On Saturday, February 28, 2026, Paul Thiebaud Gallery was pleased to host a conversation between fellow painters Cornelia Schulz, Grace Munakata, and April Glory Funcke. If you missed joining us that day, we are pleased to share with you a recording of the discussion.
Click on the image above or the following link to hear Cornelia Schulz, Grace Munakata, and April Glory Funcke share stories about their experiences while they were at U.C. Davis as either faculty or as students. Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Fertile Ground: U.C. Davis Faculty and Alumni, the conversation was moderated by Paul Thiebaud Gallery Director Greg Flood.
Cornelia Schulz was born and raised in Pasadena, CA, and initially studied at Pasadena City College, were she earned her AA degree in 1955. Immediately following this, she enrolled for two years at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now known as Otis College of Art and Design), and later took a summer session with Richard Diebenkorn at the University of Southern California in 1957. Schulz went on to attend the California School of Fine Arts (later known as the San Francisco Art Institute) where she earned her BFA in painting in 1960 and her MFA in welded steel sculpture in 1962. In 1973 she began teaching in the Art Department at U.C. Davis, where she would be a professor until 2002, and became the first female chair of the department from 1988-1992.
Among the awards and honors she has received as an artist and educator, Schulz was the recipient of the 1975 SECA Grant Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She also received the UC Davis Distinguished Public Service Award in 2000 for bringing to the university the landmark K-12 arts outreach program, ArtsBridge, which sees UC students teaching in the community. Schulz’s works have been exhibited across the United States and can be found in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Crocker Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis.
Grace Munakata earned both her Bachelors in Art in 1980 and her MFA in Art in 1985 from the University of California, Davis. After a distinguished career of teaching, she is currently Professor Emerita from California State University, East Bay. She has been a recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including a 1984 Regents Fellowship at UC Davis, a1984 Andy Warhol Scholarship, a 2017 Lucid Art Residency, a 2018 Skaffell Artist Residency in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, and a 2022 Morris Graves Foundation Residency. Her works have been included in exhibitions across the Unites States and shown in the Bay Area by Braunstein/Quay Gallery, Paul Thiebaud Gallery, and at Anglim/Trimble Gallery. Her works can be found in numerous private and corporate collections, as well as in public collections, including the Crocker Art Museum and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at U.C. Davis.
April Glory Funcke graduated from the High School for Art and Design in New York City in 1970 and later attended Yale Summer School in Norfolk, Virginia in 1986. She went on to earn her BA in Art Studio in 1987 and her MFA in 1989 from U.C. Davis. She has taught art at City College of San Francisco, Santa Barbara City College, U.C. Santa Barbara, and at Stanford University. She has been the recipient of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in 1986, the Graduate Research Award from U.C. Davis in 1988, the Juror’s Choice Award from the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in 1989, and a Senior Fulbright Scholar Award in 1994. Her paintings have been exhibited across the United States and can be found in numerous private collections.