The theme for the 2021 Picnic Day is “Discovering Silver Linings,” and the board of the student run event is making the best of it. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Picnic Day is going to take place virtually on Saturday, April 17. The student organizers have lined up more than 100 activities, presentations, and exhibits, some live and some you can watch anytime.

The Fashion and Design Society’s, or FADS, annual, always-popular fashion show hits the virtual runway Thursday, April 15 at 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Register here.

“Uncharted” will be streamed live on Twitch and feature clothing collections created and executed by 10 students in the UC Davis Department of Design’s “Signature Collections” course. The student-run fashion show is usually held during UC Davis’ annual campus-wide celebration on Picnic Day. Due to COVID-19, “Uncharted” will be presented in advance of Picnic Day this year. A video recording of the show will be available later for viewing as part of the virtual Picnic Day celebration on April 17 at picnicday.ucdavis.edu.

Read the story about the “Uncharted” UC Davis 2021 Fashion Show with photos of their preparation, and last show’s photos, in the Arts Blog.

For more information about Picnic Day festivities, including Doxies and Brew tonight and Picnic Day Pancake Breakfast, go here.

Shinkoskey presents ‘Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’

Thursday, April 15, 12:05 p.m. to 1 p.m., free, via UC Davis Music’s YouTube Channel. These concerts are brought to you by the UC Davis Department of Music and the Ann E. Pitzer Center, UC Davis.

• Anna Presler, violin and artistic director
• Phyllis Kamrin, violin and viola
• Matilda Hofman, viola and UC Davis lecturer in music
• Leighton Fong and Tanya Tomkins, cello
• Michel Taddei, double bass; and others

For more information, go here.

Preview of next week's concert, Tabitha Lewis, soprano, and Caleb Lewis, baritone

Thursday, April 22, 12:05 p.m. to 1 p.m., free, via UC Davis Music’s YouTube Channel.

The Shinkoskey Noon Concert features baritone Caleb Lewis, lecturer in music and director of choirs, performing with his wife Tabitha Lewis, soprano and I-Hui Chen, UC Davis lecturer in music, playing the piano.

• J.S. Bach: “Mein Freund ist mein!” from Wachet auf, BWV 140
• Clara Schumann: Er ist gekommen, Sie liebten sich beide, an Die Loreley
• Pauline Viardot​: Three Songs
• Gerald Finzi: Let Us Garlands Bring

Learn more here.

Asian Art Museum in Seattle features Talinn Grigior in a virtual event

Saturday, April 17, 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., free. Register.

Talinn Grigor , UC Davis professor of art history, will participate in the Seattle Art Museum and Asian Art Museum's Virtual Saturday lecture series on "Sites of Memory in Asia: Remembrance and Redemption." The lecture is free, but registration is required.

Monumental structures encapsulate poignant events and memorable moments in history. Their construction, demolition, or remodeling often illustrate larger sociopolitical movements. This lecture series, titled Sites of Memory in Asia: Remembrance and Redemption, presents four case studies in North India, Japan, West India, and China; each reveals a highly charged story behind an iconic site, one that embodies significant political or religious changes.

The Memory of the Ancients in Modern Iranian and Parsi Architecture by Talinn Grigor

In 1822, six fire temples adorned the cityscapes of West India. By the end of the century, Parsis had augmented that number tenfold. Many of these structures were erected in what they dubbed the “Persian Style,” on floor plans described as “open.” From the 1830s to the 1930s, the Persian Revival style evolved simultaneously and codependently in two different geo-cultures: the western coast of the Indian subcontinent, with large Parsi urban populations, as in Bombay and Surat, and the major cities of Qajar and Pahlavi Iran, in particular Shiraz and Tehran. These were interpretative “copies” of “originals,” not necessarily of archeological sites but European and native fantastical travelogues as “authentic” memories and national resilience.

More here.

Pence Gallery Art History Lecture Series features alum Mariah Briel

Saturday, April 17, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., free, via Zoom. Register.

In the age of digital media, people have become inundated with images and information, and have increasingly relied on maps as a way to see and interpret data. Art historian and UC Davis alum, Mariah Briel (M.A., Art History, ’18), will briefly explore the history of maps as art, and investigate how they work as markers (both literally and symbolically) of power and identity.

 This lecture is sponsored by Jerry DeCamp, an artist and art historian who studied with UC Davis faculty Wayne Thiebaud, Roland Peterson and others.

For more information and upcoming events, go here.

John Natsoulas Center for the Arts opens with a major exhibition

Every year, the John Natsoulas Gallery in downtown Davis holds an exhibition of landscape paintings by artists who find inspiration in beautiful and diverse terrains. This year the landscape exhibition, Spirit of Place, will be international. It runs through June. One of the featured landscape artists from across the globe is Javier Garrido Romanos. Other artists with featured work include Mitchell Long, Jose Luis Ceña Ruiz, recently deceased Sacramento region artist Greg Kondos, Boyd Gavin, Pat Mahony, UC Davis Professor Emeritus Wayne Thiebaud, Philippe Gandiol, Julie Smiley, and more. 

Hours

• Wednesday: 11 a.m. to  5 p.m.
• Thursday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Friday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Weekends: Noon to 5 p.m.

For more information, go to the John Natsoulas Center For the Arts website.

