UC Davis students enrolled in a popular First-Year Seminar titled "The Power of Visual Language through Symbolism and Expression in Clay" have contributed to a mural recently installed just outside the UC Davis Environmental Horticulture Building. Despite the challenges of remote learning, seven students, Leslie Briceno-Marquez, Jason Hu, Analiese Ignacio, Heewon Shin, Emma Storm, Anushka Vispute, and Mia Xiong, collaborated on this nine-tile mural under the instruction of artist-entomologist Diane Ullman, professor and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and designer-lecturer Gale Okumura of the UC Davis Department of Design. This teaching team has offered this First-Year Seminar the past few quarters and assigned each of these students to design a personally meaningful symbol that also addressed a global issue. Students enrolled in this course learned about the history of symbolism throughout time and basic design principles that they used to apply to their designs in the mural. The instructors plan to continue offering this course in the future and look forward to more creativity to come.

 

An Amazing UC Davis Mural: 'When Words Are Not Enough

Read more about the course and how this intrepid teaching team overcame the challenges of remote instruction to create a rich hands-on learning experience for their students!