Fall Season Celebration at Manetti Shrem Museum is Sunday

4:30 – 7 p.m., Manetti Shrem Museum, Old Davis Road

Join the museum on Sunday, Sept. 25 to celebrate an exciting new season. Be among the first to visit three dynamic new exhibitions that span generations. Meet exhibiting artists Loie Hollowell and Sadie Barnette and hear about their creative practice in our featured presentation, The Personal is Profound, moderated by Associate Curator and Exhibition Department Head Susie Kantor. Get creative with art activities presented in partnership with the Crocker Art Museum’s Block by Block initiative. Experience the soulful sounds of Oakland singer-songwriter August Lee Stevens and her band throughout the evening. Free for all!

The exhibitions include:

Roy De Forest: Habitats for Travelers

Sept. 25 – May 8, 2023

First-generation art faculty member and UC Davis Professor Emeritus Roy De Forest (1930-2007) is beloved for his colorful narrative figurative paintings, drawings and prints. Printmaking offered De Forest a means to explore his visual vocabulary — to experiment with the colors, textures and mark-making unique to the medium. Featuring a recent gift of prints from the artist’s estate, Habitats for Travelers explores De Forest’s dedication to the medium over three decades.

Curated by Jenelle Porter, independent curator.

Loie Hollowell: Tick Tock Belly Clock

Sept. 25 – May 8, 2023

Known primarily for paintings and drawings that map the body through both figuration and abstraction, New York-based artist Loie Hollowell draws from her own life experiences in her work. The first exhibition to focus on her soft pastel drawings, Tick Tock Belly Clock asserts the primacy of drawing within her overall practice as key to making her paintings, while also celebrating them in their own right. The exhibition features all new works made in 2020-21, and speaks directly to the pandemic moment. Hollowell, a rising star in the art world, grew up in Woodland, California, and is the daughter of longtime UC Davis Professor Emeritus David Hollowell.

Curated by Susie Kantor, Manetti Shrem Museum associate curator and exhibition department head.

Find more information here.

Rebel in the Underground: Art and Music Crawl at the Basement Gallery

The Basement Gallery is looking for art for their Rebel in the Underground: art and music crawl! All majors/mediums are welcome to apply!

Deadline to submit work is Friday, Sept. 30. Opening gallery reception and music crawl is Friday, Oct. 14, 6 – 9 p.m. Open gallery hours for visual works to be on display is Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 17 and 18 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Basement Gallery at student.art.gallery@gmail.com

Soroptimist LUNAFEST film festival is Sept. 25

Sept. 25, 3 p.m.

Davis Odd Fellows Hall, 415 Second St., Davis, $25 general, $15 student; $40 household (online)

Tickets are still available for LUNAFEST, a series of short films by and about women that will run on Sunday, Sept. 25 at Davis Odd Fellows Hall, or online that weekend. The event is a fundraiser for Soroptimist International of Davis.

The event includes eight short films, told from perspectives that champion women and gender-nonconforming individuals, highlighting their aspirations, accomplishments, resilience, strength and connection. Though the films are unrated, they are most appropriate for ages 13 and up.

The in-person event will be Sunday, Sept. 25 at Davis Odd Fellows Hall, 415 Second St. Doors open at 3 p.m. and the screening begins at 3:30. Food and drink will be available for purchase, including alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. 

Those unable to join in person can still support Soroptimist programs by watching the films virtually from their smart TV or device. Beginning at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 23, those purchasing virtual tickets will have 48 hours to begin watching the films, and 48 hours to finish viewing once they’ve started. The total running time for the eight short films is 80 minutes. Before the films, there’s a brief video from Soroptimist International of Davis, outlining how its programs improve the lives of women and girls in Yolo County.

The group is working with its Ruby Award winner Dzokerayi Minya of the TESE Foundation. Attendees who bring a new package of girls’ or ladies’ panties to the screening are eligible to receive a free item from the snack bar. These donations will support rural girls in Zimbabwe who need the panties to attend school. 

Proceeds from LUNAFEST benefit Soroptimist International of Davis, and its programs to educate and empower women and girls, as well as Chicken & Egg Pictures, a nonprofit organization that supports female nonfiction filmmakers.

For LUNAFEST tickets, visit here.

Soroptimist is a global volunteer organization that provides women and girls with access to the education and training they need to achieve economic empowerment.

Coming up

A Recital of American Music at Pitzer next week

Sept. 29, 12:05 – 1 p.m.

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free, a Shinkoskey Noon Concert

Dagenais Smiley, violin and UC Davis lecturer in music with John Cozza, piano

The program includes Amy Beach: Romance for Violin and Piano, Aaron Copland: Four Piano Blues​, Samuel Barber: Canzone for Violin and Piano​, George Gershwin: Summertime / A Woman Is a Sometime Thing, Copland: Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Gershwin: It Ain’t Necessarily So.

This recital features 20th-century American music, with transcriptions by famed Russian-Lithuanian-American violinist Jascha Heifetz, from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, as well as Samuel Barber’s own transcription of the second movement of his Piano Concerto.

A native of Northern California, Dagenais Smiley earned her bachelor of music degree at the Oberlin Conservatory as a student of Milan Vitek and her master’s degree from USC under the instruction of Kathleen Winkler. She is proud to have worked under such notable conductors as Leon Fleisher, David Zinman, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and John Williams. She has participated in master classes given by Yuval Yaron, Kathleen Winkler, Alexander Barantschik, Fritz Gearhart, the Calder Quartet, and Glenn Dicterow.

Find more information here.

Davis Musical Theatre Company presents Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

Through Oct. 2

Underwritten by Betty J. Paro

The enchanting story of Belle, a young woman in a provincial town, and the Beast, who is really a young prince trapped in a spell placed by an enchantress. If the Beast can learn to love and be loved, the curse will end and he will be transformed to his former self. But time is running out. If the Beast does not learn his lesson soon, he and his castle staff will be doomed for all eternity. The show is filled with all the wonderful music from the Disney animated classic, including: "Be Our Guest," "Gaston," and the title song "Beauty and the Beast."

Purchase tickets here.

Steve Briscoe and Lynn Beldner at the Pence next week

Stece Briscoe will be showing at the Pence Gallery in Davis from Oct. 5 to Nov. 5 with a reception on Friday, Oct. 14 from 6 – 9 p.m. This show will display all his work (with a few exceptions) from the last couple of years. 

Lynn Beldner is also showing with her art group in another part of the Pence. Her show “Interwoven” opens on Tuesday, Oct. 11 to Nov. 22. Some of the group, including Lynn, will participate in a talk at the gallery Sunday, Oct. 23 at 2 p.m. 

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

San Francisco Symphony at Mondavi in October

Thursday, Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m., Mondavi's Jackson Hall

The San Francisco Symphony performed the first concert in the Mondavi Center in October 2002. They return to celebrate a 20-year partnership, now under the guidance of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen. This celebratory evening features a rich program: a U.S. debut of new piece by British composer Daniel Kidane; Sibelius’s lovely tone poem Luonnotar featuring South African soprano Golda Schultz; and a complete rendering of Stravinsky’s breakthrough ballet score, The Firebird. 

Find more information here.

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