By Annie Drysdale, Graduate Class of 2025 Helen Davis’s life was dedicated to people and art. Her adventurous approach to art was nurtured at Northwest Missouri State University, experimenting across a wide variety of media. Davis moved to Colorado in 1948 and established an arts therapy program at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital. Davis has long been affiliated with the University of Denver. She received her Ed.D. from DU in 1961. Her experience of gender-based discrimination reinforced Davis’s feminist convictions and inspired her lifelong mentorship of and advocacy for women. She went on to lead the art department at Colorado Women’s...

Hung Liu, Mountain Ghost, 2012. Oil paint on canvas. By Chloe LeRoy, Graduate Class 2025 In this painting, Hung Liu interprets the poem Mountain Ghost or Mountain Spirit by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan (338-278 BC). The poem focuses on a Mountain Spirit who is longing for her lover. In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution at the end of the 1970s, Qu Yuan became a symbol of intellectual freedom and individual integrity. By integrating traditional-style painting into this piece, Hung Liu creates an impactful fusion of symbols, tradition, and her contemporary perspective on his poem. Mountain Spirit by Qu...

Daum Frères, Winter Scene, c. 1900. Acid-etched enameled glass By Lauren Anuszewski, Graduate Class of 2023   Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (or “new art”) was an international style known by many names: Style Jules Verne, Le Style Métro, Art Belle Époque, and Art fin de siècle in France, Jugendstil in Germany, Stile Floreale in Italy, and Modernismo in Spain.1 This “new style” was developed in the late 1880s as a reaction against the historical revivals, which looked to the past for artistic and architectural design. In search of something new, Art Nouveau artists turned to the natural world, rejecting the order,...