- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's a program that, as the name indicates, fuses art and science. Science with art.
On that note, two noteworthy events sponsored by the program will take place next week.
But first, what's the program all about?
It's the brainchild of UC Davis entomologist/artist Diane Ullman and her close friend and colleague Donna Billick, a self-described "rock artist." Their visions and talents are absolutely amazing and have drawn national and international attention.
Ullman and Billick began teaching classes in the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now Entomology and Nematology) in the mid-1990s that led to the formation of the Art/Science Fusion Program. They founded the program and now serve as co-directors. Today it includes design faculty, science faculty, museum educators, professional artists and UC Davis students.
“Participants see and feel art and science, hold it in their hands, hearts and memories—in ceramics, painting, photographs, music, and textiles,” said Ullman, professor of entomology, former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and former associate dean for Undergraduate Academic Programs, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Basically, it's an innovative teaching program that "crosses college boundaries and uses experiental learning to enhance scientific literary for students from all disciplines." The program promotes environmental literacy with three undergraduate courses, a robust community outreach program, and sponsorship of the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASERs).
One of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program's most visible and “wow!” projects is the 2,500 pound mosaic art, Nature's Gallery in the Storer Garden, UC Davis Arboretum. It showcases the interaction--and the beauty--of insects and plants. It was initially displayed at the U.S. Botanical Garden in Washington D.C. and at the California State Fair.
Another project that draws much attention and acclaim is the Ent 1 art in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee garden on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus.
Billick created “Miss Bee Haven,” a six-foot-long honey bee sculpture that anchors the garden. "I like to play with words,” said Billick. She also created the colorful Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility's mosaic ceramic sign that features DNA symbols and almond blossoms. A hole drilled in the sign is ready for a bee hive.
Also in Davis, Billick created the whimsical Dancing Pigs sculpture and the Cow Fountain, both in the Marketplace Shopping Center on Russell Boulevard; the Mediation sculpture at Central Park Gardens; and the Frawns for Life near the West Area Pond.
Billick traces her interest in an art career to the mid-1970s when then Gov. Jerry Brown supported the arts and offered the necessary resources to encourage the growth of art. He reorganized the California Arts Council, boosting its funding by 1300 percent.
She maintains a compound in Baja, where she teaches three workshops a year called "Heaven on Earth." She has won numerous awards for her work.
For outstanding teaching, Diane Ullman was recently selected the recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Award in Teaching from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America. She is now one of six candidates for the ESA Distinguished Teaching Award. ESA will select the recipient from one of six branches—Pacific, Eastern, North Central, Southeastern, Southwestern and International—and present the award at its Nov. 16-19 meeting in Portland, Ore.
The other noteworthy event involving the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program occurs on Monday, June 2. It's the popular LASER-UC Davis event and will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. in Room 3001 of the Plant and Environmental Sciences Building. (LASER is an acronym for Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous.) One of the program's teachers, Anna Davidson, a Ph.D candidate in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, is coordinating and moderating the event. Come by at 6:30 for socializing and networking. The program starts at 7.
Davidson has gathered an exciting program of four speakers, with a discussion and more networking to follow from 9 to 9:30:
The schedule:
- Gene Felice, graduate student, at the University of California Santa Cruz, will speak on "Justice in a More Human World" from 7 to 7:25.
- Michael Neff, associate professor in Computer Science and Cinema and Technocultural Studies at UC Davis, will speak on "The Gap Between Computational and Artistic Models of Movement"
- Danielle Svehla Christianson of the Berkeley Center for New Media, will discuss "The Gap Between: Computational and Artistic Models of Movement, “A Digital Forest: 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110100” from 8:10 to 8:35 p.m.
- Joe Dumit, director of Science and Technology Studies and professor of anthropology at UC Davis, will speak on "Haptic Creativity: Seeing, Scaling and Storymaking with the KeckCAVES" from 8:35 to 9 p.m.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You’re in luck. Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis, will speak on “Butterflies in Illuminated Manuscripts and Renaissance Art--Homage to Vladimir Nabokov" at the LASER-UC Davis event from 7:25 to 7:50 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2 in Room 3001, Plant and Environmental Sciences Building.
What’s LASER? The acronym stands for Leonard Art Science Evening Rendezvous. Basically, as the name implies, it integrates art and science.
The event begins at 6:30 p.m. with socializing and networking, continues with four speakers, and ends with a discussion and networking from 9 to 9:30. Organized and moderated by Anna Davidson, a doctoral candidate in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, it is is free and open to all interested persons.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian-born novelist best known for Lolita (1955) but he also made "serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer," according to Wikipedia.
The schedule:
6:30-7 p.m.: Socializing/networking
7-7:25: Amy Franceschini, San Francisco area-based artist, speaking on “Excursions through Domains of Familiarity and Surprise”
7:25-7:50: Arthur Shapiro, professor, UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology, “Butterflies in Illuminated Manuscripts and Renaissance Art--Homage to Vladimir Nabokov"
7:50-8:10: BREAK. (During the break anyone in the audience currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work).
