Annual Arts, Humanities Graduate Exhibition announces prizes at celebration

By Maria Sestito, College of Letters and Science (condensed from original story)

The annual Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate Exhibition is on view at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, at UC Davis through June 22. The exhibition features work of graduating grad students in art history, art studio, comparative literature, design, English, music and performance studies as well as environmental science and policy.

Prizes for the art were awarded in four categories Thursday, June 5, at the exhibition’s opening ceremony. Additionally, an honorable mention was awarded for design of an innovating cooling system using elements from nature.

The LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize and the Savageau Award in the Department of Design are awarded each year and enable the Manetti Shrem Museum to purchase graduate student work for the university’s Fine Arts Collection. Additionally, there is a College of Letters and Science Prize for Excellence in Art Studio. The LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize and the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize are awarded to M.F.A. students from the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program. The prizes enable the Manetti Shrem Museum to purchase graduate student work for the university’s Fine Arts Collection. 

“All of our students’ work in this incredible exhibition is done with a level of intelligence, rigor and creativity that makes me incredibly proud,” said the college’s dean, Dean Estella Atekwana, said at the  opening. “This type of nuance and critical thinking is especially important to celebrate now. During a time when the value of higher education is being questioned, it is the students in the College of Letters and Science who remind me of our purpose and give me hope for the future.”

This year’s participants utilized photography, painting, sculpture, video, performance and textiles to explore relationships between humans and technology, the environment, and one another, and engage the public in dialogue.

Letters & Science Prize for Excellence

Raquel Marie Tripp, M.F.A. in art studio, is the winner of the second annual Letters & Science Prize for Excellence. The $2,500 prize awarded for a graduating student in art studio is aimed at furthering the career of an art studio M.F.A. grad, and to encourage, recognize and celebrate creative and original contributions of the recipient.

Tripp wrestles her own feelings of disorientation and confusion while persisting in the act of making figurative narrative works, as a response to her unique cultural moment — where the line between fake and real is blurry. Tripp’s exhibition work includes a near life size multimedia installation of projected video mapped over representational figurative works on paper. 

“I’m incredibly honored to have my research recognized outside of my department,” Tripp said. “My faculty and the visiting artists and scholars that support the Maria Manetti Shrem MFA program have all been wonderful examples of interdisciplinary artistic practice. I’m excited to continue that legacy in the next phase of my career.”

Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize

The Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize is awarded to a graduating Master of Fine Arts student. That award went to Nicole Irene Anderson, who describes herself as a draftswoman and painter who creates psychological, ambiguous compositions that respond to questions of place. Following graduation, Anderson will continue working in the studio and, this winter, will attend a three-month residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito.

"It feels incredible receiving this recognition and having my first artwork in a permanent collection at the Manetti Shrem Museum," Anderson said.

LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize

The LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, made possible through donors/artists Suzanne Hellmuth, and Jock M. Reynolds (art studio, M.F.A. ‘72), was awarded to Cella Costanza, M.F.A. in art studio.

Constanza constructs skewed narratives that expose fault lines in our perception of reality and explores time as a cyclical and meandering phenomenon. Using sculpture, painting and drawing, she unmoors the myth of forward motion, as if pausing to ask “Which way is tomorrow?”

"It’s an incredible honor — and a little surreal," Constanza said. "So much of my work is about time, erosion and impermanence, so the idea that one of these pieces will live on in a museum collection is deeply moving. It feels like a gesture of belief — not just in the finished work, but in the difficult, uncertain process that got it there."

Design: Savageau Award; plus Honorable Mention award

This year the design award went to Diego Martinez Fernandez del Castillo. The Savageau Award for Design is named for Ann Savageau, a professor in the Department of Design from 2007 to 2014, is awarded to a graduating student from the design M.F.A. program.

Martinez Fernandez del Castillo is a designer exploring sustainability and well-being through fiber art and the material reuse of discarded agave waste from the mezcal industry. His exhibit invites viewers into a journey of material exploration with agave waste, imagining alternative ways of designing rooted in care, sustainability and stewardship of our common home.

Magda Rojas Valdez received an Honorable Mention for her work, Reclaiming Comfort, which explores thermal comfort as a human need, critiquing energy-intensive cooling systems and proposing nature-based solutions and behavioral adaptations for a future less reliant on fossil fuels. Rojas Valdez is a multidisciplinary designer from Baja California, Mexico, whose practice integrates architecture and visual communication with a focus on community participation, social impact and sustainability.

Read the full story by Maria Sestito on the College of Letters and Science website, and learn more about the student awardees and their plans.

Don’t miss ‘BowerHaus’ sculptures in Arboretum through Wednesday. Can you find them?

You may have missed the performance last Friday in the Arboretum and Public Garden, but you can still catch the art as it remains on display near Lake Spafford through Wednesday at UC Davis. Some of them are difficult to spot in the wooded, heavily planted area. Can you find it?

More than 200 people attended “A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World,” a novel musical and visual work devised by students and professors in music and art. It sought to address the urgency of habitat remediation and protection. The interdisciplinary work employed an imagined narrative that takes place in the arboretum before humans, during humans (the “Anthropocene”), and after humans. Read more about the performance and other art events in last week’s Arts Blog.

The students have been guided by Robin Hill, professor of art in the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program in the Department of Art and Art History; Kurt Rohde, professor of music in the Department of Music, and Stacey Parker, director of Public Horticulture and Engagement at the Arboretum and Public Garden.

“Framed as a tour of the Arboretum, in the habitat of the fictional Arboretum Bowerbird, ‘A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World’ takes the bowerbird as a case study to examine our impact on the environment and its occupants.” – Kurt Rohde

Cruess Collective Senior Showcase exhibition runs through June 13

Cruess Collective at the UC Davis Design Museum is the 2025 undergraduate exhibition highlighting the versatility and creativity of the Department of Design, as shown through the outstanding course work produced over the past year by senior undergraduate students.

The Department of Design offers a challenging curriculum combining design history, theory, and studio courses. Faculty members assist students with the complex practice of translating ideas into realities and the important process of shaping culture, form, and content. Students are trained in combining design factors with technical skills to fluidly navigate the design discipline in the areas of Textiles and Fashion, Exhibition, Visual Communication, and Interior Lighting & Architecture.

The Design Museum, part of the College of Letters and Science and free to the public, is in 124 Cruess Hall. Through June 13.

The UC Davis Design Museum is open Monday–Friday, noon-4 p.m. To schedule a weekend appointment (Sunday 2:00–4:00 p.m. only), arrange a group visit, or for further information please call (530) 752-6150 or email tplance@ucdavis.edu.