CelebrateART at Rice Jan. 25 and 26

Rice University’s Art Lab student organization will host the second annual CelebrateART, a campuswide arts festival, Jan. 25 and 26 in and around the Rice Memorial Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The event is an undergraduate-led campaign for artistic awareness and reinvigoration at Rice and is open to all members of the university and Houston community who are passionate about the arts, regardless of their area of study, age or background.

Jennifer Ding, one of the coordinators for this year’s festival, called the event “a celebration of art in traditional and nontraditional senses.” It will include a walk-through student art gallery, student-produced films and music, performance acts of all genres, a student-designed craft couture show and a large art market.

Melissa Teng, a coordinator of last year’s CelebrateART, said the event puts an even greater emphasis on the idea that anyone can participate in the arts.

“Rice has long been known as an engineering-focused research university, but we aim for this festival to present a lesser-known side of the university that is impressive in its own right,” she said.

“What has impressed me most about CelebrateART is the enthusiasm of Rice students of all majors and extracurricular backgrounds to participate not only by submitting art to the festival, but also through planning the festival itself,” added Farrah Madanay, a coordinator for this year’s festival. “The majors of our committee members alone range from music to architecture, biochemistry and cell biology to computer science.”

Teng said that the event reflects the highly interdisciplinary and diverse nature of the global art community today, particularly in the Houston community and at Rice.

”It’s been a pleasure to be involved with the evolution of CelebrateART, from concept to execution,” said Molly Hubbard, university art director and adviser to the group. “The students who created CelebrateART provide vital outlets, opportunities and resources for their peers and others to showcase and explore creative talents in a broad range of disciplines. Rice Public Art is thrilled for this to be an annual series of events organized by students. Programs like CelebrateART illustrate the incredible amount of creativity that our students possess.”

For more information on the schedule or to purchase a T-shirt, visit http://celebrateart.rice.edu. Questions can be sent to Farrah Madanay at flm1@rice.edu and Jennifer Ding at jd18@rice.edu.