- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That's the theme of the June 6th public reception celebrating the work of Entomology 1 students and the accomplishments of Donna Billick, co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. The event will take place from 6 to 10 p.m. June 6 in the Third Space, 946 Olive Drive, Davis.
It is free and open to the public.
Billick, a self-described "rock artist," co-founded the program with entomologist/artist Diane Ullman, professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now Entomology and Nematology), and former associate dean for Undergraduate Academic Programs, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Ullman and Billick began teaching classes in the mid-1990s that led to the formation of the Art/Science Fusion Program. The program today 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,” Ullman said.
The program, developed initially in the Department of Entomology and Nematology, is described as "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).
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 is the artist behind the colorful Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility's ceramic sign that features DNA symbols and almond blossoms. A hole drilled in the sign leads to a bee hive.
Billick toyed with a scientific career before opting for a career that fuses art with science. She received her bachelor of science degree in genetics in 1973 and her master's degree in fine arts in 1977, studying art with such masters as Bob Arneson, Roy De Forest, Wayne Thiebaud and Manuel Neri.
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.
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.
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.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event, free and open to the public, will take place from 6:30 to 9 p.m. It will be moderated by Anna Davidson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant Sciences who is studying plant physiology. She has organized and moderated all the LASER events on the UC Davis campus.
The April 7th schedule includes:
6:30-7: Socializing/networking
7-7:25: Christina Cogdell, UC Davis associate professor of design, specializing in history, theory and criticism, will speak on “Growing Living Buildings.”
7:25-7:50: Jesse Drew, UC Davis associate professor of cinema and technocultural studies, will discuss “Who Owns Creativity? Collective Wisdom and Media Innovation”
7:50-8:10 Break. (During the break audience members currently working within the intersections of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work (a teaser/commercial)
8:10-8:35: Piero Scaruffi, a Bay Area-based cognitive artist, will cover “A Brief History of Creativity from Cheops Pyramid to Silicon Valley: 500 Years of Art Science Misunderstandings.”
8:35-9 p.m.: Wendy Kuhn Silk, UC Davis professor emeritus and art/scientist in the Department of Land, Air, and Water Science, will speak on “Singing about Science.”
The UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program is co-directed by the founders Diane Ullman and Donna Billick. Ullman is a longtime professor of entomology at UC Davis and associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Billick, a self-described rock artist, is also science-based: she has a bachelor's degree in genetics as well as a her master's degree in fine arts from UC Davis.
More on the Speakers
Christina Cogdell, associate professor of design, specializing in history, theory and criticism, and a Chancellor's Fellow at UC Davis, is the author of Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (2004), winner of the 2006 Edelstein Prize for outstanding book on the history of technology, and is co-editor of the anthology Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s (2006). Her work is included in the anthologies The Politics of Parametricism (forthcoming), Keywords in Disability Studies(forthcoming), Visual Culture and Evolution, I Have Seen the Future - Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, and Art, Sex, and Eugenics, and published in the journals American Art, Boom: A Journal of California, Design and Culture, Volume, Design Issues and American Quarterly.
Over the last few years, Cogdell has been researching her current book project on generative architecture and design in relation to recent scientific theories of self-organization and emergence, development and evolution, and complex adaptive systems. She has received research fellowships from the Mellon Foundation (New Directions Fellowship), the American Council of Learned Societies (Ryskamp Fellowship), the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. At UC Davis, she teaches interdisciplinary classes in design history/theory/criticism, art history, cultural studies, and American studies. She previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania, College of Santa Fe, and California State University, Fullerton. Cogdell holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Texas at Austin (2001), a master's degree in American studies from the University of Notre Dame (1994), and a bachelor's degree in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin (1991).
