In the spirit of Halloween, the AU Art Club held its first-ever costume party Oct. 28 from 7:30-9:30 p.m.

Jennifer Winkler, co-president of the Art Club, felt it was a good idea to have the costume party because it went beyond the realm of activities typically endorsed in the club.

“We’ve never done a costume party in the art department before, so we thought we couldn’t go wrong with that,” Winkler said.

Based on the amount of people who came sporting a costume, the event was a great success.

“Personally, I was really impressed with the turnout,” Winkler said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a turnout with quite that much enthusiasm. It was really great to see how much effort everyone put in the costumes and the fact there were no duplicate costumes.”

Attendants were expected to dress as an artist or could base their costume off of an artist’s work. Each person was eligible to win the costume contest, which granted a prize to the individual with the best overall costume.

The winner of the contest was Hallie Dahlhofer, who cleverly dressed as Frida Kahlo, a Spanish painter notoriously known for her unibrow.

“Hallie’s costume was spot-on. I really liked the unibrow and the moustache shadow under her nose,” Winkler said with a laugh.

Humorous quirks aside, Dahlhofer had another, more meaningful, reason for dressing as Kahlo.

“I was inspired to dress as Frida because she is one of my favorite artists, and I feel a personal connection to her challenges of the social system and the art world,” Dahlhofer said.

“She was a pioneering woman in the artists realm, she strongly defended what she believed was just, and she created deeply personal paintings that reflected the pain of life.”

Aside from Dahlhofer’s costume, Winkler also favored Lauren Bittner’s “Starry Night” costume, inspired by Van Gogh’s famous painting.

Although there could only be one winner of the costume contest, participants could potentially win a multitude of raffle prizes, such as a 16-piece X-acto knife kit.

“We had various amounts of art supplies [to win], including a build-your-own Dutch still life and chalk pastels,” Ashley Haines, co-president of Art Club, said.

Due to the pricey nature of the prizes, funding was a slight issue with planning.

Although Winkler preferred not to comment, Haines stated the cost was around $200, primarily stemming from the cost of prizes.

According to Winkler, the Art Club used the money earned from the window-painting contest to help fund the party.

Another obstacle the co-presidents needed to address was providing enough entertainment to appease the attendants of the party.

“We were worried we weren’t going to have enough to do there, but I think people were just happy to be there and talk about their costumes,” Winkler said.

Additionally, there were various activities for party-goers to enjoy.

“We had music, we had pin-the-ear on Van Gogh, we also had pumpkin bowling and chatted about each other’s costumes,” Haines said.

For their first costume party, Winkler and Haines felt it was a considerable success, part of which can be attributed to the co-presidents allowing plenty of time to prepare for the event.

“We worked on it all summer to plan things out,” Winkler said.

Aside from never having a costume party before, the co-presidents had an obvious motivation for spurring on the event.

“We’re obsessed with art, and we want our enthusiasm to spread throughout the department,” Winkler said.