 Welcome to the show. You're watching in the studio. And I'm your host, Lynn Weaver. The program is brought to you by Davis Media Access and is broadcast on Davis Community Television. That's Comcast Channel 15 and AT&T, Uverse 99. We're also online at dctv.davismedia.org. So log on and enjoy all of our other TV programs. Today's topic is a new art exhibit organized or shown by the Davis Art Center. And it's called Momentum in Action and Creativity in Motion. And it's the second show. They've had one last year as well. And it runs through September 13th. And here to talk about it are two very special guests. I have Shelly Gilbride, special project with the Davis Art Center, and Rachel Hartso, who is the artist and the creator of the show. Welcome both. And thank you so much for joining us. So I'm going to start with Rachel, if I may. And I'm going to ask her, what has been your role in creating the art exhibit? I believe that you are the designer, the creator, the inspiration, the motivator, just about everything. Could you tell us a little more about what brought you to create this show? Sure, sure. And we wanted to thank you for having us on the show today and for promoting our program in this manner. So the program Discovery Art, which is what we named this, started last year. And the Davis Art Center received a grant from the Irvine Foundation to do some strategic development, look at their long-term plan in our community. And one of the pieces that we developed out of that was to put together this program, which we named the Discovery Art Program. And it was meant to be something where intergenerational groups of people, so children and their parents, parents and their friends, friends and their neighbors, grandparents, grandchildren, different groups of people could come together and experience art, kind of in not necessarily the conventional ways that they had in the past with the Art Center. So the Art Center has a really fabulous tradition, which we still do, of teaching a variety of camps and art classes for people of all ages, toddlers, up through seniors. And this, we wanted to try to investigate how we could have sort of more spontaneous short-term things where you didn't have to commit necessarily to like a month and a half of programming or two months of programming where you could just come in on a Saturday for a few hours or just come in in the afternoon for a few hours. And so we investigated using the exhibit as sort of a hands-on center. And we launched that program last summer with a show called Cross-Pollination. And then this summer we have Momentum. And the exhibit is kind of the anchor for the program, but then we also have different programs out in the community. For this particular show, we're partnering with the Arboretum, the UC Davis Arboretum, which we also did last year, and the Peregrine School and a few other wonderful partners in our community. And so I kind of helped the Art Center develop that from putting the partnerships together to designing what was gonna go in the show and how the pieces of that show were gonna work to engage the community. And I should say one of the very important pieces of the exhibit is that it's not a traditional exhibit where you walk in and look at the artwork on the wall, but all of the different elements in the exhibit are meant to be pieces that the community actually interacts with and helps to build and develop during the course of the show. So we had our opening, which is sort of traditional for an art show, but actually the big thing for the show will be the closing, which will be on September 13th. And that will be when all of the artwork will actually be completed. So we kind of started the artwork at the beginning of the show, and then you'll be able to see the completed finished artwork at the end. Can you give me an example of how the public would interact? One particular mural, for example, and one particular creation. Sure, sure. So we have, there are actually five different pieces in the exhibit, and I won't go right now into each one of them. Oh, please. But you want all of them? Yeah, but it doesn't matter, if you'd like to, yes. So we have something called Nuts and Bolts, and that is a piece that you'll see if you come to the Art Center, and it has, it's one long wall, and it's covered with images of different things that represent the idea of momentum. And for that piece, we kind of reached out into the community and invited anybody that wanted to submit images, and it ranges from people surfing to civil rights marches to yo-yos, bicycling, skateboarding, yoga, pictures of nature. There's just, we have hundreds of images up, and also some examples of poetry that people have written, and one great description I found on the table this morning of somebody's description that they illustrated of kind of how momentum works within society, culturally, socially. And the idea of that is that it just creates kind of an image map of our community, like a collection of our ideas together of what momentum means, and then that is used as the basis of inspiration for another piece in the exhibit, which is called Moving Parts. And Moving Parts is a mural, we have four artists working on it, and that mural, we've drawn inspiration from some of the images in the Nuts and Bolts installation. So that's one example. That's where people are submitting ideas, then we have some other pieces that are based more on actually people physically doing art within the context of the exhibit. So we have a piece called Off the Grid, and it is a repeat of a project that we did last year, but with a different theme this year, which was really successful, and we had a waiting list for people to participate in it and do as well now. So it is, we take a really high-resolution photograph, which is a