- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
With that in mind, the Bohart Museum of Entomology's next open house, themed “Insects and Art,” will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 20 in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane. The event is free and open to the public and family-oriented.
Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, and Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator, announced that more than a dozen artists will be displaying their work. Many will be there to answer questions.
The event spans a variety of art from the detailed illustrations of the late Mary Foley Benson, formerly of the Smithsonian Institution, to some of the whimsical representational work from the UC Davis Art 11 printmaking class.
A family activity will be crafting small insect sculptures out of wire and beads.
The work of Diane Ullman, professor of entomology and co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, will be displayed. Some will be ceramic mosaics and others will be images of larger campus installations. The UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program installed much of the art around campus, including work at the UC Davis Arboretum and the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road. Ullman and colleague Donna Billick, co-founder of the program, taught Entomology 001 students how to fuse art with science.
Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and an international award-winning writer and photographer, will show some of the images she's captured in her bee garden. One of her macro images of a flameskimmer dragonfly is published in the Entomological Society of America's 2015 world insect calendar. She also writes the Bug Squad blog that appears on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources website.
Student art from Art 11, a beginning printmaking class taught by lecturer Bryce Vinkorov of the UC Davis Department of Art and Art History will be displayed. The class borrows educational drawers from the museum and then creates works of art inspired by the assortment of insects. The display will include a work by Beatrice Lee, who drew inspiration from the "violin beetles" in South America.
"My classes have used bugs from the Bohart as inspiration for their linocut prints for the past thee years," Vinkorov said. "This is one of the my classes favorite assignments. They are fascinated by the variety of color and body shapes of these bugs." The prints displayed, he said, are a sample of this quarter's work. "The larger color prints are linocut reductions. I am very thankful that the Bohart lets this kind of cross=pollination happen."
The insect-themed drawings and paintings of Nicole Tam, an entomology undergraduate student and artist, will be displayed.
The work of Mary Foley Benson, the former Smithsonian Institution scientific illustrator who lived the last years of her life in Davis, and worked for faculty in the Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology), will be showcased. Some of it is displayed year-around at the Bohart Museum and in 366 Briggs, a departmental conference room.
Housing a global collection of nearly eight million specimens, the Bohart Museum is also the home of the seventh largest insect collection in North America, and the California Insect Survey, a storehouse of the insect biodiversity. Noted entomologist Richard M. Bohart (1913-2007) founded the museum.
Special attractions include a “live” petting zoo, featuring Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. Visitors are invited to hold the insects and photograph them.
The museum's gift shop, open year around, includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, books, jewelry, posters, insect-collecting equipment and insect-themed candy.
The Bohart Museum's regular hours are from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. The museum is closed to the public on Fridays and on major holidays. Admission is free. Open houses, focusing on specific themes, are held on weekends throughout the academic year.
The remaining schedule of open houses:
- Sunday, Jan. 11: “Parasitoid Palooza,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Sunday, Feb. 8: “Biodiversity Museum Day,” noon to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, March 14: “Pollination Nation,” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, April 18: UC Davis Picnic Day, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Sunday, May 17: “Name That Bug! How About Bob?” 1 to 4 p.m.
- Saturday, July 18: “Moth Night,” 8 to 11 p.m.
More information is available by contacting (530) 752-0493 or Tabatha Yang, education and public outreach coordinator at tabyang@ucdavis.edu