DAAP Students' Artworks Dedicated in Renovated Kettering Atrium

It’s not every day that an esteemed scientist quotes Pablo Picasso. But that was the case Wednesday, Aug. 19, when the Department of Environmental Health celebrated a special day in the newly renovated atrium of the Kettering Laboratory Complex.

Six artworks created by students at UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) were unveiled at an event that capped the department’s student orientation day. Following remarks by Shuk-Mei Ho, PhD, Jacob G. Schmidlapp Professor and Chair of Environmental Health, and Robert Probst, DAAP’s dean, the artworks were simultaneously unveiled.

The new atrium, which includes office space for recently hired faculty and staff, is part of a $5 million renovation project at Kettering Lab supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Taylor Frank, a DAAP student worker in the Department of Environmental Health, led and collaborated on the atrium art project with five of her fellow DAAP students: Emily Finley, Audrey Law, Calista Bohling, Anne Stuckey and Kelly D’Amico. Each offered a few words of explanation about their artwork after the unveiling.

Moments earlier, Ho said in her remarks: "I’m going to borrow a very simple sentence from Picasso: He said, ‘Everything you can imagine is real.’ I believe that’s true.”

Ho noted that health is a central theme that cuts across campuses and said of the students: "Their passion for arts and for the environment is encapsulated in these beautiful murals that reflect well not only on this department but also upon DAAP and the spirit of cross-campus collaboration.”

Probst, in his remarks, also discussed the importance of cross-campus collaboration and noted that DAAP and the Department of Environmental Health will collaborate through UC’s cluster hiring initiative, which includes water as a focus area. (Other cluster hiring focus areas include cancer, with Ho as the lead faculty.)

The unveiling was the first of a series of events to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the naming of the Department of Environmental Health and 85 years of research excellence at the Kettering Laboratory Complex. A gala dinner and a scientific program are planned for the weekend of Oct. 9-10.