surprise. We haven't released what the photo is yet, so you have to wait till the end of the show to see it, and we grid it into 132 sections and create a kit with each of those sections. So anybody in the community is invited to come in and check out a kit, and the kit you take home with you, it has one section of this color image, and it has instructions and a sheet of paper, and you take that home, it's numbered, and it corresponds back to a section of this giant grid that's on the wall, and so when you complete it, you bring it back in, and it gets put back up on the wall, and then slowly over the course of the summer, as more and more of these grids come back in, we start to be able to see what the image is, and it's just starting now to kind of materialize on the wall, so it's fun if you go in there and you can start to get an idea of what it is, but it's nice because as people come back throughout the summer, they can kind of, each time see a little bit more of this image coming into focus and kind of guess what it is, and it's actually fun to see people coming into the gallery. We have a lot of kids that are there doing camps throughout the summer, and it's fun to see the kids coming back in every day or every week and seeing what the progress on the mural is, or seeing what the progress on the grid is, so that's one way that people can very directly become part of the fate of the artists. Yes, well this is fascinating, and to some extent it exemplifies this concept of movement and motion and creativity, which seems to be the highlight or the theme rather of this exhibit. For example, in your press release, you say, well, see what happens, I'm paraphrasing, see what happens when art and science come together, and the reality or the physics concept or reality of motion is translated into art, and it seems to me that of the grid is one example because it will move and evolve into something different, which is great. I was, when I saw the exhibit, I was curious about the of the grid and you've explained it very nicely. I also, there are a couple of other murals, I think that there was one particular one that you were telling me about, and that is the moving parts. Yes, so Rachel started talking about the moving parts mural, which is a large-scale mural that actually four artists are working on. Rachel is one of them. Yes. Working on the mural, but there are Marc Rivera, Camille Shea-Lichter, is that right? And Margot Mullen and Rachel Hartzler are all creating this mural and they've done it in relay. So at the opening ceremony, Marc came in and did this beautiful blue wash on this large scale. It's three canvas panels. Yes, yes. He came in and did a blue wash on this panel and it's a really beautiful blue, kind of evokes the sea or the sky and it's actually dripping down so you see the movement of this blue. And then next, I think Margot came in and added on to the mural. Yes. And then so it's adding, each artist is contributing to the mural and then at one point I think it became clear as the artists were working that there was a theme happening and they all got together and discussed what this was going to be and now it's just turned into this gorgeous sea-skyscape that's really quite beautiful. That would be great. We have a b-roll or a video of the exhibit and let's take a look and see what it looks like and feel free to please comment. So these are scenes as you're entering into the gallery, that's nuts and bolts. That's right, that's just a visual, yeah. And there you have the artists actually working on the mural. This is the nuts and bolts wall that Rachel was talking about. And this is Tiva Lasseter who's our program manager and she's actually putting some of the panels up on the wall for off the grid. Those are the sections I was referring to. And you can see it's kind of filling in that space. This is Camille who's one of our mural artists painting and drawing. And this is the beautiful blue. You can see those drips coming down that Shelly was talking about. Yes, I do, yes. And I think one of the things that it's interesting about the entire program is that we're looking at intergenerational participation and also professional artists, amateur artists, in the community. And this mural is really for professionals who work in very different styles coming together to collaborate on this mural. And that's one of the key features is this collaborative spirit that Discovery Art is really fostering and that anybody in the community can come and watch these artists at work and see how they're creating this beautiful piece. So there again the motion, the theme of the motion and the evolution and the change is, this is very beautiful, yes. And I can see that a small kid there, a child contributing and... So we have all of these, there's free play areas where kids can explore momentum and be in the gallery and they can play while artists are working. This is a spirograph that is the UC Davis Physics Club. They loan this to us and this has been by far one of the most favorite activities of the year. We have children lined up with paper every day waiting to do this. And it's a great way. The whole, we really wanted to explore kind of the physics of motion in this exhibit and not just take things that were typically within a physics context but really think about how you make art with those. And so the spirograph lend itself, this is such a perfect segue. The kinetic playground, which is this wall with these bicycle wheels, they actually, you can't tell from this but they have little compass pencil holders on them and you put a pen in it and then you spin it. And so the idea is that as these wheels move, they create a mark of the movement that you're making and actually leave like an artist mark on the wall and that over the course of the two months, while