Artist explores transdisciplinary collaboration as part of Experience UWF Downtown Lecture Series
The University of West Florida College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities will continue its 2016-17 Experience UWF Downtown Lecture Series on Friday, March 3, 2017. Interdisciplinary artist Elizabeth Demaray will present her lecture, “Art and Science: Transdisciplinary Collaboration” at the Pensacola Museum of Art in Historic Pensacola.
The event is part of the UWF STEAM2017 Colloquium and is free and open to the public, with a reception at 5 p.m. and the lecture from 5:30-6:30 p.m.
In “Art and Science: Transdisciplinary Collaboration,” Demaray will explore how humanity might adapt to critical contemporary challenges by referencing resilience and interdependence in ecological systems. With an interest in the interface between the built and the natural environment, she grows lichen on the sides of skyscrapers, designs housing for hermit crabs and fabricates robotic supports for potted plants. Drawing from the art and science disciplines, her work offers transformative experiences. Demaray finds parallels in mutualistic biological systems and diversity in transdisciplinary practice.
Demaray is an associate professor of fine arts and the head of the sculpture concentration at Rutgers University-Camden. At the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus, she is a work group advisor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and a co-founder of the DigiHuman Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science, which is dedicated to supporting artistic practice in the fields of computer vision and machine learning.
Among her honors, Demaray received the National Studio Award from the New York Museum of Modern Art/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, the California Artist in Residency Award at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Art Omi Residency Award and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art Emerging Artist Award. In 2014, she was the featured artist at the Association of Environmental Science Studies Symposium, “Welcome to The Anthropocene.”
Experience UWF Downtown promotes the value of liberal arts in contemporary life by showcasing outstanding UWF faculty and scholars of national prominence, who illustrate the essential role of the liberal arts in building and sustaining contemporary culture. The next lecture, which will focus on guerilla gardening and the community garden movement, will be presented by Ron Finley on March 29, 2017. Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central Los Angeles in an effort to grow a nourishing food culture for healthy eating.
For the full series schedule and more information, visit uwf.edu/downtownlectures.
