Freshman seminar students make statement with fish art

A group of students from Karen Dalke’s freshman seminar class, Animals and Society, took their lead from another seminar course and recently created art with a message. The students including Keirsten Neihous and Jenessa Denfeld (above) displayed their work, “The Fish’s Perspective,” near the Garden Cafe in the Cofrin Library last week. Dalke says the public-art project was inspired by Ellen Rosewall’s Arts Management Seminar class. Students in Rosewall’s seminar created and displayed six chalk board doors, inspired by visiting artist Candy Chang, and placed them around campus to pose questions and invoke creativity, innovation, and vision. Dalke, a faculty member in Democracy and Justice Studies, credited an Animals and Society seminar “alumna,” Holly Anderson, for suggesting the current students’ response. (Along with Neihous and Denfeld, other students contributing ideas and art to the display were  Amy Baldwin, Lucas Bennetts, Hailey Heimerl, Katelyn Heuser, Rachel Hill and Izzy Niemi.)  The art was in keeping with their shared interest in human-animal interactions and the perspective of the animal as “other.”