Science and art often overlap – as in an upcoming climate-change exhibit presented by UCF’s School of Visual Arts & Design and the CREATE Program.
The exhibit, “Today for Tomorrow: A Visual Response to Climate Change,” will feature emotionally driven artwork created by students from UCF and local elementary schools beginning Jan. 13 at the Orlando Science Center’s Fusion: A STEAM Gallery.
Organizers of the exhibit said the two-month show “is a visual response to one of the most complicated issues of our time…We read about it. We worry about it. We study it. We attempt to fix it.”
Curator for the exhibit, UCF art professor Carla Poindexter, said displays at science centers usually are about scientists looking for answers.
“But the works produced by the art students for this show are what I would call images of concern, they pose questions or offer images that are intended to solicit emotional responses,” Poindexter said.
For example, artist Chris Rivera’s work “When You Remember That Bees Are Dying at an Alarming Rate” focuses on the future of bees around the planet.
“In the last five years alone 30 percent of the national bee population have disappeared and nearly a third of all bee colonies in the U.S. are gone,” Rivera said. “Bees play a very significant role in the production of the fruits and vegetables that we humans consume and commonly take for granted. The bee population is so low in China they are reduced to human workers pollinating their produce fields by hand. Does all this not weigh on our conscious?”
The science center’s Fusion: A STEAM Gallery is on the third floor mezzanine and combines the STEM acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics with the “A” to represent Art.
UCF’s rotating exhibits at the center feature paintings, sculptures, animations graphic designs and other artworks among the center’s other displays. The gallery is included with admission to the center, 777 E. Princeton St.