So Lehrer-Graiwer and Nicholas H. Ma ’05 met with OFA Director Jack C. Megan earlier this fall to discuss the possibilities of installing student artwork in the entrance atrium of the OFA early next year.

They also attempted to open up the Science Center for student displays, but soon abandoned their efforts when they were met with administrative opposition.

Although it has less foot traffic, the OFA space came with much less red tape, according to Lehrer-Graiwer.

“Getting this started was a big ordeal,” she says. “We’ve met and talked and now we need to do what we’ve been talking about.”

She and Ma say they hope to begin by installing a student show in the OFA in September, and then setting up an ongoing selection committee of students to review proposals and encourage participation.

Gogel and Andrew J. Conrad ’05 say they agree with Lehrer-Graiwer that student demand for exhibition space well exceeds the current supply.

Gogel, armed with a growing list of more than 60 Harvard students, formed a group called Art Squatters which aims to increase public displays of student art on campus and around Cambridge.

According to Gogel, Harvard’s spring renovations and construction production projects have resulted in many indoor and outdoor spaces that could be utilized for student displays.

“Upperclassmen today are limited and depended on their hour tutors to display their artwork in temporary art exhibition spaces in their own houses,” she says. “We are missing an opportunity to do this on a more permanent and integrated basis.”

With Art Squatters, Gogel has searched for public, outdoor spaces where students can produce or display art. She says Harvard needs a space open around the clock and completely devoted to student art. She has her eye on Holyoke Center, the OFA and William James Hall.

As one of their first projects, Gogel and the Art Squatters plan to paint a mural on Bow Street during Arts First weekend. And Gogel says their goal of painting murals of every department building at Harvard aims to link the university with the artistic community of Cambridge.

“We need to think of exhibition space for art not only as space inside but also as space outside, in the form of murals and other public art,” she says. “The space is there; now the policies need to be adjusted for them to be put to permanent and temporary usage.”

Like the Art Squatters, Conrad’s initiative seeks to make student art more accessible to the Harvard community. His project, Democratizing the Gallery (DTG), gathers art from students and tutors in all Houses, both involved and uninvolved with VES, to display “democratically” in the basement of Eliot House.

In April, Conrad and nearly 40 other students assembled in Eliot’s media room to share art of all mediums from charcoal drawings to ceramics to poetry.

DTG also provided those in attendance with the tools of improvisational art—100 pounds of clay to play with, folk music and paper tacked to the walls of the gallery. DTG currently has plans to repeat the event in Kirkland and Quincy Houses in the near future.