Work of Native American Printmaker Jean LaMarr on Display Exhibit Title: "Violetly Volatile: Selected Mixed Media Works from 1974 to 1995" Date: April 7 to June 16 Where: C.N. Gorman Museum 1316 Hart Hall University of California, Davis Hours: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and Sunday, April 9, 2-5 p.m. Reception: 6-8 p.m. Friday, April 7 Lecture: 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 24 1130 Hart Hall Artist: Jean LaMarr A one-woman exhibition by Paiute and Pit River artist Jean LaMarr features printmaking characterized by LaMarr's sharp and poignant political commentary on Native American issues of land, sovereignty and representation of women -- and her love for the color purple. The exhibit will be one of the first retrospectives of LaMarr's works from 1974 to 1995 from the artist's collection and local private collections. LaMarr describes herself as a community artist-activist. Her close association with Chicana and Chicano printmakers, including Ester Hernández and Malaquias Montoya, led her to printmaking as her primary form of expression. Her printmaking follows personal and community ideals of making art and its messages accessible through copies made in printmaking. Her artistic development was critically influenced by the Third World strike at UC Berkeley in 1969 as well as other political events in the early 1970s. LaMarr recalls balancing her activism with her formal art training at UC Berkeley's art department. "I went to school during the time of the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, and then the Wounded Knee occupation and the Pit River occupation. As a student, I would always try to have this information in my work, although during critiques, I would always have to have colorful abstract paintings. Then I would go home and add the real stuff to it later," LaMarr told Susan Lobo when interviewed in "Indigenous Woman." LaMarr's Gorman Museum exhibit will include her "Cover Girl Series," in which she has appropriated exploitative 19th-century photographs of partially nude native women and silkscreened them with clothing, jewelry and basketry to restore the loss of dignity and respect of the women. Among other works to be exhibited is "Returning the Spirit of Our Ancestors," a response piece to her participation as a witness to the repatriation of Peruvian textiles from an United States textile dealer to the Peruvian community. LaMarr balances the seriousness of these political issues with witty sense of humor shown in her "They're Going to Dump it Where?!?" that depicts a young native woman outfitted in a cowboy hat, tank top and shawl wearing sunglasses that reflect a nuclear energy plant. LaMarr lives on the Susanville Indian Rancheria in northeastern California, where she directs the Native American Graphic Workshop. She studied art at UC Berkeley and has taught studio art at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, Calif. This exhibition is supported by the campus's Native American studies department, Women's Resources and Research Center, Cross-Cultural Center and the California Arts Council's Multicultural Entry Grant Program. The exhibition and events are free and open to the public. The C.N. Gorman Museum was founded in 1973 and is named in honor of Carl Nelson Gorman, a retired Native American studies faculty member who is a long-time advocate of Native American art and lives on the Navajo reservation.