Culture Crawl t-shirt designer draws from CU’s arts and culture…and its night sky
The front of this year's t-shirt design.
On the night of the Culture Crawl on Oct. 8, 2025, the stars above campus will do more than light the night sky. They will also shine from this year’s Culture Crawl t-shirt, designed by CU Boulder College of Music alum Andrea Kloehn, who took inspiration from the campus arts and culture scene and celestial maps found in University Libraries collections.
Each year, Culture Crawl introduces a new, unique design created by local artists. For the 2025 t-shirt, Kloehn looked for inspiration in the Earth Sciences and Map Library, meeting with Map Curator Naomi Heiser to review specific items from the maps collection.
“We settled on using a star map because they look cool! There’s a rich history of these maps merging scientific knowledge with constellation artwork. We decided to make our own version with constellations that represent different parts of the Culture Crawl,” Kloehn said.
The Earth Sciences and Map Library has a large collection to look to for both artistic and scientific needs. It contains an estimated 200,000 maps, over 3,000 atlases and geographic reference books and more than 25,000 Colorado historical aerial photographs. Culture Crawl attendees will be able to see items from the collection during their Afternoon Tea Party: Traditions of Asian Countries and Desire Lines: Charting Firefly Love and Light events, both running from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
“Naomi pulled out a wide variety of star maps for me to peruse: Dakota to Greek, many 20th century, and a great 1930 pictorial map by Elizabeth Shurtleff, one of the few female cartographers. The primary sources really helped me flesh out creative options and make our map realistic,” explained Kloehn.
“The map collection holds a range of space maps including some beautiful examples of historical planetary and moon mapping. We also have recent detailed planetary mapping by the U.S. Geological survey, and some new comprehensive space atlases from countries other than the U.S,” Heiser said. “It’s always a treat to show maps to artists like Andrea, who immediately recognize the craft and composition of map-making, even within scientific maps. To effectively communicate, maps follow many of the same visual principles as art. The map library staff is delighted to be a part of this year’s Culture Crawl design!”
“The maps in the collection are functional guides, even when they're very florid and artistic," said Kloehn. “I started to think ‘why not make our design a real map as well?’”
The map in this case displays Boulder’s night sky from the view from Fiske Planetarium. “It takes place at 8 p.m. on Oct. 8 to be exact,” said Kloehn. “I like the idea that you'll be able to look up at the sky and use the shirt as an actual reference.”
The other graphics in the design—the iconic Flatirons along the bottom and the symbols in the night sky—showcases CU Boulder’s unique campus culture.
Want the 2025 edition of the Culture Crawl t-shirt? Visit any of the 20-plus events on Oct. 8 to get your very own in black or blue while supplies last. And—if you want to see the stars in the position they will be in the design—peer through one of Sommers-Bausch Observatory’s state-of-the-art telescopes during “Celestial Explorations”, an open house event from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Sponsoring units
Culture Crawl is generously sponsored by Academic Affairs, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Office of Undergraduate Education, College of Arts and Sciences, Arts & Humanities and the University Libraries.