar to the barter market. The club’s goal would be to make spaces for art activities on campus and share them with the Augustana community, mentioning the initial success of the class in bringing everyone together.
“To me, art is many different things,” Fuller said. “I think it’s relaxation, expression and the overlap of those things is really nice because sometimes expressing yourself can be very difficult.”
Through art, Fuller said that we can get to know cultures that might seem foreign without necessarily experiencing them firsthand.
“Morocco or Barcelona, I’ve never been there, but I can get a sense of what the culture is like by studying their art,” Fuller said.
Projects like “Let’s bARTer” show that art is not just a luxury for a few but a shared form of expression that can break barriers, involve people and stimulate collective creativity.
Through art, we can connect with one another, recognize and celebrate differences, and hope that initiatives like this can truly change the way we think about art in the future.