Studio Art & New Frontiers Brochure Cover Collaboration- 1st Meeting

On Wednesday we (the seminar series organizers) had our first meeting with the studio art class that will be working on the cover design for next year’s seminar series brochure. The students in the class have been working for the past month to learn techniques in digital painting and from what we saw today, they have learned a lot in a short amount of time – very impressive skills and tools! Today we met with the students to describe the seminar series, the vision and goals for the brochure cover, and the amount of exposure that the cover image receives as part of that year’s advertising materials. It was an important experience for both us and the students as we both found ourselves communicating, at times, in different languages. We had selected 4 biomedical topics we thought would make good cover images and using only a chalkboard attempted to describe the science and draw these concepts for the students. At the same time, the students were asking critical questions about shape and texture of the three-dimensional objects being portrayed as circles and sticks in two dimensions on the chalk board; questions we did not always have an easy time answering. Students were given our contact information and encouraged to meet with us as often as needed. We also invited the students to visit our research labs and have the opportunity to see cells under the microscope and get a personal look at some of the aspects they are being asked to depict. We will meet with them again next Wednesday as a class to go over what they have come up with, give them some feedback, and keep them moving in the right direction. This is an exciting process and we can’t wait to see what the students produce. We are carefully documenting our experience in build-up and anticipation of an exhibit in April where the work generated by the students will be on display and people in attendance will be able to vote for the image that makes the cover. So mark your calendars for Friday, April 15, when you can see what students were able to create from our chalkboard drawings. We will post another update on the progress after next week’s class.