8:10-8:35: Justin Schuetz, San Francisco Art Institute faculty member and director of conservation science for National Audubon Society, “Approximating Equations: Visual and Statistical Explorations of Truth”
8:35-9: Mary Anne Kluth, interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco, “Narratives of Inquiry in a Contemporary Art Practice”
9-9:30: Discussion/Networking
Speaker biosketches:
Amy Franceschini is an artist and founder of the San Francisco-based art and design collective, Futurefarmers. Her work is highly collaborative and usually involves a diverse group of practitioners who come together to make work that responds to a particular time and space. Franceschini creates tactile frameworks for exchange where the logic of a situation can disappear -- where moments of surprise and wonder open the possibility for unexpected encounters and new perspectives on a particular situation. This situational approach emerges as temporary architectural interventions, public programs, choreography, radical journalism and museum exhibitions. Franceschini received her masters of fine arts degree from Stanford University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and has exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art, New York Hall of Sciences and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evoluation and ecology at UC Davis, monitors the butterfly population of Central California and posts on his website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/. He works on butterfly biogeography, evolution, and ecology and also does research in Argentina. Shapiro received his bachelor of arts degree in biology from the University of Pennslvania in 1966, and his doctorate in entomology from Cornell University in 1970. Shapiro joined the UC Davis faculty in 1971. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, California Academy of Sciences, Royal Entomological Society (U.K.) and Explorers Club. He also was selected a Fellow of the Davis Humanities Institute. His credits also include 300 scientific publications (one book, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, University of California Press, 2007); and 16 completed doctoral and 15 masters students under his direction. He works on butterfly biogeography, evolution, and ecology.
Justin Schuetz is a visiting faculty member at San Francisco Art Institute; he co-teaches a class on scientific and artistic exploration of biological systems. “Recently I have been using images and text to explore the ideas of a Japanese mathematician whose work has changed how biologists construct statistical models of the world,” Schuetz said. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology and studio art from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; his doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell University; and his master’s degree in fine arts (photography) from the San Francisco Art Institute. As the director of conservation science for National Audubon Society, he leads a team “that aims to describe relationships between birds, people, and places so that we can better shape conservation outcomes. Much of our recent work has focused on reconstructing responses of birds to historical climate change and forecasting responses to future climate change."
Mary Anne Kluth is an interdisciplinary artist who received her master’s degree in fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008 and a bachelor’s of fine arts from California College of Arts in 2005. She says her work explores the nexus of landscape imagery, narrative, and information, and her most recent body of work deals with descriptions of landscape from the 1860s, and contemporary theme park simulations. Kluth recently completed a residence at the Kala Art Institute and exhibited at the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, and the Contemporary Art Center, Las Vegas. Her work has been featured in ARTnews, Beautiful Decay, and Harper's, among other publications. Kluth has written catalog essays, reviews and contributed to various publications, including Art Practical, Artweek, Art Ltd. and Stretcher. She is represented by Gallery Wendi Norris in San Francisco.
For directions to the Plant and Environmental Sciences building, see map. See you there!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This beetle belongs to a large and varied order: their eltrya—the hardened outer wings that form the beetles’ iconic carapices—are jeweled purple and gold, colors that shift with motion. “A Study of Stillness in Motion,” the piece would be called. This particular beetle is green, so green your eyes slide off of it, like you’re looking at the greenest of greeniness, the very Form of green, and it is not for you to comprehend.--Whitney Krupp
So begins an insect tale, illustrated with her art, at the Organism show sponsored by the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. It started out as a one-day show on Dec. 11, but by popular demand, evolved into a three-day show.
The last day to see it is Saturday, Dec. 15 from 6 to 9 p.m. The site: Old Nelson Art Gallery in the UC Davis Art Building (across from Shields Library).
Whitney Krupp, a second-year ecological management and restoration major from San Rafael, tells the story of a beetle, a fire, and a pictographs in her piece, "A Study of Stillness in Motion." You'll have to stop by to read what happens in this thought-provoking and creative piece.
Krupp is one of 15 entomology students showcasing insect tales and art. Another memorable one is by Nhu Mai who writes about "The Demise of the Hornet Who Thought He Could."
"New Japanese Giant hornet larvae have been born and the supply of food for the colony of hornets is now running extremely low on this cold autumn night in the mountains of Japan," Mai begins.
The hornet colony grows increasingly hungry and desperately needs food. So a hornet scout sets out to steal food from a honey bee hive. Spoiler alert: hornets kill honey bees and raid the colony of honey, immature brood, and adult bees.
This particular hornet, however, encounters a strategic maneuver. The bees swarm it, vibrate heat, and smother it.
Honey bees, Mai explains, can withstand 118-degree temperature, while a hornet "can only survive up to 115 degrees...Within seconds, the hornet is lifeless."
