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Sea of Support Tile Mural

A Partnership between UA School of Art and the Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans (CEDO)

This project is funded by a grant from the Office of 100% Student Engagement.

The primary objectives of the project were to promote eco-literacy and environmental engagement in art and design students by providing the opportunity for them to apply their creative skills to benefit conservation efforts in the Upper Gulf of California, Sonora Mexico.

Assessment Results

Students kept field journals and sketchbooks and wrote glowing accounts of their experiences at CEDO. They learned first hand about the local culture and environment, the rich biodiversity and challenges of the region, and the individual organisms they researched and drew. CEDO’s Director is delighted with the mural designs, and several of the students who worked on the mural will attend the unveiling of the Rocky Intertidal mural installed at CEDO in the Fall 2018.

Student Quotes

“CEDO is a place of research and outreach, which made our being there even more special as we were able to engage with different members of CEDO’s community such as researchers and educators and become part of the organizations social fabric, making us part of its community and not merely transient interlopers.”

“Working on the CEDO mural was a fantastic experience for both personal and artistic growth. I learned a lot about intertidal zones and estuary environments and I also learned to collaborate with my peers, we had to decide on which species to draw, who was going to draw them, and figure out a reasonable time-frame for all of it.”

“Being able to go through CEDO’s vast library of texts and research materials was great, but then we could also walk 20 yards and be scouring through the tide pools or take a quick 5 min drive to the estuary and actually see first-hand most of the species we were depicting. We were able to see how these species lived and moved in their environment in real life, rather than through a screen. Engaging with the people who worked at the field station, who would see the mural every day; watching how visitors both foreign and local interacted already in the space where the mural would be located made me think more critically about the design and construction of the overall mural.”