On the Navajo Nation in Arizona, looking in any direction from her ancestral home, D.Y. Begay sees cliff formations “outlined in stepped patterns painted in bundles of red streaks, subtle shades of pinks, clusters of dusty-ochre, and flickering sand-tone colors.”

“At dawn, shoots of pale baby blue awaken the sky, and I sometimes see deep dark indigo, pinks and shades of soft yellows.”

It is images like these that the fourth-generation weaver turns into lasting treasures of natural beauty — she calls them tapestries, created in a blend of traditional weaving techniques and contemporary design. Eighteen of them comprise the C.N. Gorman Museum’s winter exhibition, The Weavings of D.Y. Begay, which opened this week and is scheduled to run through March 15. Reception and artist talk, Tuesday, Feb. 12: reception starts at 4 p.m. in the museum, and the lecture starts at 4:30 p.m. next door, in 2 Wellman Hall.

This is the first show of the museum’s 40th anniversary year, a celebration that focuses on Navajo art — honoring the Navajo artist for whom the museum is named, Carl Nelson Gorman, a founding member of the Native American studies faculty.

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• 2.5 Dimensional — Craft Center instructor Joanna Kidd presents ceramic bas-relief portraits in fragment, removed from any surrounding narrative context. The work in this exhibition combines the three-dimensional depth of sculpture and the illusion of depth on a flat surface of drawing. This combination of sculptural depth and illusion creates distortions in the images when viewed from different angles, lending the sculptures a curious animation as the viewer moves around them. Through -Feb. 8, Craft Center Gallery, South Silo. Closing reception, 6-7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8. Regular hours, 12:30-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 12:30-7 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. weekends.

THE REST OF THE WINTER SCHEDULE

• Design + Build — In conjunction with the architectural design competition that is now under way for the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. “As our architects are working on their designs, you are invited to participate in this exciting process by contributing your vision, ideas and designs for our new museum as part of the open-call exhibition Design + Build, hosted at the Nelson Gallery," museum leaders said. Visual ideas and designs will be accepted one day only, Feb. 1, and text-based contributions are due by that same date. Casual participation is welcome all throughout the exhibition, where building blocks, site analysis and construction advice will be available. Feb. 8-March 17, Nelson Gallery, Nelson Hall. Opening reception, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8. Regular hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and Saturday-Sunday, and Friday by appointment. Read more.

• Structures, Signifiers and Society: People and Textiles — Global ethnographic and contemporary works from the university’s Design Collection, in an exhibition that coincides with the release of alumna Mary Schoeser’s new book, Textiles: The Art of Mankind. It features more than 200 objects from the Design Collection, and more than 50 of these are in the exhibition. Jan. 22-March 18, Design Museum, 124 Cruess Hall. Opening reception and a lecture by Schoeser, 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24. Admission is free; people interested in attending are asked to RSVP by email, designmuseum@ucdavis.edu. Guided museum walk with the curators, 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 27. Regular hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday, 2-4 p.m. Sunday. Read more.

AT SHIELDS LIBRARY

• College to Work: Postsecondary Students and Graduates in the Work Force — Celebrating National Disability Awareness Month and California Disability History Week. The “College to Work” theme comes from the campus’s Disability Awareness Fall Symposium, which presented two UC Davis “success stories”: a Ph.D. student in chemistry who is blind, and a medical student who has profound hearing loss. Read the Dateline UC Davis story. Fall quarter.

• Following the Great Migration: Researching the 2012 Campus Community Book Project Book — Library resources that complement the 2012 section, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson's award-winning study of the Great Migration, the movement of almost 6 million African-Americans from the South from 1915 to 1970. Display assembled by David Michalski, social and cultural studies librarian, who also has compiled an online resource guide, including parallel texts for examining and interpreting the Great Migration's profound influence on American society and culture. The online guide also includes interviews with Wilkerson, a list of influential books on the Great Migration, and links to archival sources and other research tools that can help animate the discussion of this year's book. Fall and winter quarters. For more information about the exhibition and-or the online research guide, send an email to the Humanities, Social Sciences and Government Services Department,  hssref@lib.ucdavis.edu.

• Worlds of Steampunk: Fiction, Art, Fashion and Culture — It started as a subgenre of science fiction in the 1980s — incorporating fantasy, alternate history and fantastic technology, inspired by the advances of the Industrial Revolution and the late 19th century. Like its antecedents, including the novels of Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and H.G. Wells (The Time Machine), steampunk fiction features dirigibles, balloons, everything powered by steam, and mechanical contraptions of all kinds. You can see it today in movies and art — and in an entire subculture with its own fashion style (goggles, corsets, fancy top hats, and all manner of mechanical accessories decorated with wheels, cogs, gears, clockworks and other imaginative devices). Exhibit prepared by Roberto C. Delgadillo and Marcia Meister, Humanities, Social Sciences and Government Information Service. Fall and winter quarters.

The Shields Library exhibitions are in the lobby. Regular hours: 7:30 a.m.-midnight Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, noon-6 p.m. Saturday and noon-midnight Sunday. Holidays and other exceptions.

OFF CAMPUS

• 2013 Student Exhibition — Screenprints from TANA's summer 2012 and fall 2012 workshops. TANA (Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, or Art Workshop of the New Dawn) is a program of the Department of Chicana/o Studies. Through winter quarter, TANA, 1224 Lemen Ave., Woodland. Call for exhibition hours: (530) 402-1065.

• Playing Their Dream — UC Davis retiree Charlie McDonald presents a selection of images from the River Cats' 2012 season, during which he served as a photography intern for the Sacramento baseball team. Playing Their Dream "is my collection of photographs depicting the color and design of the game — and the character of the men involved while playing professional baseball at the Triple-A level," McDonald said in a news release. Through January, Gallery 1075, inside the West Sacramento Community Center, 1075 W. Capitol Ave. Regular hours: 8 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday.

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