By Abigail Loop
Reporter
The artistic passions of Baylor students can now be expanded and shared.
Austin sophomore Nathan Elequin has created an independent organization that helps Baylor students pursue their creative talents.
Elequin said he is giving Baylor students a chance to explore their passions and become better at doing what they love by joining Bearthology, a collaborative group of students who are interested in different aspects of the arts.
Students who have talents in music, dance, film, poetry, visual and digital art, graphic design, theater speech or photography make up the organization.
Elequin said he came up with the idea of Bearthology when he was a freshman at Baylor.
“I explored a lot of organizations,” Elequin said. “Swing Dancing, After Dark, Uproar, you name it. But I realized I had the most fun sitting down and producing music for my friends. I loved the experience when their face lit up when their music was heard. So I decided to get everyone together and make a network.”
Elequin spent this last summer researching and working on plans to create this network, now known as Bearthology.
“I researched aggregators and wanted to do a lot more with people’s passions,” he said. “I wanted to take music and put it on iTunes, maybe get some writing and get it on Nooks and at Barnes and Nobles. I want to do that for people.”
Now, Bearthology is up and running and has 48 active artists, all hoping for their art to become known and to become professional artists one day.
The purpose of Bearthology is to help produce student’s talents to achieve these goals. All departments work with one another on different projects to show each departments set of skills. Whether making a song, filming a video or writing poetry, students work together to make a finished product. A singer could record a song and then a music video could be made by other departments, such as film and digital and visual art.
“We emphasize collaboration. It maximizes the potential to be discovered one day by helping each other,” Elequin said. “They get the experience and thrill of trying new things and then also have the opportunity to promote one another.”
Rockwell sophomore Taylor Neely, an officer of photography for Bearthology, said she thinks the aspect of collaboration the coolest thing about the organization.
“The collaboration between departments of Bearthology is great,” Neely said. “The poets will write something and then give it to the photographers. The photographers will then go out and shoot something for the poem.”
As of now, Elequin has not completed any contracts for Bearthology to be an official organization at Baylor but hopes that Bearthology will be a part of Baylor in the future.
“This is the very beginning, and the potential artist growth is insane,” Elequin said. “Right now, we’re independent of Baylor, you could say we’re an unsanctioned gorilla operation. One day I hope this turns into a company with students on campus and that we build a partnership with Baylor. I want to make Baylor the ideal university known for this to help student talents become known.”
In the future, Elequin said he also hopes to showcase the artists of Bearthology to show what talents are being produced.
“We tell our artists to showcase all the time but we want to do a night for people to see what our artists can do,” Elequin said. “Families at home can see what their kids are doing. “
All students with a passion to express their talents are invited to join Bearthology.
“We are all inclusive and there’s no discrimination,” Elequin said. “All we’re about is creative expression and collaboration.”
To learn more about Bearthology, interested students can visit the Bearthology Facebook page or the Bearthology website.