The 15 students wrote "curious tales about insects" and illustrated those stories "through their art pieces,” said show curator Anna Davidson, a Ph.D. student who's a teaching assistant with the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. “The concept behind their art pieces is based on Cabinets of Curiosities, a pre-Linnaeus collection of curiosities made popular among the affluent in 14th and 15th century Europe.”
“During this show you will experience glow in-the-dark organisms, art made of fungus, large-scale installation, live performance, and sound art and tales about insects that are so curious they are almost unbelievable!” said Davidson, whose own work includes "art made of fungus."
The Organism show is not just about bees and beetles. You'll see assorted other insects, including monarch butterflies and praying mantids, brought to life through art and text.
While you're on the UC Davis campus (Saturday, Dec. 15), be sure to attend the Bohart Museum of Entomology's open house, themed "Insects in Art," from 1 to 4 p.m. in 1124 Academic Surge on Crocker Lane.
You'll get an opportunity to make a bug button--and maybe win a prize.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Art made of fungus?
Tales about insects?
That will all take place at “Organism,” an art show fusing art, science and technology, including insect art by young entomologists on the University of California, Davis campus
The date: Tuesday night, Dec. 11.
The time: 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
The place: the Old Nelson Gallery in the UC Davis Art Building.
The event, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program.
"Organism" also will include visual, sound, live performance, and a look at a Cabinet of Natural Curiosities (see example on Wikipedia).
“This is a two-part show,” said curator Anna Davidson, a doctoral candidate who teaches for the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, which was launched in 2006 by entomologist Diane Ullman and self-described “rock artist” Donna Billick.
Part One will spotlight artworks created by both artists and scientists on the UC Davis campus. Participating scientists will include Ciera Martinez, Anna Davidson, Brad Townsly, Dan Chitwood and Diane Ullman. Among the artists: Daniel Brickman, May Wilson, Evan Clayburg, Daniel Mendoza, Sarah Julig, Dylan Wright, Donna Billick and Emily Schleiner.
Part One also includes performance art by Allison Fall and a dance performance by Linda Bair Dance Company.
Part Two of the show will feature 15 students from the Entomology 1 class, which is housed in the Art Science Fusion program. “These 15 students have been writing curious tales about insects and illustrating those stories through their art pieces,” Davidson said. “The concept behind their art pieces is based on Cabinets of Curiosities, a pre-Linnaeus collection of curiosities made popular among the affluent in 14th and 15th century Europe.”
“During this show you will experience glow in-the-dark organisms, art made of fungus, large-scale installation, live performance, and sound, art and tales about insects that are so curious they are almost unbelievable!” she said.
The 15 students include Christina Ball, Edna Chen, Alejandra Gonzalez, Whitney Krupp, Danielle Laub, Nina Liu, Huong Nhu Mai, Amy McElroy, Brenda Nguyen, Lawrence Nguyen, Meredith Scarborough, Alison Stewart, Kevin Tran and Hsin Hwei Tsou.
For more information, contact Anna Davidson at adavidson@ucdavis.edu. She is a Ph.D student in the Horticulture and Agronomy Graduate Group, Department of Plant Sciences.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
And they're not letting the secret out until Saturday, Dec. 3.
What it is: the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program will sponsor a "Cabinets of Curiosity" scientific art show on Saturday, Dec. 3 in Davis.
Billed as "found object and sculpture featuring 17 student artists," the event will take place from 7 to 10 p.m. at 721 7th St., Davis (corner of 7th and G streets). A performance art by Evan Clayburg is set for 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
"But what's in those drawers?" we asked entomologist/artist Diane Ullman, co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. She is a longtime professor of entomology at UC Davis and associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Ullman did not disclose the secrets, but she said folks attending the event "will find out what happens when artists mix this concept with the strange world of insects using found object and sculpture."
A little background: She and Donna Billick of Davis co-founded and co-direct the Art/Science Fusion Program, which meshes art with science in undergraduate education and community outreach. Some of their work is showcased in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, west of the central campus.
The Dec. 3rd show "is based on the fusion of art and science, particularly insects and art and is based on the theme of Cabinets of Curiosity," said Art/Science Fusion Program teaching assistant Anna Davidson, who is a third-year PhD student in the Horticulture and Agronomy Graduate Group, housed in the Department of Plant Sciences.
"Cabinets of Curiosity were pre-museum, pre-Linnaeus collections of curiosities from around the world featured for the affluent in the 15th and 16th centuries," Davidson said. "Curious items were either displayed in cabinets or entire rooms. We have created a cabinet of curiosity consisting of 20 drawers. Each drawer is a shallow, glass covered box that tells a story about insects using found object and sculpture. Each piece is very unique."
"There will also be a local--but becoming more famous--performance artist named Evan Clayburg performing at 8 p.m. His piece will be a surprise. We will also have two Djs."
And the site? "The gallery is an empty house that we will transform into an art space to facilitate this one-night underground art show," Davidson said.
Davidson did provide a couple of "bug" images (below)--but the rest you'll have to see on Dec. 3.
And learn more about them...