Press Release from San Diego Science Festival April 4th.
CHICAGO, Ill. (April 2, 2009) – Blick Art Materials and Bio-Education and Art for Science Innovation (BioEASI), an organization dedicated to bringing science to the community through art, today announced their partnership in sponsoring the first-of-its-kind art contest to researchers and K-12 students in San Diego schools. The contest, called Science as Art, invited students to submit original artwork based on three scientific disciplines – health, environment or technology.
“We are thrilled to be a part of this project and applaud BioEASI’s mission of using art to bring science to the forefront,” said Bob Buchsbaum, chief executive officer of Blick Art Materials. “There’s a perceived gap between the arts and sciences, and this contest is a perfect example of how students’ creativity is breaking down those barriers in a unique way.”
With a goal to unite science with art as a means of communicating science to the public, the Art as Science contest resulted in more than 60 submissions and nine prizes that will be awarded to the first, second and third place finishers in three age categories: kindergarten through 5th grade, 6th through 8th and 9th through 12th. BioEASI will display the winners’ science art at the first annual San Diego Science Festival, April 4 in Balboa Park, which is planned as one of the largest multicultural, multigenerational, multidisciplinary celebrations of science ever seen on the West Coast.
Through its involvement, Blick Art Materials donated art kit prizes for the contest winners and also supplied paint, charcoal pencils and canvases for festival attendees to create their own science art at BioEASI’s booth at the Festival. For more information on the San Diego Science Festival, visit http://www.sdsciencefestival.com.
Young child displaying his art.
“The support from Blick Art Materials has been overwhelming,” said Julia Claggett, co-founder of BioEASI. “BioEASI is a small team of graduate students with big ideas, but we never dreamed we would have such a presence at the San Diego Science Festival. The generous contributions from Blick Art Materials have enabled us to reach many more people and encourage them to look at science in a new light.”
Examples of some of the winning submissions include:
• A colorful depiction of bacteria found in water using watercolor pencils
• The environment in split screen: if we take care of our resources and what it would look like it we don’t
• An atomic zoo – 26 different particles in an atom
• The food chain in a tundra/taiga biome, featuring plants and animals
Father and Daughter enjoy the event
About BioEASI
BioEASI was founded by three graduate students in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. The organization’s mission is to reignite public interest in and subsequent support for the sciences by making basic research more accessible and meaningful to everyone through art. For more information, please visit www.bioeasi.org.
