Art by Grace Holmes
Fall/Winter 2022
Art and science are two inextricably linked ways of interpreting the world around us.
Leonardo da Vinci understood this. He said, “To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
Astronaut Mae Jemison got it, too. She said, “The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin, even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.”
Three CEOAS students have embraced this philosophy as well, and have been awarded Oregon State University Arts-Sci fellowships for the 2022-23 academic year.
The Oregon State Arts-Sci program brings together faculty from across the university with an interest in the intersection of the arts and sciences, and in collaborations that can bring this discussion to a broader audience. These partnerships have led to a lecture series, exhibits, formation of a student-led club, courses and other initiatives.
The group is now sponsoring its first cohort of student Arts-Sci fellows who will conduct year-long independent projects. Each will have both an art and a science mentor to advise them in project development, and their projects will culminate in an exhibition in spring 2023. Each fellowship comes with a stipend and a small budget for supplies. Twelve fellowships were awarded, including three to CEOAS students.
Undergraduate Grace Holmes is majoring in oceanography and environmental science and conducting an honors thesis focused on paleoceanography. She will use her fellowship to create a portfolio of paintings that will showcase foraminifera species in the climates they experienced when they were alive. These tiny marine organisms record the climate history of the planet in their calcium-based shells, and Holmes seeks to raise awareness of their importance using an artist’s lens.
Val Chang is a queer, gender non-binary, first-generation scholar, who is currently a geography Ph.D. student. Their research involves using video-based projection art to build emotional resonance and community conversations around the impacts of climate change (as observed through satellite remote sensing imagery) and the cultural impacts of climate change (as observed through mapping and comparing environmental soundscapes). Their project will ask, how does climate change impact the relationships we hold to land and water?
Val Change and Jay Baker. Image courtesy of Val Chang
Chang and another Oregon State grad student, Jay Baker (Environmental Arts & Humanities), have also been awarded a Santa Fe Arts Institute 2023 Changing Climate Arts Residency. While in residence in Santa Fe, NM during February and March, they will further their unique interdisciplinary, art-sci collaborations and work towards the program’s goals of fostering “artistic exploration, creative activism, and community art actions related to global warming that inspire individual transformation and inform collective action.”
Graduate student Aliya Jamil’s research focuses on shifting oceanic boundaries and their impact on the base of the marine food web. Her fellowship project will explore the impacts of climate change on the marine environment with a focus on dynamic boundaries between marine ecosystems, how they shift through space and time, and ocean color.
In addition to these students, CEOAS geography professor Hannah Gosnell is serving as an Arts-Sci advisor to Anita Spaeth, a graduate student in the Environmental Arts & Humanities program. Spaeth is an artist and educator whose work is currently focused on themes of contemporary Western land-use politics, environmental ethics and the bucolic, everyday scenes of Willamette Valley agricultural landscapes.
“This [program] is a great story from many perspectives, but it shows the interest that students have in becoming more interdisciplinary and in making connections between art and science,” says Professor Jerri Bartholemew, Department of Microbiology, who helps guide the Arts-Sci program.
Art by Grace Holmes
