Manetti Shrem Museum’s Virtual Re-opening Ceremony this Sunday
Sunday, May 23, 3 p.m., free, via Zoom. Register.
The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art holds a virtual celebration as they prepare to reopen in June. Tune in for a special livestream event from the museum. Founding Director Rachel Teagle and exhibition curators Susie Kantor, Quintana Heathman and Sampada Aranke will introduce you to the art and artists featured in the new exhibitions.
You'll be the first to hear about the museum’s reopening plans and learn how to reserve your free, timed ticket to visit beginning in June!
Learn more about this virtual event here.
Today and tonight
Shinkoskey presents 'Igor Veligan, violin and Natsuki Fukasawa, piano'
Thursday, May 20, 12:05 p.m. to 1 p.m., free, via UC Davis Music’s YouTube Channel.
Music by Arvo Pärt, Rebecca Clarke, Franz Schubert, and others. Igor Veligan, violin
Natsuki Fukasawa, piano
To learn more about this program, go here.
Next week: Thursday, May 27, 12:05 p.m. to 1 p.m., free, via UC Davis Music’s YouTube Channel.
Jennifer Ellis, harp
Kurt Rohde, viola and UC Davis Professor of Music
Laurie San Martin, clarinet and UC Davis Professor of Music
Program to be announced.
Learn more about this performance on the UC Davis Department of Music website.
Virtual 2021 Film Fest at UC Davis tonight
Thursday, May 20, 7 p.m., free. Tickets.
For two decades the Film Fest at UC Davis has showcased hundreds of short films by student filmmakers. The second day of the 21st annual festival is tonight, Thursday, May 20, with screenings beginning at 7 p.m. and Q&A with Awards at 7:55 p.m. The winning films will be announced after the screening tonight. Get your free tickets here.
The Film Fest shows student works that are eight minutes or less in length that have been created by undergraduate or graduate students and recent graduates. The films include a variety of genres and styles, from narrative to documentary to experimental.
Natsuki Fukasawa, piano on Thursday. (Courtesy photo)
Though free, audience members can make a donation on the web page to benefit future festivals.
The 2021 festival is co-produced with support from the Departments of Art and Art History, Cinema and Digital Media, Design, Music and Theatre and Dance.
To read more about the event, go here.
Come in person, talk to artist Marc Lancet at the Pence Gallery
On Saturday, May 22, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., visitors will have the opportunity to come in and chat with Marc Lancet at the Pence Gallery. His work is currently on view at the gallery until June 13.
The search for the figure has inspired sculptor Marc Lancet’s artistic practice for decades. Harkening back to ancient goddess figures from prehistoric Europe, Japan, and pre-colonial Africa, Lancet builds totemic female figures on a grand scale. Always aiming for wonder and mystery over realism and planning, he produces abstracted figures full of emotional depth. Equally full of sentiment are Lancet’s ceramic masks, in which found objects add expressive facial features and wry character. Each figure is fired using an ancient wood firing process, in which ash from burning wood deposits on the surface.
Learn more about the event here.
Verge Center for the Arts Fair all weekend long
Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento is proud to present their inaugural Verge Fair, a three-day art market designed to build a bridge between artists and art lovers. Verge Fair will be a unique, exciting, dynamic, first-of-its-kind celebration of the vitality and creativity of the Sacramento arts scene.
The fair will open to the public on Friday, May 21 with a hybrid offering of virtual art lectures, artist Q&As, and live stream performances as well as curated selection of art for sale in both the silent auction and bespoke retail space on site at Verge Center for the Arts. Verge Fair will run through Sunday, May 23 with timed entry and social distancing helping to bring all guests a safe and comfortable retail experience. Masks are required. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased according to the date and time here.
Stay tuned for the full weekend event schedule and featured artist list coming soon!
For more information about the event, visit Verge Center for the Arts.
Coming up next week
Artist Cameron Rowland in Conversation with Erin Gray and Justin Leroy
Wednesday, May 26, 12 p.m., free, via Zoom. Register.
MacArthur Foundation fellow Cameron Rowland is an artist making visible the institutions, systems and policies that perpetuate systemic racism and economic inequality. His research-intensive work centers around the display of objects and documents whose provenance and operations expose the legacies of racial capitalism and underscore the forms of exploitation that permeate many aspects of our daily lives.
Rowland joins UC Davis professors Erin Gray (English) and Justin Leroy (History) for a conversation that centers on Rowland’s works Disgorgement, Depreciation and Encumbrance. Each of these pieces utilizes the everyday functions of financial instruments to reveal the complicity of those instruments in histories of racial violence and dispossession. The works’ conceptual nature asks viewers to imagine expansively the form reparations and abolition might take.
Organized by Professor Justin Leroy and the Mellon Initiative on Racial Capitalism. Co-sponsored by the Cultural Studies Graduate Group and the Manetti Shrem Museum.
To read more about this program, go here.
The Official Rogue Book Club features Ellen Forney
Thursday, May 27, 6 p.m., free. Register.
Each month, the Official Rogue Book Club at the Crocker Museum, Sacramento, brings together readers, art lovers, and special guests to discuss books that inspire us to look at art and life in new, unexpected ways. For Mental Health Month, the Crocker is taking on their first graphic novel — Marbles by cartoonist Ellen Forney. Described as “darkly funny and intensely personal,” Forney explores the relationship between “crazy” and “creative.” Drawing on her own experience with bipolar disorder, Forney interweaves her story with those of famous bipolar artists and writers.
Attempting to dispel any romantic notions about her life, Forney tries to come to terms with the concept of the “crazy” or “tortured” artist, finding inspiration in the lives and work of artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath. As The New York Times noted in a short review of her book: "Her crushing lows made it nearly impossible for her to make it, or do anything else; and the desperately inexact science of medication, she once feared, might rob her of the creativity she cherished." Forney also researches the clinical aspects of bipolar disorder, including the strengths and limitations of various treatments and medications, and what studies tell us about the conundrum of attempting to “cure” an otherwise brilliant mind.
Read about the event on the Crocker’s website.
Forney’s book was also chosen as the book for the 2020-2021 UC Davis Campus Community Book Project. Read more about the book selection here.
Social Media of the Week
We came across this Instagram post reminding us to go check out the work of alumnus Michael Tompkins (MFA ’18) at the b. sakata garo gallery in Sacramento.
