For a campus with such a large variety of clubs celebrating different artistic mediums — from songwriting, to filmmaking, to musical theater — it almost seems strange that Fordham Lincoln Center had no multidisciplinary art club before this semester when Hannah Berggren and Tanzema Qureshi, both Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’24, founded Lincoln Center’s first Arts Club.
Prior to knowing each other, club founders Berggren and Qureshi were interested in establishing an art club on campus, as they both hold visual art mediums to be near and dear to their self-expression. Berggren, president of Arts Club, loves painting and drawing small details in everyday life, particularly through the use of inexpensive art materials such as Crayola markers. She shared that the material makes her art more colorful and offers a heightened level of enjoyment over more realistic depictions.
“Illustration will forever have a chokehold on me,” Berggren said. “I like being able to draw the mundane details in our lives in ways that highlight the cute and interesting parts of them.”
Qureshi, the club’s vice president and president of United Student Government at Lincoln Center, paints, embroiders and has done calligraphy for years. She believes that art offers the creator a revolutionary outlet that can be more emotional and moving than people often realize.
“All creation is an expression of love for me,” Qureshi explained. “Art is a form of love for me and an act of resistance, and I feel peace doing any and every form of art.”
Sarah Breitman, FCLC ’25 and the treasurer for the Arts Club, joined the project after the club was approved, and shared that her love for pottery and painting stands at the same level as Berggren and Qureshi’s. She mentioned that her favorite aspect of an art project is mixing and choosing colors and highlights that she “loves bright, vibrant art.”
“Another reason why I have a passion for art is because it’s a form of escapism for me,” Breitman said. “It always puts me in a good mood.”
“Art is a form of love for me and an act of resistance.” Tanzema Qureshi, FCLC ’24
Through their common interest in art, the three have come together to spread and create spaces for creative minds at Lincoln Center’s campus, no matter how proficient they are in their respective mediums.
According to the editorial board, Arts Club was designed with the purpose of creating a space for visual creation and artistic creativity on campus for those who seek it. In a college campus environment where students’ daily academic and extracurricular activities can often be high-stakes, with consequences reaching far into their futures, Arts Club hopes to be a remedy to that pervasive culture.
The club is meant to be relaxing: Members don’t have to be an art major or have to pursue professional careers in the arts. Anyone of any experience and skill level is welcome, and the E-Board invites all different kinds of art interests, styles and personalities to join — the only thing they require is a simple interest in creating art.
Arts Club specifically focuses on visual art, which encompasses a wide variety of mediums such as painting, drawing, collaging and calligraphy. The editorial board plans to have a specific visual art focus that they hone in on during each of their meetings and consider themselves a “creation-based club.” For special events, Qureshi said that the E-Board often does polls on their Instagram account to gauge what activities members want to do. According to the E-Board, members have already expressed interest in activities relating to many different mediums within visual arts, such as pottery, polymer clay, crocheting and collages.
Qureshi and Berggren noted that the Arts Club attracted a large crowd, with over 40 people signing up for their mailing list. Now, the E-Board looks forward to commencing their weekly meetings and crafting a space for members to create and share their art.
Berggren shared that plans for the club’s first general body meeting involve either painting or drawing, and added that the E-Board hopes to diversify their mediums as the year goes on. For future events, the club hopes to also reach out to local art communities in the city. The E-Board would like to hold painting sessions, art picnics, trips to art museums, art walks and even art classes in the greater New York City area.