Jesse Drew, associate professor of cinema and technocultural studies at UC Davis, teaches media archaeology, radio production, documentary studies, electronics for artists, and community media. He researches and practices alternative and community media and their impact on democratic societies, with a particular emphasis on the global working class. His audio-visual work, represented by Video Data Bank, has been exhibited at festivals and in galleries internationally, including ZKM (Germany), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), Museum of Contemporary Arts (Chicago), Barcelona Cultural Center (Spain), World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), Dallas Film and Video Festival. Open Country is his current film project, a feature documentary on the politics of American Country music. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, journals and anthologies, including Resisting the Virtual Life (City Lights Press), Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture (City Lights Press), At a Distance (MIT Press), Collectivism After Modernism (University of Minnesota), West of Eden (PM Press). His new book is A Social History of Contemporary Democratic Media (Routledge). Before joining the UC Davis faculty, he headed the Center for Digital Media and was associate dean at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Piero Scaruffi is a Bay Area-based cognitive scientist who has lectured in three continents, has published several books on artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the latest one being "The Nature of Consciousness" (2006). He pioneered internet applications in the early 1980s and the use of the worldwide web for cultural purposes in the mid 1990s. His poetry has won several national prizes in Italy and the United States. Scaruffi's latest book of poems and meditations is "Synthesis" (2009). As a music historian, he has published 10 books, the most recent: "A History of Rock and Dance Music" (2009), "A History of Jazz Music" (2007) and "A History of Silicon Valley" (2011). The first volume of his free ebook "A Visual History of the Visual Arts" appeared in 2012. He is also the author of "Demystifying Machine Intelligence" (2013) and has written extensively about cinema and literature.
Wendy Kuhn Silk, UC Davis professor emeritus and art/scientist in the Department of Land, Air, and Water Science works on plant-environment interactions, writes songs, and performs with several local bands. In her early work she introduced concepts and numerical methods from fluid dynamics to the analysis of plant development, a field now known as the kinematics of plant growth. Silk's current projects include several collaborations on problems of soil health. To understand the root-soil interactions, she imagines sitting on the growing root tip and hopping off onto neighboring soil particles.
She teaches the course “Earth Water Science Song,” in which students hear lectures in environmental science and write, discuss and perform songs to communicate their understanding of natural history and scientific concepts.
LASER organizer and moderator Anna Davidson, makes bioart using fungus and other living materials as media. As a teacher for the UC Davis Art/cience Fusion Program, she leads the found object and sculpture studio section of the class, "Entomology 1, Art, Science, and the World of Insects." She specializes in curriculum development and teaching at the intersection of biology and the arts.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Ullman, a UC Davis professor of entomology is the associate dean for undergraduate academic programs, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program.
She will receive the award at the 98th annual PBESA meeting, set for April 6-9 at the Marriott University Park, Tucson, Ariz. PBESA is comprised of 11 western states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming), parts of Canada and Mexico, and seven U.S. territories.
Pacific Branch will now advance her as its candidate for the ESA's international 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.
“Dr. Ullman is a world-renowned and highly respected teacher, but she is an outstanding mentor, researcher and administrator who combines innovation, energy, talent and dedication to help students learn, retain that knowledge, and succeed in class, college and life. They cannot praise her enough, and neither can we,” the team of nominators wrote.
Ullman excels at developing new courses, programs and teaching methods, using traditional and non-traditional means. She employs a unique multidisciplinary approach to teaching. A key example is her Art/Science Fusion Program (which has drawn national and international attention, including a TEDx talk, ESA and AAAS presentations, and scores of speaking invitations all over the world. One of her 2013 presentations was to Lleida University, Spain, where she guided them in setting up an art/science fusion program.
The Art/Science Fusion Program, developed initially in the Department of Entomology and Nematology, is an innovative teaching program that crosses college boundaries and uses experiental learning to enhance scientific literary for students from all disciplines. Her program promotes environmental literacy with three undergraduate courses, a robust community outreach program, and sponsorship of the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASERs).
