The Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate Exhibition is a display of human connection, emotional processing and solution-oriented designs. The participating graduate students have created public spaces for connection and storytelling, immersive experiences and installations, and performative pieces meant to make expand our thinking and question reality.
The exhibition features student work from a variety of departments within the College of Letters and Science and UC Davis, including art history, art studio, comparative literature, design, English, music and performance studies as well as environmental science and policy. Final projects will be on view through June 22 at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
Prizes were awarded during the exhibition's opening reception at the Manetti Shrem Museum on June 5.
The LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize and the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize are awarded each year to two graduating M.F.A. students from the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program. The prizes enable the Manetti Shrem Museum to purchase graduate student work for the university’s Fine Arts Collection.
The Savageau Award for Design in the Department of Design is meant to encourage, recognize and celebrate creative and original contributions to the discipline of design.
The Letters & Science Prize for Excellence is a $2,500 prize for a graduating student from the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program. The purpose is to help further the career of an art studio M.F.A. graduate from UC Davis, and to encourage, recognize and celebrate creative and original contributions of the recipient. It was created Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science.
"All of our students’ work in this incredible exhibition is done with a level of intelligence, rigor and creativity that makes me incredibly proud as dean of Letters and Science," Atekwana said at the opening night celebration. "This type of nuance and critical thinking is especially important to celebrate now. During a time when the value of higher education is being questioned, it is the students in the College of Letters and Science who remind me of our purpose and give me hope for the future."
The prizes are just one way that UC Davis community continues to invest in this future, she said.
Meet the students and see the winning work below and read about last year's winners in L&S Magazine.
Letters & Science Prize for Excellence
Raquel Marie Tripp, M.F.A. in art studio, is the winner of the second annual Letters & Science Prize for Excellence.
Tripp wrestles her own feelings of disorientation and confusion while persisting in the act of making figurative narrative works, as a response to her unique cultural moment — where the line between fake and real is blurry. Tripp’s exhibition work includes a near life size multimedia installation of projected video mapped over representational figurative works on paper.
When presenting the award, Professor Darrin Martin, co-chair of the Department of Art and Art History, called Tripp's work "psychologically charged."
Tripp is also be exhibiting recent work in a group show at the Doug Adams Gallery at the Center for the Arts & Religion in Berkeley July 1-31; and at Brother Joseph McNally Gallery at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore Aug. 1-31.
"I’m incredibly honored to have my research recognized outside of my department," Tripp said. "My faculty and the visiting artists and scholars that support the Maria Manetti Shrem M.F.A. program have all been wonderful examples of interdisciplinary artistic practice. I’m excited to continue that legacy in the next phase of my career."
Follow Tripp on Instagram @raquelmarieart.
Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize
The Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize is awarded annually to a graduating Master of Fine Arts student.
Nicole Irene Anderson is this year's winner of the prize. Anderson describes herself as a draftswoman and painter who creates psychological, ambiguous compositions that respond to questions of place. Following graduation, Anderson will continue working in the studio and, this winter, will attend a three-month residency at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito.
"It feels incredible receiving this recognition and having my first artwork in a permanent collection at the Manetti Shrem Museum," Anderson said of the prize.
Follow Anderson on Instagram @nicoleireneanderson.
LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize
The LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, made possible through the generosity of Suzanne Hellmuth and Jock M. Reynolds (art studio, M.F.A. ‘72), was awarded to Cella Constanza, M.F.A. in art studio.
Constanza constructs skewed narratives that expose fault lines in our perception of reality and explores time as a cyclical and meandering phenomenon. Using sculpture, painting and drawing, she unmoors the myth of forward motion, as if pausing to ask “Which way is tomorrow?”
"It’s an incredible honor — and a little surreal," Constanza said of the prize. "So much of my work is about time, erosion and impermanence, so the idea that one of these pieces will live on in a museum collection is deeply moving. It feels like a gesture of belief — not just in the finished work, but in the difficult, uncertain process that got it there."
After graduation, Constanza plans to continue developing her studio practice and applying to residencies that support experimental, research-driven work. This summer, she is participating in a residency in Mexico City followed by a stone carving residency in Italy.
"UC Davis gave me the space to get lost — and to find my way through making. The faculty pushed my thinking without trying to fix my work and my cohort was full of strange, brilliant artists who helped shape my practice in ways I’m still processing. I’m walking away from this experience with a deeper understanding of what it means to make art that holds complexity, contradiction and care."
— Cella Constanza, M.F.A.
Follow Constanza on Instagram @cella.today.
The Savageau Award for Design
The Savageau Award for Design named for Ann Savageau, a professor in the Department of Design from 2007 to 2014, is awarded to one graduating student from the design M.F.A. program. This year's award went to Diego Martinez Fernandez del Castillo.
Martinez Fernandez del Castillo is a designer exploring sustainability and well-being through fiber art and the material reuse of discarded agave waste from the mezcal industry. His exhibit invites viewers into a journey of material exploration with agave waste, imagining alternative ways of designing rooted in care, sustainability and stewardship of our common home.
My project was my love letter to the agave fibers that I had heard so much about when I was growing up in Mexico, and also a love letter to design and the design process. I wanted to explore how I could design a better representation of my values and be able to use it for the stewardship of our common home. — Martinez Fernandez del Castillo, M.F.A.
Fernandez del Castillo said he will be continuing his creative practice and the values learned during his time at UC Davis.
Magda Rojas Valdez received an Honorable Mention for her work, Reclaiming Comfort, which explores thermal comfort as a human need, critiquing energy-intensive cooling systems and proposing nature-based solutions and behavioral adaptations for a future less reliant on fossil fuels. Rojas Valdez is a multidisciplinary designer from Baja California, Mexico, whose practice integrates architecture and visual communication with a focus on community participation, social impact and sustainability.
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