Students from seven disciplines — art, design, art history, music, theater, creative writing and French — will take part in the second Arts and Humanities Graduate Exhibition at the University of California, Davis. The show will be on view from Wednesday, May 30, through Sunday, June 17, at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
The exhibition will include large multimedia installations, music listening posts, paintings, video, an outdoor sound installation, and performances and presentations from 33 graduate students in the College of Letters and Science. An opening reception, which will include performances, will take place Thursday, May 31, beginning at 6 p.m. with additional performances and presentations taking place throughout the weekend.
The visual, performing and literary arts included in this exhibition represent the culmination of at least two years of students’ intensive study and creative output. The exhibition invites visitors to join the provocative dialogue instigated by UC Davis’ next generation of emerging artists.
“This expansive exhibition in a highly visible setting like the museum is an excellent way to show the wide range of creative, intellectual achievements that define the College of Letters and Science,” said Elizabeth Spiller, college dean.
Also at the opening event, the winner of the Keister and Allen Art Purchase Prize will be announced. The Keister and Allen Art Purchase Prize is awarded annually to a UC Davis graduating Master of Fine Arts student in Art Studio. Thanks to the generosity of the donors, Shaun Keister and Walter Allen, this award ensures that one piece chosen from a student artist’s body of thesis work will be added to the university’s Fine Arts Collection each year.
“UC Davis has a great tradition of coming together as a creative community to engage ideas and challenges,” said Rachel Teagle, founding director of the museum. “This student show is an opportunity to celebrate the makers, scholars and researchers across the arts and humanities who are part of that community, and to make their work accessible to all of our visitors.”
Thematic highlights include place, collaboration
Several participants have tapped into the landscape, environment and story of California:
- Darcy Padilla (art studio) has created a narrative about the “framework of memory” using photographs of the California wildfires and her mother who has dementia.
- Justin Goldwater (design) has imagined experimental watercraft and tools inspired by vernacular architecture and ecological conditions at a former state park in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
- Jodi Connelly (art studio) engaged in an “environmental intervention” by removing invasive plants and replacing them with native grasses and flowers that she presents through an installation that includes grasses and photos.
- Madeline Gobbo (creative writing) and Sam Clark-McHale (music) collaborated on a video that explores the changing and often wildly inaccurate way people have imagined California from ancient times to today.
- Molly Montgomery (creative writing) will read a story set in the near future in which a mother and her baby huddle in a California neighborhood as wildfires rage around them.
Additional programs accompanying the 2018 Arts and Humanities Exhibition include the 2018 Annual Art History Graduate Colloquium on Saturday, June 2, 1- 4 p.m. and Writers Read, featuring readings by Creative Writing and Art History students on Sunday, June 3, 2-4 p.m. All events will be held at the Manetti Shrem Museum. As always, admission is free for all.
Video: College of Letters and Science Art Exhibitions
More details available both at the museum, and in this College of Letters and Science story.
Catch first-year MFAs at Verge, Sacramento
“Notebooks of a Body,” UC Davis first-year master of fine arts students exhibition, will be held at the Verge Center for the Arts, 625 S St, Sacramento, June 1 – Aug. 12.
Work by first-year MFA artists, Bailey Anderson, Julian Childs-Walker, Adam Cochran, Rachel Deane, Sarah Frieberg, Brooklynn Johnson and Nathan Smith, make up “Notebooks of a Body.” The artists work in many and across mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video and performance.
An opening reception takes place on Friday, June 1 from 6-9 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Verge Center for the Arts
625 S Street
Sacramento
Thursday-Saturday: 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday: 12-5 p.m.
Go here for updated information.
This story was compiled from stories by Jeffrey Day, and Michael G. French, College of Letters and Science, and Sasha Wallinger, Manetti Shrem Museum.