For example, her Entomology 001 students researched honey bees, learned and crafted mosaic ceramics, and then installed the project in the department's honey bee garden. Her ENT 001 and her freshman seminar on Plants in Art and Science led to 12 permanently installed public art projects and one exhibition at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. These projects illustrating student learning at UC Davis, have attracted national attention, including a 16-page article in the November 2013 edition of Works and Conversations.
The Art/Science Fusion Program drew praise for its robust collaboration with the UC Davis Arboretum and its work with the GATEways (Gardens, Art and the Environment) Project, a campuswide project aimed at increased accessibility to UC Davis and its academic enterprise. One of her most visible and “wow!” projects is the 2,500 pound mosaic art, Nature's Gallery, showcasing the interaction of insects and plants. A product of her ENT 001 class and community outreach, it was displayed at the U.S. Botanical Garden in Washington D.C. and at the California State Fair and is now permanently installed in the UC Davis Arboretum.
Ullman's nominators singled her out for special praise:
1. Her teaching methods and influence are not just in the classroom. As the associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (student population 6000), Ullman leads curriculum and program development, student recruitment and outreach; administrates all undergraduate academic policies ranging from orientation of incoming students; advises and assists students in academic difficulty; and develops campuswide policies with a wide range of academic committees, taskforces and councils at college and campus levels, including the Council of Associate Deans, Undergraduate Dean's Council, and Undergraduate Advising Council.
2. Career Discovery Group. Ullman co-founded the Career Discovery Group Program (180-380 freshmen/year since 2006). This program, essential in training mentors, and obtaining college and private funding for program support and expansion, helps students explore career possibilities, select majors and tailor their academic program to enhance their success. Recently, her leadership resulted in garnering college and private funding for expansion of the program to Educational Opportunity Program students (first in their family to attend college, under-represented minorities) and she contributes throughout the academic year to training and managing the mentors for this program. Undergraduates participating in the program have a faster time to degree, higher GPAs and are less likely to be in academic difficulty.
3. National Online Class. In 2013, Ullman co-directed development and teaching of a national online class on scientific mentoring (Thrips-Tospovirus Educational Network or TTEN) to students and postdoctoral scholars at seven institutions. This effort involved developing an Adobe Connect virtual classroom, a Google Plus site for sharing materials, videos and resources and preparation of curriculum. In addition to this formal teaching, she also trains undergraduates and graduate students to do research in her laboratory. As a researcher, she is best known for translating advances in understanding insect vector-plant virus relationships into novel strategies for preventing vector population growth and epidemics of insect transmitted pathogens. Her success let to a $3.75 million grant; she is the principal investigator.
4. New Techniques and Strategies. Ullman invests a great deal of energy in delivering content and exploring innovative strategies for teaching. In 2012, she revised her strategy for teaching ENT 001, using more online resources, collaborative learning techniques and in-class testing strategies that allowed her to “flip” the classroom and increase discussion, questions and interactive activities in a highly successful project. She continues to innovate and integrate art and science in her teaching, stressing visual literacy and creative confidence.
Unsolicited and anonymous comments from students include:
- “Professor Ullman is wonderful! She is extremely enthusiastic about what she is teaching.”
- “Great professor. She is passionate about what she does and very enthusiastic about insects.”
Professor Jean VanderGheynst, associate dean for Research and Graduate Study, UC Davis College of Engineering and a professor of biological and agricultural engineering, describes Ullman as “the most passionate professor and undergraduate advocate I have encountered. She has worked tirelessly on issues facing undergraduate students. Her teaching acumen and excellence extends far beyond entomology students and have literally reached every student on the Davis campus.”
Highly honored for her work, Ullman was named a fellow of ESA in 2011. She received the UC Davis Chancellor's Achievement Award for Diversity and Community in 2008; the USDA Higher Education Western Regional Award for Excellence in College and University Teaching in 1993; and the Hawaiian Entomology Society Entomologist of the Year Award in 1992, among her many awards.
