In addition to having to purchase regular books and school supplies, some students have to include art materials like canvases, clay and paint to their shopping lists.
Art students and visualization design majors and minors can be hindered by the lack of local art stores in Bryan-College Station. College towns such as Waco and Fort Worth have at least one store dedicated to fine arts and stocking supplies.
A&M art students like visualization junior Taylor Chojecki gravitate to online stores such as Amazon or craft and department stores such as Hobby Lobby, Michaels and Wal-Mart to obtain their supplies.
“Sometimes you can’t find what you’re looking for, or the Amazon shipping price really goes up, and it really hurts because you have to buy so many different things,” Chojecki said.
Chojecki said in order to avoid higher prices, or lack of inventory, some students resort to buying their supplies as the semester goes on to complete each project.
“Sometimes [instructors] will recommend things you end up not needing and you just waste your money,” Chojecki said.
To avoid spending too much money, marketing senior and visualization minor Jessica Tran said she will buy a cheaper product but then find out the product may not be of the highest quality. Tran said she bought a cheaper version of a class-required tool from one of the major craft stores, but found it to be faulty when attempting to use it.
“To get the highest quality of work, you need higher quality supplies,” Tran said. “So sometimes Hobby Lobby or Michaels isn’t exactly the highest quality.”
Dalton Walker, customer experience manager at Michaels, said it can not only be taxing for students to find arts supplies, but for the employees at the stores as well.
“There are some of the specialty items that we don’t necessarily carry here in the store,” Walker said. “We try to redirect them to online sale, and then there’s some stuff that Michaels doesn’t carry, but we try still to help the customer out and kind of point them in the right direction.”
Without a specialized art store, students like Chojecki and Tran are left to obtain supplies from the major craft and department stores in Bryan-College Station.