While many arts events are postponed until students, staff and faculty at UC Davis return to the classroom, a few worthwhile arts events are on the horizon and happening right now. We hope to have more news next week. For now, noon concerts are canceled. Find out about some arts grants available to apply for, as well, below.
Karen Nikos-Rose, Arts Blog Editor
Circa is coming to Mondavi Jan. 28; well-being discount available now
The “well-being” ticket deal has deeper meaning this month. With much of the campus watching the COVID variant levels closely, look forward to Circa at Mondavi. Well-being ticket deal for January: Staff and faculty have until Jan. 22 to purchase their $10 tickets to see Australia’s Circa Contemporary Circus at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28.
The Mondavi Center follows all campus safety protocols for COVID-19, including proof of vaccination and campus symptom survey requirements.
Circa is the Mondavi student/staff/faculty well-being ticket in January. Staff and faculty have from Jan. 1 to 22 to purchase their $10 tickets to see Australia’s Circa Contemporary Circus at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28. Find more information about the special $10 deal here. Tickets are on sale for all others here.
A symphony of acrobatics, sound and light, Humans 2.0 is next level circus by Circa.
Ten bodies appear in a flash of light. They move in harmony for a fleeting moment and then descend into a sinuous trance. Towers grow and decay, bodies leap and are caught, as physical limits are pushed to their extreme. Can we ever find a perfect balance or is adapting to constant change the only way forward?
This next chapter of Circa’s internationally acclaimed Humans is a tightly woven choreography of bodies, pulsing with music by composer Ori Lichtik and revealed in Paul Jackson’s dramatic lighting. Created by circus visionary Yaron Lifschitz, Humans 2.0 is intimate, primal and deeply engaged with the challenge of being human.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates 75th anniversary at Davis
Saturday, Jan 15., 7:30 p.m., Jackson Hall
Celebrating its 75th anniversary, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra returns to the Mondavi Center with music director Vasily Petrenko leading a program of English and Russian. Britten rewrote the Four Sea Interludes to stand on their own from Peter Grimes, his masterful opera. Pianist Olga Kern joins the RPO as soloist on Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, one of the most beloved classical works. The Enigma Variations, 14 musical sketches of the composer’s friends, was the work that brought Elgar worldwide acclaim.
Find more information and purchase tickets here. COVID-19 safety protocols apply and are explained at the tickets site.
“A Walk in the Flatlands” exhibition at John Natsoulas
Jamie Madison’s landscape exhibition “A Walk in the Flatlands” available at John Natsoulas Gallery through Feb. 26th. The opening reception will be on Friday, Jan. 14, 7-9 p.m.
Jamie lives and works in Winters and Sausalito in Northern California. She received a Bachelor of Arts in painting and printmaking at UC Davis, studying with Wayne Thiebaud and Roland Peterson. She returned full time to painting in 2017 and has recently studied with Fran O’Niell (New York Studio School), and Enrique Martinez Celaya.
Madison’s focus is primarily on making, particularly on process and choice of materials. She often works on paper, sometimes collaging handmade monoprints onto acrylic paintings. The paint slides on easily, dries quickly, and, as she says, “welcomes the next layer with open arms.” In creating work for this exhibition, Madison gravitated toward larger, sturdier formats, first wood panels, and then stretched linen. As she worked on the panels, hot pinks and bright reds began to emerge over the slick surfaces, a reflection of the orange sky of the distant wildfires. When she switched to oils on stretched linen, a softer, more forgiving surface, she encountered an unexpected shift: a cooler, soothing palette materialized. The compositions refocused from distant horizons to smaller details of the land — puddles and woodland debris – things that are nearby and underfoot, perhaps embedded in the earth itself. Madison’s striking paintings from the last eighteen months do not merely chronicle changes in the landscape but crystallize her reverence for the humming web of life that she has discovered in the flatlands. She is a witness to the landscape’s inexorable fragility in the face of industrial man’s epic battle against nature.
Find more information here.
John Natsoulas Gallery is located at 521 First St., Davis.
Processors, Barriers, and Implements at Transmission Gallery in Oakland
Until Jan. 22
Produced primarily during the last two years of chaos and upheaval, Steve Briscoe‘s recent works offer a response, a stand in for the body/brain negotiating this new and shifting social, physical, and political territory. Mysterious, yet approachable, these objects speak to the hidden and oblique mechanisms that maintain balance, coerce cooperation, or initiate action in the face of distress.
Briscoe, a former employee at the UC Davis Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, is a visual artist working in a variety of media to create works that reflect on, resonate and engage with our world. Crafted and found things are melded into compositions that are knowing and questioning at the same time.
Transmission Gallery promotes primarily regional and national figurative artists with an emphasis on Expressionism, California Funk, Neo-Funk and Socially Engaged Art. As artists and art educators themselves, gallery owner/directors Ruth Santee and Cameron Brian have a passion for art and its various forms of expression, often showing unconventional work with a point of view. 770 West Grand Ave., Oakland, 94612.
Find more information here.
New Exhibitions at the Pence
Sean Free Alcala: Under the Surface
The exhibition runs through Feb. 25, with an opening reception on Jan. 14, 6-9 p.m.
This exhibit celebrates the exquisite glass sculpture of Sean Alcala, the winner of the Pence Gallery Emerging Artist Award for 2021. His kiln-formed sculptures evoke a sense of captured time and movement, through his careful control of layered colors, textures and shapes. Playing with the ability of glass to reflect or absorb light, the artist alters the glass to play with its transparency and opacity. As he writes, “I invite my viewers to look beyond texture and form, to explore the internal space…to discover what exists under the surface.” In this regard, he connects our visual journey to our environmental plight, offering us a chance to rethink our relationship with the natural world.
Sponsored by James R. & Suzette M. Smith as part of the Pence Emerging Artist Award
Lover’s Eye
The exhibition runs through Jan. 30, with an opening reception on Jan. 14, 6-9 p.m.
Lover’s eyes, or eye miniatures, were popular in Great Britain from the late 1700s through the Victorian era. Typically painted on a small piece of ivory, an eye miniature depicts a single eye, representing the gaze of a loved one. Thought to have been originally created as a secret token of love, these mysterious portraits were often worn as jewelry. Thousands survive today, but for the most part, their subjects and the artists who created them are unknown.
The local and regional artists in this exhibit have uniquely explored the lover’s eye theme in various ways. Stellar participating artists include Steven Levin, Adam Forfang, Chris Leib, Kirstine Hansen, Natasha Dikareva and Laurelin Gilmore, among others.
The Pence Gallery is located at 212 D St., Davis.
California’s Arts grant season begins Jan. 19
This year, 12 grant programs have been rooted in several of the aspirational areas identified in the California Arts Council's strategic framework, including increased capacity building for local arts agencies, general operating support, multiyear grant opportunities, geographic equity, small organization prioritization, and funding for individual artists.
In an effort to make the agency’s grantmaking processes more effective and efficient, Council members voted to align grant activity periods with the fiscal year from which grant funds are allocated. To achieve this, the 2022 grant season will consist of two cycles, A and B, with applications opening in January and April, respectively.
Programs opening in Cycle A versus Cycle B are largely reflective of when current grant activity periods from our previous grant season will end. The two-part timeline also accounts for added time to develop new programs, and for programs that may be administered differently than they have been in the past. It provides an opportunity to receive outcome reports from programs to determine possible guidelines changes, allowing Council to invest more deeply in each program, reduce confusion in the field, and increase grant-making efficiency for staff.
Take a look at the 2022 program offerings here.
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