A visiting artist speaker series exploring the concepts of disability and varying abilities begins Thursday, Nov. 2, at UC Davis Wright Hall with Katherine Sherwood. She is a professor emerita at UC Berkeley in the Art Department and the Disability Studies Program where she taught art, medicine and disability and art and meditation.

She presents from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Wright Hall Lab A.

Sherwood’s mixed media paintings investigate the point at which the essential aspects of art, medicine, and disability intersect. In addition to showing regularly throughout the United States, she co-curated the exhibition Blind at the Museum at the Berkeley Art Museum, and organized an accompanying conference at UC Berkeley.

“Functional Diversity & Art: A Creativity Engagement” is a series offered to the campus community and wider public during 2017-18. It was devised by associate professors Julie Wyman of Cinema & Digital Media, and Darrin Martin, Art Studio, College of Letters and Science.

The fall 2017/winter 2018 series includes presentations, lectures, and first-year seminars that asks students to create responses in various media to these visiting artists and critics.

Contemporary artists are actively exploring questions about bodies, ability, perception, and normativity – producing work of all genres and media that diversifies the expression of human experience.

The parallel field of critical disability studies offers a productive powerful site that intersects issues of race, gender, sexuality and technology.

Major funding for the series comes from the UC Davis Office of Student Affairs Diversity and Inclusion Grant, Department of Art and Art History, and the Department of Cinema and Digital Media.

More information at the art department’s web site.