the show is up, it will capture all of those experiences that users have had in the gallery space during that time. And so we'll leave this, it will create a piece of art on the wall. Well, the bikes are prominent in your exhibit. And I was wondering, of course, their exemplify motion but I'd like you to tell me beyond a means of transport, what do they represent to you in terms of science as well as art? So, well, my other job, I run a bicycle pedestrian driver safety program for the city of Davis. So as you know, the bicycle is our city logo. It's a very important part of our culture and our city and what defines us and our community. And it is also a growing part of a national international dialogue about steps that we can take to make our planet and our communities healthier. So yes, it is a means of transportation and it is something that a lot of people use as transportation. And Davis is also something that keeps people more physically fit when they ride bikes and it helps us make our air quality of higher, better nature and it eliminates cars because every person that rides a bike is ostensibly not gonna be in a car or they could be walking. But there are many reasons why biking is important and so we wanted to not bang people over the head with that but sort of use that as an example with this show. We could have used, there are a lot of different things we could have picked kind of as a theme to promote but biking seemed to make the most sense. And it's fun. Yes. And it's fun. And so we really wanted people to think about bikes as something fun and something beautiful. And so it's not just something that you hop on and like go to work a lot. Beautiful. And the various colors and the type of bikes and the wheels especially I've always been a fascination to a lot of people, especially children. And so that's very good. One thing that I'd like to ask you, both of you is something that I've been thinking about in for quite a while is creativity more important in art or in science. And how can you define creativity? Is it a first step or second step? Is it? Well, let me share what I've been thinking and that is to me curiosity is the beginning of everything. And then from curiosity we go to some type of intuition and from there perhaps some creative thing happened. So is this to you more important in art to produce something beautiful or do you see science as also the result of creative thinking? Very much so. I mean, we are certainly not trying to say that one is more important. The other, I think that what we're trying to say is that they need to work in tandem with each other to both be effective. I mean, if you look at art, art is about color, it's about form and shape and things that all are very much rooted in science and physicality and then if you look at science you can teach kind of the basics of science but if you don't teach somebody actually how to think creatively, you're not necessarily gonna generate a very strong scientist. And so this is also where the Davis Art Center has kind of entered into an interesting dialogue that's happening nationally right now with curriculum where there's a kind of growing movement called STEM and it's an acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and there has been a movement to change that to STEAM adding the A in for art because a number of pretty big entities are recognizing corporations and universities are recognizing the fact that without having that creative training and kind of access to art as children within an education context that the skills needed to really think creatively within a science context are not as full as they could be and so we're participating in that, we feel like it's very important and it's also the way that young children learn is through play and if you look at the way that science and art are kind of taught to preschoolers it's just about playing and exploring your physical world and they're kind of one in the same and so this just gives an opportunity I think to children of all ages to experience that just experimentation whether you wanna call it art or call it science it's all sort of the same one in the same I think. Do you have anything to? No I think that was very well said but I think that the Very much so I think that creativity is related to critical thinking and that if you're and that something that sparks your imagination is very important and so whether science sparks your imagination or art sparks your imagination to think critically about something and think creatively to solve a problem that they're all part of how we experience our world and so I think the initiative to include art and design in STEM curriculum is to say that if art sparks critical thinking skills just like math can spark critical thinking skills that they're all part of the same skill set and we need to make sure that art and color and aesthetics and playing with hands on things are included in curriculum development and just in kind of the things that are so vital to be human and to enjoy and to make life good and real. So yeah we're very much ourselves in the art center as a proponent of STEM curriculum. Color seems to be another theme of your art exhibit, momentum, art in motion. Did you plan the colors? I mean by having the right color paint or the selective photographs or anything? Yeah very much so. Rachel created the initial logo for this exhibit is a bicycle wheel with the color spectrum inside the paint color spectrum. The rainbow. The rainbow yeah and she created that on her own. You created that on your own bike. It's on my bicycle. I actually saw a picture of it on the internet but you can't just use somebody's picture and we needed a better quality one so I thought okay we'll just make our own and then what happened was I started driving it around Davis