'Sheepmowers' illustrate the art of grazing
Wednesday, June 4 to Friday, June 6, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., on the UC Davis Quad, free
The Sheepmowers are back — for the last time this school year! Each day the sheep will mow to a different theme. And for the first time, they are right in the UC Davis quad for easy access.
A look back on Wednesday: Shepherds’ Art Cafe – “Ewe Brew & Create”
Anxious about upcoming finals? Come sip coffee, listen to soothing music, and harness your inner Baa-b Ross with stress-reducing crafts, including block printing, rock painting, watercolors, and mural design.
Thursday: Focus on Fashion – “Ewe in Style”
Experience the first annual wool walk fashion show! Come watch students and interns strut their stuff. Sketch your own fashion designs using natural dyes and watercolors. Bring your no-longer-wanted clothes to participate in a sustainable clothing swap and find your “pasture perfect look.”
Friday: Shear Sustainability – “Ewe-topia: Grazing Toward a Greener Future"
From grazing to growing, the Sheepmowers are celebrating a day rooted in sustainability! Build native seed mixes, share wooly mulch, and flex fleece facts with trivia games. Cultivate greener pastures, together!
Shinkoskey Noon Concert features work by UC Davis' Pablo Ortiz
Ortiz professor of music and composition
Thursday, June 5, 12:05 p.m., Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, free
Works by Franz Schubert, Elizabeth Ogonek, and Professor of Music Pablo Ortiz
Program to be announced.
About the performers, Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Ryan McCullough:
As both musical and life partners, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and pianist Ryan McCullough bring an intimacy to their performances that speaks to their many years of collaboration. Praised as “breathtaking” by The Wall Street Journal, the husband-and-wife duo has performed throughout North America and Europe in such venues as New York’s Merkin Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Di Menna Center; London’s Wigmore Hall; and Toronto’s Koerner Hall, in addition to a recent appearance on PBS’ Great Performances. Forthcoming albums include Pablo Ortiz’s collected art songs and Johannes Brahms’ Die schöne Magelone on an 1857 Johann Baptist Streicher piano.
Art & Humanities 2025 Graduation Exhibition takes over the Manetti Shrem Museum
Opening celebration and awards: Thursday, June 5, 5:30-9 p.m., at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
Exhibition on view: Thursday, June 5 to Sunday, June 22
UC Davis graduate students in Art History, Art Studio, Comparative Literature, Design, English, Environmental Science and Policy, Music and Performance Studies present their work at the Manetti Shrem Museum. The Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate Exhibition gives students hands-on experience in installing and exhibiting their work in a museum setting. Explore new ways of seeing and understanding the past, present and future in this multidisciplinary exhibition. In all, 30 Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts and doctoral students are participating.
The free public opening celebration of the exhibition features performances by master’s and doctoral students, as well as the presentation of the LeShelle & Gary May Art Purchase Prize, the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize, the Letters & Science Prize and the Savageau Award in the Department of Design.
Read the opening program PDF here: Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate Exhibition
Read the full story on the exhibition.
Ongoing Art in Davis
Catch the last night of ‘Taming the Lightning’
Thursday, June 5, 7-10 p.m., Arena Theatre, Wright Hall, free
A walk-through immersive performance installation, Taming the Lightning, conceived, directed, designed, and composed by Granada Artists-in-Residence David Adam Moore and Vita Tzykun, explores our relationship to nature and technology. This innovative project will be presented by the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance.
The title references a Silicon Valley quote about harnessing the forces of nature to create artificial intelligence: “We have tamed lightning and used it to teach sand to think.” Rather than celebrating human dominance over nature, Taming the Lightning invites audiences to question the boundaries humans construct between ourselves and the living world of which we are an integral part.
Students are collaborating with Tzykun and Moore to create an immersive, interactive, environment that blends live performance with digital and tactile elements. This multi-faceted installation incorporates cutting-edge tools such as custom-made sensor technology, plant sonification, 3D projection mapping, and multi-channel spatial audio, as well as an extended reality experience.
Disclaimer: The immersive experience uses VR headsets, which may cause discomfort such as dizziness, nausea, or disorientation. Use of these devices is strictly voluntary.
Get tickets for June 5 here.
‘Sing With Pride’ honors the life of Matthew Shepard
Thursday, June 5, 7 p.m., Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Choruses of UC Davis and the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus, perform “Considering Matthew Shepard,” honoring and celebrating the life of Matthew Shepard at Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
Considering Matthew Shepard, first performed in 2016, is a full-concert length modern-day oratorio. The choral work is fused with different styles. The texts are from poets, including Rumi and Hildegard von Bingen, along with words from Shepard’s own journal. The Chicago Tribune wrote: “Moving among styles ranging from Lutheran hymnody to blues to Broadway, this modern-day Passion will move many listeners to tears even as it reaches beyond tragedy to peace, understanding and forgiveness.”
Get tickets here.
