Weekender: See Graduate Art; Buy Tickets for Mondavi Season

Plenty of Art to See Now

by Hayley Morris, UC Davis Media Relations Intern
June 09, 2021

Singer Becca Stevens will make her Mondavi Center debut this season. Tickets for the long-awaited Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts season are on sale now.

Annual grad exhibit opens tonight with awards, virtual reception

The annual exhibition by UC Davis arts and humanities graduate students will showcase works across the disciplines of art, design, music, creative writing, Native American studies, English, Spanish and French. The exhibition is hosted by the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art and can be viewed June 10 through Sept. 6 on the museum’s website. This is the second year it will be taking place online due to the restrictions of COVID-19.

Photo of artwork that is a book. — Jake Rose, a poet and MFA candidate in creative writing, has created a book-length erasure project using Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” The erased project, titled “The Art of the Death,” tracks each day in the last year of the presidency, recording the date and cumulative death toll from the coronavirus pandemic on every page, alongside erased text.

The exhibition opens with a virtual reception on Thursday, June 10, at 6 p.m. PDT during which the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize for an art student and The Savageau Award for a design student will be announced. The winners, and their artwork, will be featured in next week's Arts Blog.

Access the Art Studio Exhibition Celebration Livestream Program here.

View the "Arts & Humanities 2021 Graduate Exhibition" here from June 10 to Sept. 6.

Read more about the exhibition by the UC Davis College of Letters and Science here.

Despite the pandemic, which has required many of the students to work remotely, 27 students are taking part in the exhibition — a number comparable to past years. The majority of participants are from the studio art and design programs, for which an exhibition is a graduation requirement. Individual web pages will showcase the students’ work through installation photographs, video, audio and written statements. Many of the students’ works connect with larger issues, including climate change, environmental destruction, political divisions, racism, immigration and more. Their projects take a wide range of forms, including photography, ceramics, augmented reality, illustration and jewelry design.

Mondavi Center to reopen for the 2021-22 season

The Mondavi Center for Performing Arts at UC Davis announced its 2021–22 season this past week. The entertainment begins Oct. 14 with Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and closes May 19, 2022, with flutist, electronic musician and academic Grace Leslie.

Get your tickets. Subscriptions at the Mondavi Center are discounted packages of three events or more. Subscribers enjoy priority seating, early access to added shows, and discounted tickets throughout the 2021–22 season. More subscription information is available here.

Ticket prices start at $25. Ticket prices fluctuate throughout the season; the most current pricing is always available here.

Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra continue their long relationship with the Mondavi Center, presenting the full vigor and vision of American’s music on Feb. 2. Making a Mondavi Center debut, singer and songwriter Becca Stevens, on Feb. 10, makes music that is based in folk and jazz, but makes room for smart lyrics and funky beats. Another debut features keyboardist Matthew Whitaker on March 25, a phenomenon on the Hammond B3 organ and piano, and his talented bandmates. The next night, cabaret artist and provocateur Meow Meow will bring her remarkable voice and keen physical comedy together for an unforgettable evening of music, crowd-surfing and tragicomic delight.

Read the full story here. The Mondavi Center’s digital brochure, with complete information on the artists is available here.

Ongoing Exhibitions...

'Feathered Relations' at C. N. Gorman

Marwin Begaye’s exhibit, Feathered Relations, explores sacred Indigenous beliefs around birds and their link to nature. His prints and paintings place a variety of birds in the foreground, depicting them naturally, but also existing on a higher plane. This online exhibition is based on his show that was at the C.N. Gorman Museum when the pandemic forced its closure.

In the solo exhibition, Marwin Begaye (Diné) includes prints, wood blocks, and multi-media works to create a conceptual homage to birds. For the artist, birds are about our relationships – to nature, to one another, to culture.

Read more about the exhibition here.

