As images of Erika Tsimbrovsky appeared on the screen, the artist danced around a large table in the center of a room at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. She instructed her audience to write spells on paper, crumple the pages up and throw them on the same table. Tsimbrovsky rolled on, crawled over and eventually read some of the crumpled papers before waxing poetic about the unorganized nature of her Ph.D. dissertation, which is, at least in part, about the fallibility of words and language.
Tsimbrovsky (performance studies) was just one of five live presentations at the opening night of the Arts & Humanities 2026 Graduate Exhibition on June 4. A celebration of graduate student work from performance studies, design and art studio, the evening was full of joy, gratitude, inquiry and laughter.
"Personally, I am deeply grateful for artists and their bravery," UC Davis Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan said in her opening remarks. "Through the arts, we find new ways of seeing the world. Art helps us grow and connect with others, and it shapes us into better human beings."
Art has a transformative and compelling way of showing us experiences that differ from our own and gives us the precious gift of a new perspective. Perhaps most importantly, art reminds us of our shared humanness and our desire to connect with one another.
— Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan
Four students were honored with awards, including three art purchase prizes. In all, 20 Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts and doctoral students from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis participated in the event. The design and art studio work will be exhibited at the museum through June 20.
Learn more about the award-winning students and their projects below.
Letters & Science Prize for Excellence
Sean Olmstead (M.F.A., art studio) won this year’s Letters & Science Prize for Excellence. Olmstead’s work draws on humor, anxiety and absurdity to explore our relationship with technology and electronic media. His gallery and performance works re-imagine technology systems and media landscapes, conjuring natural and artificial processes and dynamics with sound, video and installation.
Olmstead also kicked off the exhibition’s opening celebration with a performance titled “I Know I Am Here, But Where Is Here?”
“Sonic disturbances haunt the works of Sean Olmstead whose curiosity about ubiquitous technologies leads the way,” Executive Associate Dean Elizabeth Miller said. “Harnessing the sensibilities and fearlessness of an inventive prankster, Sean uncovers a space that tethers us humorously between old and new technologies beyond the myth of obsolescence to find the ghost within the machine.”
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 three years ago by Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science.
As of this year, it is also a purchase prize. Purchase prizes enable the Manetti Shrem Museum to purchase graduate student work for the university’s Fine Arts Collection.
LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize
Levi Keatts (M.F.A., art studio) took home the LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize. Keatts’ painting and mixed media explore the arbitrary, moralized boundaries between what is considered “natural" or “unnatural," particularly with regards to queerness.
“Through an array of gestures expanding between expressive excess and meticulous control, Levi Keatts’ large panel paintings build up beautiful and uncanny glimpses of shapeshifters in a landscape,” said Darrin Martin, professor of art and co-chair in the Department of Art and Art History. “Creatures actively transitioning between the edges that attempt to define them crawl, trot, walk and fly between states and the landscapes that attempt to ground them.”
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.
Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize
Tara K. Daly (M.F.A., art studio) won this year’s Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize. Daly engages symmetry as a compositional tool to speak about interconnectedness and entanglements. Her sculptural looms hold a variety of ways to interlace diverse kinds of materials into structured wholes that propose an ontology in which knowledge and being might emerge through interwoven, relational processes.
“Tara Daly’s colorful and intricate sculptures move woven materials out from the body and beyond the wall towards a suggestive utilitarian architecture of play,” Martin said. “The tensions created holding her material investigations together creates space for a seemingly imagined world that is simultaneously joining together and detangling its imperfect symmetry.”
Savageau Award for Design
Rafael Bertacini (M.F.A., design) won the Savageau Award for Design for his work “Designing for Homeostasis.” Bertacini explores how complex human experiences can be made tangible and legible through objects and interactions. In this work, Bertacini investigates a multi-site wearable to support emotional regulation in neurodivergent adults living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder.
“The awards committee was impressed by the project’s exhibition design, research foundation and prototyping process,” said Jiayi Young, professor of design and chair of the department. “Rafael is currently pursuing a patent and has submitted conference papers to share the work with broader audiences.”
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.
Nathalia Guimaraes (M.F.A., design) received an honorable mention for her project “EcoPlay Landscapes: Designing Learning Landscapes for Environmental Connection.”
“The awards committee recognized Nathalia’s co-design research and prototyping process conducted with the UC Davis Early Childhood Lab School,” Young said. “Her project combined community engagement, grant-supported development, and scholarly dissemination through peer-reviewed conference presentations.”
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