Ullman joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now Entomology and Nematology) in 1995. She served as the department's vice chair from 2001 to 2004, and as the 2004-05 chair. Ullman obtained her bachelor's degree in horticulture from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1997 and her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1985.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Jacobson's seminar is titled "Investigating Factors Underlying Thrips-Topovirus Interactions: the Importance of Thrips Genetic Variation in the Transmission of Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus by Thrips tabaci and Its Relevance to Other Tospovirus Vectors."
Host is Diane Ullman, associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs at the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Jacobson's abstract:
"Thrips tabaci (onion thrips) is a major agricultural pest worldwide, causing direct damage on many vegetable and field crops. It is also a vector of two plant-infecting Tospoviruses: Iris yellow spot virus (IYSV) for which it is the primary vector, and Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) for which its role as a vector varies geographically. In the U.S. T. tabaci has generally been disregarded as an important vector of TSWV due to its localized importance as a vector worldwide and its inconsistent presence in crops where TSWV is a major problem. However, the vector competence of T. tabaci in the U.S. had not been formally investigated. In this study populations of T. tabaci from multiple locations in NC were tested for their ability to transmit TSWV isolates collected at each of the locations. In addition, population-level differences underlying observed variation in transmission efficiency were investigated using mtCOI and microsatellite markers. Together, the results of these studies demonstrate that specific vector-virus interactions underlie variation in transmission of TSWV by T. tabaci, and that population-level variation in vector competency is an important factor contributing to the differences in the status of this cosmopolitan species as a vector of TSWV. The genetic variation within onion thrips revealed in this work highlights the need to better understand the species- and population-level variation that exists in this species throughout its geographic range in relation to vector competency and other economically important traits, including insecticide resistance and host plant use. They also have important implications for the study of other thrips vectors of tospoviruses whose populations have been reported to exhibit varying degrees of genetic variation."
She received her bachelor of science degree in agricultural biology from New Mexico State University; her master's degree in entomology at Purdue University investigating insecticide resistance in the corn earworm under the direction of Rick Foster; and her doctorate at NC State University working under the direction of George Kennedy researching onion thrips' role in the epidemiology of a Tomato spotted wilt virus in North Carolina.
Upon completion of her doctorate, Jacobson was awarded a USDA/NIFA Postdoctoral Fellow position to investigate population genetic structuring in New York onion production regions in relation to geographic distance, reproductive mode and insecticide resistance traits.
In the future. she looks forward to entering a career teaching, and conducting research to solve contemporary pest management problems.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event is free and open to the public, said Anna Davidson, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Plant Sciences who is organizing and chairing the LASER speaker series. This is the first of five LASER events, made possible by Leonardo International Society of the Arts Sciences and Technology and the UC Davis Art Science Fusion Program.
Among the speakers on Oct. 3 will be Diane Ullman and Donna Billick, co-founders and co-directors of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. Founded 12 years ago, the program includes design and science faculty, museum educators, professional artists and UC Davis students, using a novel experientially based paradigm for learning.
The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of the Davis/Bay area and to foster interdisciplinary networking with an emphasis on art and science through a series of lectures and presentations, according to the Leonardo website. LASER events have already taken place at the University of San Francisco, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, a New York studio “and now we’re coming to UC Davis,” she said.
The schedule for the Oct. 3 program:
6:30-6:50 Socializing/networking
6:50-7:00 Welcome, opening remarks on the Davis inaugural LASER by Anna Davidson
7:00-7:25: Diane Ullman and Donna Billick, co-founders and co-directors of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, speaking on “Fusion and Perception”
7:25-7:50 Bob Ostertag, professor of technocultural studies at UC Davis (title of his talk to be announced)
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 (a teaser/commercial)
8:10-8:35 Meredith Tromble, San Francisco Art Institute School of Interdisciplinary Studies, and Jordan Van Aalsburg, research programmer for the UC Davis Complexity Sciences Center, Department of Physics, speaking on “The Vortex Touches Down”
8:35-9 James Crutchfield, UC Davis physics professor and director of the Complexity Sciences Center, speaking on “Hidden Fragility and the Data Deluge”
9-9:30 Discussion/Networking
Billick is an eight-year member of the board of directors of the Tile Heritage Foundation, and is involved in many other regional and national organizations. She founded Todos Artes in Baja Mexico and the Heaven On Earth educational series. As the co-founder and co-director of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, Billick partners with Ullman in teaching the undergraduate course: “Entomology 1: The Art, Science and the World of Insects,” as well as a series of freshmen seminars covering widespread topics.