and then just all these random people would kind of stop and wave and say oh I like your wheel and it made me think oh wow that's not, it's a pretty small effort but then look at what it does. As far as what Shelly's talking about art impacting our quality of life. We can do these little things and kind of a little subversive part of this exhibit also is to get people to think about art in Davis and how we kind of define our community through the way that we celebrate creativity whether that's through putting a painting on your garage door which a friend of mine has done or whether it's helping support public art in different contexts or whether it is just having your kids take art classes there are so many different ways whether it's yarn plumbing, something at the co-op there's like, there are all these different things and they all kind of add this little spark of magic into our community and so I think it's also about just having the community think about that and think about what we want our community to celebrate. And I think that goes back to the bike all the bike imagery in the exhibit it's not just about this explosion of art and science but it's about really thinking about the things that are important to our community and making sure that those things are represented in the exhibit and bikes are so important to Davis and putting them in a new context and making people think about them differently or one of the things that Rachel was really clear about in the beginning is that movement and momentum isn't just about science and art it's also about social movement and part of this is to, when people see Rachel on her bike and say hi, it's about creating connection within our community and making our community even better than it is through art. And bringing people together to do artistic things together and to think as a community and I think the multi-generational aspect of it is beautiful because we do tend to segregate ourselves into little groups by age or by taste or by specialty and art and science are universal and as a matter of fact, they bring not just communities together but worlds together, nations together. And I think that's what you are doing here is a microcosm of what actually happens already in the world. Now the question I have is the exhibit opened mid-July that you had your inauguration of vernissage or whatever you want to call it. Sounds fancy. And how has it been received? What has been the feedback that you've had? It's been fantastic. We've had, we have to spend hours cleaning up that central area every day because kids come in with their parents or with their grandparents and just go nuts in there. Yeah, we've had really nice positive feedback and we've had a lot of people participating in it and a lot of people visiting and at a time of the summer when I would have expected that things would kind of wind down a little because we're getting ready to go back to school. We've actually seen more people coming in. Yes. I'd like to promote an event we have coming up. Absolutely, absolutely. Go ahead, please. So on September 8th, we have an event at the UC Davis Arboretum who has been one of our fabulous partners. It's called the Design and Launch Flight Derby. Is that right? Design and Launch Flight Derby. Derby, that calls for an explanation. So we have a fabulous group of partners, many partners from campus, from bee biology and tomology, wildlife, the arboretum, ornithology and we'll have all kinds of fun activities looking at the design and shapes of seeds in nature and how that propels them to move and looking at birds and flight and bees and flight and other things that fly in gardens and outdoors and then we're gonna actually have a flight derby so people can come and build things that fly, whether it's a seed or some kind of flying machine and then we're gonna go out on the lawn and test them out. So that will be at the Gazebo. There's more information about that. That sounds wonderful, and this is September 8th and do you know what the location is? It is at the Gazebo, at the UC Davis Arboretum. You just mentioned that, actually. Yeah, I've got time. I think it's 11 to one, but it's on our website. And the website is ARTS Center. It's www.DavisArtsCenter.org. .org, perfect, yes. Well, this is an incredible event and of course, this is a free exhibit, isn't it? And could you tell us the hours when you're open? I think it's between 10 and 7? The Davis Art Center is open on weekdays from 10 to 7 and anytime that the Art Center is open, the gallery is open. And I think on Friday we close at five unless there's an event in the evening and on Saturday we're also open from 10 to four. So we have pretty broad hours and on September 13th is our closing celebration. September 13th, which is Friday. Which would be the unveiling of the off the grid. Yes, absolutely. And what would it be? I can't wait. You'll have to come find out. No, that should be a fun event. So we welcome anybody to join us that evening. And of course, all that information is on your website. Yes. Which is perfect. Well, I am delighted to have learned so much more about the exhibit and to have had you here. I'm afraid we're out of time. So we need to wrap it up. But thank you again for coming to join us today and to being such an inspiration for the community. So Shelly Gilbride, the special projects at Davis Art Center and Rachel Hartso, the artistic extraordinaire and the creator of this wonderful exhibit. And thank you all of you for watching. You've been watching in the studio and you can actually stream this episode again and watch it again on our website at dctv.davismedia.org. And while you're there, you can also check out some of our other very enjoyable program. Thank you so much again for watching. I'm your host, Lynn Weaver. See you next time.