Verge Center for the Arts now open for in-person viewing

Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento is now open. Verge is excited to present its first exhibition in a year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Class of 2020 showcases the work of the 2020 Ali Youssefi Project , or AYP, artists in residence. The title is a nod to the unique challenges the artists faced pursuing their residencies during quarantine and largely in isolation. The works produced reveal the deep personal explorations that come not just through the luxury of time and space that a residency provides, but also through the additional focus that solitude allows. There is also a virtual tour of the exhibition here.

Visit the space Thursday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. or Sunday 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Visitors must adhere to social-distancing guidelines and must wear a mask.

Roger Sansi: The Anthropologist as Curator next Wednesday

Wednesday, April 21, Noon
Register online

Why do contemporary art curators define their work as ethnography? How can curation illuminate the practice of contemporary anthropology? Does anthropology risk disappearing as a disciplinary heritage within the general model of the curatorial? Roger Sansi (Universitat de Barcelona), editor of the recently published book The Anthropologist as Curator (2020), shares the process of collecting the perspective of international scholars working at the intersection of anthropology, contemporary art, museum studies, curatorial studies and heritage studies.

Programmed by Tarek Elhaik (associate professor, anthropology) and the AIL: Anthropology of the Image Lab. Co-sponsored by the Manetti Shrem Museum.

This series examines the dual practice of the scholar as curator at the intersection between the humanities and the social sciences.

Coming up...

Make a Boombox Piñata

Thursday, April 22, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., free, via Eventbrite. Register.

Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana,  based in San Jose, is celebrating Earth Day with a piñata making workshop hosted by Cultura Power Fellow and Piñata Sculptor Patty Botello. In this virtual Earth Day-inspired workshop, Botello will guide attendees through a piñata making class where she will teach you how to upcycle all those recyclable materials in your recycling bin into your very own boombox piñata sculpture. You will learn how to think differently about recyclables and transform ordinary cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, small plastic lids and plastic caps into a portable music machine piece of art.

Takeout Tuesdays: Indonesian Batiks Worn on Kartini Day

Tuesday, April, 12 p.m. to 12:30 p.m., $0-5, via Zoom. Buy tickets here.

The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco presents another Takeout Tuesday where you can “take out” a taste of art and join museum docents and fellow art lovers for interactive lunchtime encounters with selected artworks from the collection. Next week, docent Henry Tanudjaja will lead attendees in looking closely at examples of Indonesian batiks from the museum collection.  Attendees are welcome to turn on their microphones to join the discussion. This event is free for members and $5 for non-members. More information here.

Mondavi Open Mic Night next week

Wednesday, April 21, 7:30 p.m., free. (A link to the event will be posted on the website the week of the performance).

Enjoy a night of music, poetry, dance, and spoken word — all from the comfort of your home. This event is hosted by MC Denisha “Coco Blossom” Bland.

Featuring:

• Yuppie Liberation Front
• Bad Neighbors
• Alexandra Huynh
• Capital Dance Project with Joe Kye
• Paul Willis
• Leila and the Bohemians
• A Tribe Quartet
• Neil Nayyar
• The Pikeys
• Teagarden Jazz Camp Internet All-Stars
• Tiara Abraham

For more information about the participants and the event, visit the Mondavi Center website.

UC Davis Lecture features acclaimed designer Julia Koerner

Thursday, April 22, 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., free, via Zoom. Register.

Julia Koerner, an acclaimed designer whose work intersects with architecture, product and fashion design, will be the speaker for the fifth Alberini Family Speaker Series in Design at UC Davis. This virtual event, Models & Models, is presented by the College of Letters and Science’s Department of Design.

Koerner’s presentation focuses on recent innovations in 3D printing, which have revolutionized the cross-disciplinary design work of architects and fashion designers. Such novel collaborations within the fashion industry are disrupting traditional craftsmanship and empowering innovation by utilizing emergent technologies. These new methods re-form fashion production and potentially reduce shipping, carbon footprint and textile waste, and open opportunities for implementing sustainable processes in production, alongside innovative new aesthetics.

Koerner, an award-winning Austrian designer, is the founder of JK Design GmbH and a faculty member at UCLA. Her recent collaborations include 3D-printed haute couture and the Academy Award-winning costumes for the film Black Panther. For more information about this event, go here.

To learn more about Koerner, check out this story in the Arts Blog.

Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Arnold Joseph Kemp in Conversation with Sampada Aranke

Thursday, April 22, 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., free, via Zoom. Register.

Arnold J. Kemp has been making and exhibiting critically engaging art for 25 years. The materials employed in his interdisciplinary practice absorb or reflect light while mirroring likeness, becoming haunted and ghostly metaphors for absented and obfuscated Black bodies. Kemp’s work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Portland Art Museum, among others. His work has been exhibited nationally, and internationally, including at the Drawing Center (New York) and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and featured in Nia DaCosta’s film Candyman (Monkeypaw Productions, 2020). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. Kemp lives and works in Chicago, where he is professor and dean of graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Arnold Joseph Kemp: I would survive. I could survive. I should survive." will be on view at the museum this year. Kemp will give a reading of his poetry, then discuss the relationship between language and the aesthetics presented in his paintings, photographs and sculpture with the exhibit’s curator, Manetti Shrem Museum scholar-in-residence Sampada Aranke.

Organized by the Department of Art and Art History. Co-sponsored by the College of Letters and Science and the Manetti Shrem Museum.

For more information about this event, go here.

Art Social Media of the Week

We came across this Instagram post by the Atlantic reminding us of the power of digital art, this poster by a UC Davis student, and its role in starting conversations about issues that should be addressed.

 

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