‘Reform to Restoration: French Art from Louis XVI to Louis XVIII from the Horvitz Collection’ at the Crocker Art Museum now
The 125 drawings and 20 paintings in the exhibition reveal the ways that more than 70 artists engaged with artistic debates, archaeological discoveries, and sweeping political changes from the final decades of the ancien régime through the French Revolution, Empire, and Restoration. The show explores the visual shifts in taste, which moved away from the popular and decorative mid-18th-century Rococo style toward a more structured and formal Neoclassical and, in the early 19th century, Romanticism. The exhibition will be on view until Sept. 14. Get tickets here.
‘A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World’ combines musical, sculptural, and natural elements in arboretum
Friday, June 6, 8 p.m., at the UC Davis Arboretum on the North Side of Lake Spafford across from the Wyatt Deck, free
“A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World,” a novel musical and visual work devised by students and professors in music and art seeks to address the urgency of habitat remediation and protection. The interdisciplinary work employs an imagined narrative that takes place in the arboretum before humans, during humans (the “Anthropocene”), and after humans. The performance begins at 8 p.m. in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden on Friday, June 6, on the north side of Lake Spafford directly across the lake from the Wyatt Deck.
The project show takes the participants to an imagined time after we’re gone, where the bowerbird remains, continuing on after we have left off.”
The students have been guided by Robin Hill, professor of art in the Maria Manetti Shrem Art Studio Program in the Department of Art and Art History; Kurt Rohde, professor of music in the Department of Music, and Stacey Parker, director of Public Horticulture and Engagement at the Arboretum and Public Garden.
Framed as a tour of the Arboretum, in the habitat of the fictional Arboretum Bowerbird, ‘A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World’ takes the bowerbird as a case study to examine our impact on the environment and its occupants, said Rohde and Hill, who together created upper-division courses in art and music for the project in order to create the piece from the ground up.
Additionally, Marie Lorenz, the spring 2025 artist in The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies, contributed input. Guest musicians include Lina Bahn, violin, and Kate Vincent, viola.
The project received a grant from Global Affairs at UC Davis, which offers grants for “Advancing Sustainable Development Goals” in partnership with Grand Challenges, Sustainability and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Framed as a tour of the Arboretum, in the habitat of the fictional Arboretum Bowerbird, ‘A BowerHaus for a Post-Anthropocene World’ takes the bowerbird as a case study to examine our impact on the environment and its occupants.” – Kurt Rohde
For more information, visit this link.
Pence Senior Show features UC Davis graduating students
Saturday, June 7, 6-9 p.m., Pence Gallery, 212 D Street
The Basement Gallery and Open Walls Collective come together to celebrate art created by graduating art studio seniors in “Senior Art Meets Conversation: A Panel of Perspectives.” Don’t miss this discussion showcasing student artists and curators meeting at the Pence Gallery.
Elevating the Arts this week: at a glance
Want a quick summary of the arts events and performances Thursday and Friday? Check out this article.
Coming up
New exhibit moves into the Manetti Shrem Museum for fall
On display Thursday, August 7 to Monday, December 1, free
Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice considers the connections between social and environmental injustice through the lens of contemporary art. This groundbreaking exhibition brings together works focused on climate change by artists, scientists and activists whose practices encompass photography, multimedia, large-scale sculptures, painting and more.
Check here for more information.
Celebrate Pride Month at the Crocker Museum
Thursday, June 12, 6 p.m., ages 18+, 216 O Street, Sacramento
Celebrate Pride Month with a serving of high tea, high fashion, and high energy! Join in on the fun at the Crocker Museum’s monthly ArtMix for a night of French decadence with a dazzling drag showcase inspired by Reform to Restoration: French Art from Louis XVI to Louis XVIII from the Horvitz Collection, an LGBTQ+ market with QueerShoppe, and courtyard games fit for royalty. DJed dance floors keep the vibes immaculate all night long. Get tickets here.
The Woodland Opera House opens 'Something Rotten!'
Saturday, June 13 to Sunday, June 28, 340 Second Street, Woodland
Week 1: Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m.
Week 2: Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m.
Week 3: Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.
The Woodland Opera House’s new musical "Something Rotten!" is a comedic musical that tells the story of the Bottom brothers, Nick and Nigel, who are playwrights living in Elizabethan England. The plot is set in 1595, when the Bottom brothers are struggling to compete with the wild success of their contemporary, William Shakespeare. Desperate to write a hit play, Nick consults a soothsayer who foretells that the future of theater will be "a musical." This leads the brothers on a hilarious journey as they attempt to create the world's first musical. Get tickets here.
Media Resources
Arts Blog Editor: Karen Nikos-Rose; News and Media Relations, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu
Jamie Gelfond will be graduating this spring, so this is her last Arts Blog, but feel free to email jsgelfond@ucdavis.edu
To subscribe to the periodic newsletter with highlights from the weekly blog and other content, email Karen.