Last semester, the FGCU Library sought proposals for a mural on a splash of wall next to the library’s information desk. Fifth-year art and biology major Macy Noll won the commission. She’s painting a mural that draws upon her chosen fields of study.
“I wanted to paint this mural as a depiction of the kind of hands-on experiential learning that is available to FGCU students and let them know that they can be doing the same things that I ultimately got to do, which is become a scientific scuba diving instructor and research assistant for Vestor, getting out into the field and tackling real-world problems, because marine health is incredibly integral to our way of life in Southwest Florida,” said Noll.
The mural depicts a boat from the Vestor Marine and Environmental Field Station skimming the surface while the sun’s rays illuminate divers collecting samples for FGCU research scientists to identify and catalog.
Noll’s color palette reflects the jade, emerald and deep greens she sees while diving at places like Kimberly’s Reef.
“Around the places where we do research, it can be kind of this hazy, misty, green color, and depending on what kinds of algae are in the water, it can be bluer, greener, browner,” Noll explained.
Noll possesses a strong preference for murals.
“I'm interested in humanizing artwork again,” she said. “We can tell, as people, that this wall was not printed. It was not wrapped. It was not created digitally. It was hand-painted. A real human took real time to create something beautiful, and I think that's incredibly inspiring. And even if we don't think about it consciously, it changes the way that we engage with the space.”
Although her deadline is March, Noll is on schedule to complete the mural by the end of January.
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The library’s web page for the mural describes Noll’s composition as follows: “Just a small peek into the incredible hands-on learning opportunities FGCU offers, this mural depicting scientific divers conducting benthic surveys and quantifying marine organisms via light microscopy will be representative of the myriad ways FGCU students turn knowledge into community-driven action. Having spent two years as a Research Assistant for Vester Marine Field Station and a current Instructor for the Scientific Diving Program, Macy based this design on first-hand experience of the incredible impact this kind of experiential learning can have on a student’s development and on the communities they seek to serve. Water quality and overall marine health is of the utmost importance in SWFL and will be an impactful subject for the first of many murals highlighting Knowledge in Motion.”
For more on the call to artists, visit “Mural to be painted this spring inside Florida Gulf Coast University library by student applicants.”
“Part of the reason that I chose this subject matter is I'm pursuing a dual degree in art and biology,” Noll said. “As a freshman first coming to FGCU, I had no idea that we even had a field station or that there were research projects like our artificial reef in the Gulf. So, although the mural does represent opportunity at FGCU, I really want it to be whatever field of study a student is interested in, just exemplary of the opportunities available for real-world work.”
Noll resists attempts to classify her art, particularly as realist because that’s subject to reproduction or imitation by AI.
“I'm not trying to be hyper-realistic in an age where AI can come up with anything,” she said. “It's incredibly easy to create hyper-realistic paintings. I'm not interested in that.”
Instead, she prefers to think of her work as “painterly.”
Painting is apparently part of her genetic makeup. Her grandfather was an artist, as was his grandfather, although her mother, a musician, chose the performing arts as her form of artistic expression. While not visual artists, both of her parents supported Macy’s artistic pursuits.
“My parents handed me a crayon, and I started scribbling, and I loved it so much that I just never stopped,” she said.
There was a time she couldn’t draw a stick figure. After years of tenacious hard work, that’s changed.
“Art, just like any other discipline, takes lots and lots of practice and hard work to become great at it,” she observed. “So what you see now may look like it just came out of nowhere, but it really is the culmination of 20-plus years of drawing and painting.”
Her long-range goal is to become a marine biologist who uses artwork to help people reconnect with the natural world.
“I am really interested in exploring scientific illustration as one of the ways that we can bridge that gap between art and science, between scientists and the public. I'm really interested in science communication and art as an incredible medium for accomplishing that.”
She is specifically committed to uniting scientific inquiry with artistic expression to advocate for a revitalization of ecological identity. Through large-scale paintings, scientific illustration, and immersive installations informed by her experiences as a scientific scuba diver, researcher, and environmental educator, she seeks to awaken awe, belonging, and a renewed sense of stewardship for the ecosystems that sustain us.
She is also working to expand the number of SCUBA certified research scientists who can assist in that endeavor.
“So, I help train other students now, kind of as a peer mentor instructor figure to hone their scuba diving skills to the point where they can earn their AAUS authorization to become underwater researchers.”
More on the Vester Field Station
A resource for FGCU faculty and students as well as researchers from throughout Florida and the United States, Vester has also hosted scientists from 15 foreign nations. Located 12 miles from the FGCU campus on Little Hickory Island, the field station sits along Fish Trap Bay, where the Imperial River empties into Estero Bay. Its three buildings perch on a spit of land that formerly held a commercial fish house, then an Old Florida-style resort.
The Vester Field Station conducts water quality monitoring as part of a project funded through the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA) that supports four stationary locations equipped to collect many types of data.
This data is used for many research projects, such as oyster monitoring, seagrass monitoring, and Florida red tide monitoring. Students can use this data for their own research projects for classes as well as faculty to teach about local water quality issues. Local beachgoers and boaters can use this data to look at current water quality conditions.
Florida is known to have harmful algae blooms, such as Florida red tide, that can cause toxic waters and mortalities for many marine species. Harmful algae blooms occur when toxic phytoplankton populations grow too rapidly. Chlorophyll is a great indicator for harmful algae presence, as it is found within most phytoplankton species. Using chlorophyll concentrations can increase the monitoring efforts towards detecting these events along the SWFL coast.
More on Kimberly’s Reef
Kimberly's Reef is FGCU's official research reef, located 10 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico in 30 feet of water. The FGCU artificial reef brings a living laboratory to the coastal waters off Collier and Lee counties – only a 25-minute boat ride away. The reef’s size and location makes it an essential research and community outreach tool.
For more, see “Dispatch from Kimberly’s Reef: What is Kimberly’s Reef?”
For full disclosure, FGCU holds the broadcast license for WGCU. WGCU is a member-supported service of FGCU.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
