The Ballard Ink Club: Where Pen and Paper Collide!

Students get creative in quarantine

Will Glasby, Staff Reporter
Originally published March 2, 2021

A blank piece of paper can lead to endless possibilities. You could write a story about monsters and knights at battle, draw the sun rising over a mountain or you could even fold the paper into a swan! 

As quarantine attempts to infuse our very being with its boredom, Ink Club (advised by Language Arts teacher Gordon Macdougall) rises to help students deter the endless weariness of being stuck at home by providing a place to socialize and share your art pieces with others.

Senior and club veteran Iris Worrall writes poetry and short stories for Ink Club. Despite the club losing members this year, they recovered by recruiting new students.

“We had a fair amount of members, but many didn’t return this year. We were a little scared during the first couple weeks since the only people at the meetings were just a few seniors,” Worrall said. “We have gotten more members though, which is nice. Mr. Macdougall also teaches an honors class for 9th grade so we gained a few new members from that.”

Macdougall and other members have tried hard to advocate for the club, as the quarantine has heavily limited the ability to spread the word about the club. Junior and club member Mia Saunders also worked on recruiting new members to the club.

“I ended up recruiting a few friends who have come to quite a few of our meetings,” Saunders said. “Also, collaborating with the Art Club has meant we’ve been in touch with other artists outside of Ink who can submit their work to the Ink Journal.”

The Ink Journal, which is an almost yearbook-like publication of all the art shared by club members, is one of the best ways for artists and writers to share their work with others and put their work on display to the masses.

“With the pandemic I’ve felt less motivated to draw and write,” Saunders said about how the newfound time created by the quarantine has affected submissions. “I’ve certainly had more ideas for future projects, but it has been more difficult to actually execute them. Being in a group of other artists definitely encourages me, but if there’s anything the pandemic has taught me it’s that it is ok to slow down and rest when it is needed.”

As we slowly feel our way through this pandemic, Ink Club has begun to consider whether they should start to plan their end of year gallery, “Spilled Ink.” Worrall also mentioned the club’s plans for how they might be able to still run the event.

“We didn’t have a Spilled Ink at all last year, because quarantine suddenly hit out of nowhere,” Worrall said. “Generally, people get the Ink Journals at the end of our gallery event, but the lockdown meant that people didn’t get their 2019-2020 Ink Journals until Oct. of this school year. Now that we have had some time, we’ve started to hesitantly talk about hosting some form of an event.”

As the second half of the school year begins, now is a perfect time to join one of their Thursday Zoom meetings. Ink Club always appreciates new members and creative pieces of art. Each meeting begins at 12:00 pm and wraps up at around 1:00pm. To learn more about the club, you can visit their Instagram @ballardinkclub or their website. Keep on writing!