Art Studio MFA student's ‘An Intervention in Space and Time’ wins purchase prize
Jodi Connelly has won the 2018 Keister and Allen Art Purchase Prize, given to a UC Davis art studio master of mine arts student annually. The award provides for the purchase of artwork created by the recipient for the university’s Fine Arts Collection. The award was presented at the May 31 opening reception for the annual graduate student exhibition at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
For her final thesis project, Connelly engaged in an “environmental intervention” by removing invasive plants and replacing them with native grasses and flowers that she presents through an installation that includes grasses and photos. The work is in the graduate student exhibition on display through June 17.
“It is an incredible honor and I am deeply grateful for the support of the studio art faculty,” said Connelly. “My cohort and Cathy Koehler, the director of the McLaughlin reserve where I did the work and who was an amazing source of support and information as I worked on this project. I encountered many unforeseen obstacles along the way, but the support and friendship of my community gave me the courage to continue when I doubted everything. Thank you to everyone who believed in this project. I am excited to pursue future iterations of this work.”
Prior to coming to the College of Letters and Science’s Department of Art and Art History, Connelly developed arts programming for inner-city youth in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. She was a recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts Grant, the Kira Fournier Memorial Scholarship for Sculpture at Brandeis University, and the UC Davis Drake Award. She has been awarded residencies at Cill Railaig in Ireland, Vermont Studio Center and Penland in North Carolina.
The purchase prize is made through an endowment fund established by Shaun Keister, vice chancellor of the UC Davis Office of Development and Alumni Relations, and Walter Allen, a business analyst in the client services unit of UC Davis Information and Educational Technology. More information on the award and the graduate student exhibition is in a former Arts Blog post.
Art and Art Talks to Catch Wednesday
At 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 6, in the Community Education Room at the Manetti Shrem Museum, art studio major Aida Lizalde and Associate Professor Natalia Deeb-Sossa will talk about how art teaches us about the unique experiences of the undocumented community at the Manetti Shrem Museum. Lizalde is a formerly undocumented childhood arrival and a studio art major currently attending UC Davis. Deeb-Sossa is an associate professor in Chicano/a Studies, and a political refugee from Colombia who arrived in the U.S. in 1995.
Also on campus, a student exhibition combining entomology and design will be presented Wednesday night. The World of Insects: Paper, Tile, Branding and Packaging — Gale Okamura, lecturer in the Department of Design, said students will present branding and packaging for edible-insect products. “The packaging had be appealing to the consumer, and, in some sense, change behavior of the audience to buy edible insects by having appealing graphics,” she said. 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, June 6, courtyard of the Environmental Horticulture building. Read more on Kathy Keatley Garvey’s “Bug Squad” blog.
The articles above are compiled from multiple sources.