Of her talk, Billick says: “I would like to map how fusion or the unity of knowledge, includes cross-discipline, cross culture, cross generational exploration and discovery. An experiential, hands-on approach to education, as with Art/Science Fusion, is to access perception and grow new associations and build life force or fusion energy.”
Bob Ostertag, a professor of technocultural studies at UC Davis, is a musician, author and movie producer. He has published 25 music CDS, two movies, two DVDs, four books and dozens of articles and essays. His writings on the Central American revolutions of the 1980s have been published on every continent and in many languages. Ostertag has performed at music, film and multi-media festivals around the globe, and many of his instruments he designed himself. His diverse collaborators include the Kronos Quartet, avant garder John Zorn, heavy metal star Mike Patton, jazz great Anthony Braxton, transgender chanteuse Justin Bond, Quebecois film maker Pierre Hébert, and the media guerrilla group, The Yes Men.
Meredith Tromble is an artist, faculty member of the San Francisco Art Institute School of Interdisciplinary Studies, and serial collaborator. Under the auspices of James Crutchfield, she and colleagues Dawn Sumner and Jordan Van Aalsburg are creating an immersive, interactive 3D vortex of dream elements called Take Me to Your Dream (Dream Vortex).
Jordan Van Aalsburg, who describes himself as “a recovering physicist,” is a research programmer for the UC Davis Complexity Sciences Center. He co-founded the Davis Makerspace, builder tools and resources for the local community.
James Crutchfield, a UC Davis professor of physics, teaches nonlinear physics, directs its Complexity Sciences Center, and promotes science interventions in nonscientific settings. He says he is mostly concerned with what patterns are, how they are created, and how intelligent beings discover them (see http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~chaos/).
Anna Davidson is studying the ecophysiology of fruit trees for her doctorate. She also makes bioart using fungus and other living materials as a medium. As a teacher for the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, she leads the found object and sculpture studio section of the class, “Entomology 1, Art, Science, and the World of Insects.”
“I am very interested curriculum development and teaching at the intersection of biology and the arts,” Davidson said.
Upcoming LASER events at UC Davis:
Dec. 2, 2013
Amy Franceschini, artist and designer, Bay Area
Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology, UC Davis
Mary Anne Kluth, artist, Bay Area
Justin Schuetz, biologist and artist, San Francisco Art Institute
Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014
Phillip Benn, artist and digital artist, Oakland
Terry Nathan, UC Davis Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Art/Science Fusion Program
Genevieve Quick, artist, Bay Area
Maciej Zwieniecki, UC Davis professor of plant sciences
Monday, April 7, 2014
Christina Cogdell, UC Davis professor of design and art history
Jesse Drew, UC Davis professor of technoculutural studies
Michael Neff, UC Davis professor of computer science and program of cinema and technocultural studies
Wendy Silk, professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources and the Art/Science Fusion Program
June 2, 2014
Joe Dumit, UC Davis director of Sciences and Technology Studies and professor of anthropology
Evan Clayburg, performance/visual artist, Davis
Danielle Svehla Christianson, ecologist, fiber artist, Bay Area
Leonardo community members interested in presenting work at an upcoming LASER should contact LASER chair Piero Scaruffi p@scaruffi.com com for details. To RSVP to attend an upcoming LASER event, email p@scaruffi.com or adavidson@ucdavis.edu for the Davis LASERS.