Print above: Waiting for Spring, 2018. Monotype on paper, 30 x 22 in

UC Davis Art Returning Live

The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art reopened June 3 with a diverse roster of new exhibitions that will be on view through Nov. 12, 2021. Gallery capacity is limited to keep visitors and staff safe. Visit manettishrem.org to reserve free timed tickets and learn more about the new season.

Current exhibitions include:

Stay tuned for the Music Department’s schedule coming up.

Art. In. Action at the Barn Gallery

The current exhibition Art. In. Action at the Barn Gallery in Woodland features Project: Hope and Black Lives Matter, two books compiled in a collaboration of 43 UC Davis students in Design 15: Form and Color.

Art. In. Action honors Black women heroes, civil rights leaders, and women who have been killed by police. Presented in the form of two books Project: Hope, and Black Lives Matter, give insight as to how students can take action through art. They visually communicate their hopes for the future and amplify Black stories as well as bring the Black Lives Matter movement to the forefront.

The exhibition of both UC Davis-created books is on view through June 19, closing with a Juneteenth freedom celebration that day from 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Read more about this project in the Arts Blog here.

John Natsoulas Center for the Arts presents 2 new exhibitions

Pop Meets Funk Exhibition

Featured Artists: Banksy, Christo, Richard Pettibone, Claes Odenberg, Mel Ramos, Patrick Siler, James Albertson, Robert Arneson, William T. Wiley, Peter Saul, David Gilhooly, Wayne Thiebaud, Alex Gross, Shalene Valenzuela, Peter Vandenberg, Bill Maul, Gladys Nilsson, Roy De Forest, Lisa Clague, Robert Ransom, Kevin Snipes, Beth Lo, Glenn Takai, Patti Warashina, Tom Rippon, Robert Brady, Robert Haemmerling, Melissa Chandon, Richard Shaw, Mark Buwinkle, and more.

Opening Reception Night: Friday, June 11 at 7 p.m. at the John Natsoulas Gallery in downtown Davis.

Alumna Sarah Lam will be exhibiting her work

Sarah Lam graduated with honors from UC Davis, where she studied fine art under professors David Hollowell and Wayne Thiebaud. Through a University sponsored class, Sarah met John Natsoulas, a gallery owner who would become her mentor in the art world. Impressed by her work, Natsoulas sponsored her first solo show in 2004 at his John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, where she continues to regularly exhibit her work.

This exhibition runs until Saturday, July 17 at 5 p.m.

Learn more about the exhibitions here.

Bouquets to Art at de Young Museum now

Bouquets to Art is back in the galleries this year to celebrate the summer season in its 37th year with a new palette of fresh flowers, running through June 13. Inspired by works of art in the de Young museum’s galleries, the weeklong display of floral installations offers new ways of seeing the permanent collection. This year, for the first time, look for collection highlights in the arts of Africa and Oceania galleries upstairs, as well as plenty of perennial Bouquets to Art favorites, such as Frederic Edwin Church’s Rainy Season in the Tropics (1866). Stroll through the de Young and you’re sure to find inspiration in every corner.

Although in-person tickets have sold out, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is hosting an opening preview evening, a luxury raffle, a lecture with a world-renowned ikebana artist, and the first-ever virtual visit of Bouquets to Art. Learn more and purchase tickets here.

View the Bouquets to Art 2021 Program here.

Coming up

Juneteenth Celebration of Freedom planned in Woodland

YoloArts, in collaboration with Women in Leadership, Davis (WiLD), will host a Celebration of Freedom and closing reception of the Art. In. Action exhibit on Saturday, June 19 12:30-3:30 p.m. at the Gibson House grounds in Woodland.

The family-friendly event will feature music by DJ Vallas, light refreshments, and art activities including Juneteenth sidewalk chalk drawing and collage creations for all ages. The outdoor gathering will also include a short program with WiLD co-founder Dzokerayi Minya, Sarah Zimmerman, WiLD member, and spoken word presentations by WiLD members and mentees.

The Art. In. Action exhibition artwork can also be viewed online here.