Exciting times in the UC Davis art world:

Alumna Hong Chun Zhang returns to the campus next week to give a talk at the Nelson Gallery, where the fall quarter exhibition includes some of her drawings — giant drawings of her hair.

Craft Center staff members are selling their works in an auction that ends next week, with proceeds going to support the center's programs.

And Wayne Thiebaud, professor emeritus of art, considered one of America's greatest living painters, has yet another New Yorker cover to his credit. His art has appeared on nearly every one of the magazine's food issues, beginning with Jolly Cones in 2002. His latest is Hot-Dog Stand (2004-12) for the Dec. 3 edition. See The New Yorker's slide show of some of his other food issue covers.

• Zhang — In Out of Line: A Show of Extended Drawing Practices, she joins seven other artists who have extended the medium of drawing to the very large scale. In Zhang's case, the subject is her hair — in realistic, giant drawings, some of which she showed recently at the Smithsonian Institution. She received a Master of Fine Arts in 2004, two years after her husband, John Kennedy, received his own UC Davis degree: a doctorate in political science. Now they live in Kansas, where Kennedy is an associate professor at the University of Kansas.

Zhang's talk, free and open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. Tuesday (Dec. 4) at the Nelson Gallery, Nelson Hall, where Out of Line continues through Dec. 16. Regular hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday-Sunday, and Friday by appointment.

• Craft Center — Unique, handcrafted gifts are yours for the bidding in the annual  Staff Show and Silent Auction — featuring jewelry, glasswork, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, woodwork, photography, painting, drawing, screen printing and mixed media.

Written bids are acceptable any time the center is open, through 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7. The cutoff time will come during a closing reception, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. A live auction will commence at 6 for any items that have interested, active bidders.

The Craft Center is in the South Silo. Regular hours: 12:30-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 12:30-7 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.

For more information, call Jan Garrison, Craft Center coordinator, (530) 752-3096.

• Thiebaud — His New Yorker covers offer just a taste of what's in this painter's pantry: from the sweetness of ice cream and cake, and lollipops and gumballs, to cheeses and a turkey dinner. He also is known for vertiginous San Francisco cityscapes and lushly colored Sacramento Valley riverscapes.

Thiebaud and others recruited to the art faculty in the early 1960s would become identified with “California funk.” But Thiebaud’s work goes far beyond funk, far beyond pop. He depicts subjects “that reflect a nostalgia and reverence for American culture that sets him apart from the stark commercialism of Warhol and his contemporaries,” according to a news release from Acquavella Galleries, where a Thiebaud retrospective winds up today (Nov. 30).

"My paintings displayed on the covers of The New Yorker allow me to feel like a small part of a special family of writers and artists that I greatly admire,” the magazine quotes him as saying, in an article about the 2012 cover art.

Read The New York Times review of the Acquavella show.

MORE ON CAMPUS

• Salt-Bitter-Edge-Red Streak into the = Water Girl: Works of Melanie Yazzie — In this printmaking series, the Navajo artist considers her experiences since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She reflects upon her life today, developing new ways of living in Denver, while she remembers the events and people of her childhood and home on the Navajo Nation. Through Dec. 7, C.N. Gorman Museum, 1316 Hart Hall. Regular hours: noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2-5 p.m. Sunday.

• Serigrafía — An exhibition of information design in printmaking, a traditional and powerful communication tool in California’s Latino culture. Through Dec. 7, Design Museum, Cruess Hall. Regular hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday and 2-4 p.m. Sunday.

Read more about the campus's fall exhibitions.

• Political Posters from the Chicana/o Studies Poster Archive — TANA (Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, or Art Workshop of the New Dawn), run by the Department of Chicana/o Studies, presents a selection of works from the 23-year history of the department's Chicana/o studies poster workshop. TANA is at 1224 Lemen Ave., Woodland. Call for exhibition hours: (530) 402-1065.

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.

• UC Davis Traditions Past and Present — A sampling from the photograph collection of the university archives, keeper of such memories as Labor Day, Frosh Dinks, Tank Rush, Frosh-Soph Brawl and Wild West Days. Exhibit prepared by Sara Gunasekara, collections manager. For more information or to share your memories of UC Davis traditions, send an e-mail to Special Collections, speccoll@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.

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