The Gibson Southern Art Club is introducing a new face this school. The club has voted, and decided, on a new mascot to represent the group this year.
“At the beginning of the school year, Mrs. Russell and I were discussing ideas for Art Club and she brought up a mascot,” said senior Art Club President Tyler McFadden. “I thought it was a great idea and would make the club more fun, so I asked the officers at our first officer meeting and they all agreed.”
From there, the idea was introduced to members at the first meeting of the year. Each attendee was given the opportunity to vote between four animals: a chicken, duck, sloth or fish. After deciding on the animal, a duck, members wrote name ideas for the mascot. The officers then decided on the top five ideas and let the club members vote on their favorite name.
“The officers got back together and counted up the votes and the winner was Vincent van Duck,” said junior Art Club officer Allison Spindler.
While van Duck will be a fun addition to the Art Club, he will also be useful in projects. Russell plans to use duck stickers as door prizes for meetings, as well as make van Duck a prominent subject in the children’s coloring book the club is creating.
“We can use him to kind of help with themes,” art teacher Laura Russell said. “We are doing a coloring book and in the coloring book we have like 20 pages with a duck on there. We are actually introducing him that way, the front of it has [him on it].”
McFadden believes van Duck will be a useful collaboration tool for the group.
“I think that having a mascot makes the club more fun and can bring people together to share their creative ideas,” Mcfadden said.
For the time being, van Duck will be the face of the Art Club, but Russell has plans to pick a different representative each year.
“I think that it would be great to have a different one every year,” Russell said. “I think we will do that; I think that will become a tradition.”
Although the mascot is subject to change eventually, club members are happy with the representative for the time being.
“I actually think that a duck is pretty unique; you don’t see many mascots like that,” Spindler said. “I think it fits with the creativity that artwork ‘splashes’ around. Vincent is certainly a name that represents our crazy Art Club, very unexpected and out of pocket.”
