New Exhibition at TANA: Ramona Garcia Works on Paper

'Siren Tales and Other Incantations'

Through May 8, TANA, 1224 Lemen Ave. Woodland

In this exhibition Ramona Garcia through their works on paper explores the internal desire for home within the context of diaspora and migration. They have also partnered directly with TANA to feature a new editions collaboration. In the editions collaboration the guest artist works collaboratively with a master printer to produce limited edition silkscreen prints. These prints will be available the day of the exhibition.  

Ramona Garcia is a paper-mache and visual artist whose work is inspired by her cultural upbringing and Mexican healing traditions, particularly folk art & paper mache doll-making from her native community of Guanajuato. As a first-generation immigrant and as a Xicana queer woman with indigenous Purepecha roots, Ramona’s work explores the internal desire for home within the context of diaspora and immigration. Garcia’s current practice focuses on the craft of working with such dolls with the purpose of facilitating doll-making workshops as a form of art therapy and engaging others in conversations about healing and mental health.  

“Sometimes the shocks of transitions lure us into states of muteness from which we must find creative ways to recover,” says Garcia. “Having migrated to the United States at the age of 13,  art became an important language and an outlet of expression.”   

“Through my work, I explore the internal desire for home within the context of diaspora and migration. Making home, leaving home, returning, seeking, longing for, fighting, losing & remembering.  I’m particularly interested in the ways in which we express longing and remember home through our bodies, objects and possessions and the types of storytelling that emerge from these processes.”   

“Finding our way ‘back home’ through our narratives is a process that requires an inward journey; one that seeks to dig deeper through layers of colonialism and displacement. The products are acts of liberation, of making sense of the world through our stories.”   

Find more information here.

Loveable bear and familiar children’s story comes to life on stage

“Corduroy” Friday, March 24, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 25, 2 p.m., and Sunday, March 26, 2 p.m., Woodland Opera House, 340 Second Street, Woodland

“Corduroy” is an expansion of the beloved children’s picture book by Don Freeman that follows the little teddy bear, Corduroy, as he wanders through a department store in search of his missing button. In pursuit is an increasingly exasperated night watchman. And in the meantime, little Lisa searches for a way to win over Mom so she can give the bear a loving home. This tender and enduring story is about longing, determination, and true friendship. It stirs up the stage with a rumpus of action, joy, and pathos. Presented as part of the Opera House’s Theatre for Families series, the production is recommended for all ages. Adults who are familiar with the story from their own childhood will enjoy seeing the heartwarming tale of Corduroy live on the Opera House’s historic stage.  

All seating is reserved, ticket prices are $20 for Adults, $18 Seniors (62+), and $10 for Children under 17. Balcony pricing is Adults at $12 and Children at $7.

Purchase tickets online at www.WoodlandOperaHouse.Org and at the Box Office (530) 666-9617. Located at 340 Second Street, Box Office hours are: Tuesday – Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. & 2 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Ongoing Exhibitions at UC Davis

From Concept to Creation: Inspired Shoe Design by Chris Francis

Through April 23, UC Davis Design Museum

The UC Davis Design Museum takes a bold step with the exhibition “From Concept to Creation: Inspired Shoe Design by Chris Francis,” which showcases the colorful and imaginative footwear created by the Los Angeles-based shoe designer.

Co-curated by Professor Susan T. Avila and Cristina Gomez, graduate student in design, the installation spotlights creations by shoemaker and designer Francis. His work combines global shoemaking traditions and techniques, with references to the built environment such as industrial design and brutalist architecture as well as 20th-century art movements and punk rock. His narrative-based, unique hand-constructed shoes theatrically bridge contemporary art and wearable design.

Visit the Design Museum for map and parking information.

Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965–1985 at Manetti Shrem

Through June 25, Manetti Shrem Museum

UC Davis Professor Emeritus Mike Henderson’s first solo U.S. museum exhibition in 20 years brings to light the pioneering artist’s rarely seen contributions to the history of contemporary painting and filmmaking, radical Black politics, and to the story of California art. The exhibition integrates paintings and films by Henderson that offer new ideas about Black life in the visual languages of protest, Afro-futurism and surrealism. Challenging the protocols and propriety of art-making in the 20th century, these works depict scenes of anti-Black violence as well as utopian visions and questions of self-making. Curated by Sampada Aranke (Ph.D. ’13) and Dan Nadel.

Read more about Henderson and this exhibition here.

New works at SFMOMA recall ruins of lost city

Anna Sew Hoy

March 25 – July 16, Floor 4, SFMOMA

Los Angeles–based sculptor Anna Sew Hoy’s Growing Ruins rise from the floor in a mesmerizing tangle of hand-built clay arches, found metal cages, and detritus ranging from charging cords to denim scraps. They recall the ruins of a lost city or shelters assembled from the shiny, tech-laden remains of a land destroyed. Three of these towering forms take center stage in Sew Hoy’s New Work exhibition at SFMOMA, alongside coiled clay vessels that recall giant, cartoonish organs and vast fabric webs created by stripping office shirts down to their seams. Taken together, the sculptures embody Sew Hoy’s interest in turning things inside out to explore the relationship between the exterior world (of bodies, buildings, and objects) and interior space (of psyches, emotions, and souls)—and the inevitable porousness between them.

Sew Hoy is represented in museum collections including SFMOMA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She has had solo exhibitions at the Aspen Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum; the San Jose Museum of Art; and the Orange County Museum of Art. Honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship for Visual Art (2022); Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2021); Creative Capital Grant for Visual Art (2015); California Community Foundation Grant for Emerging Artists (2013); and the United States Artists Broad Fellowship (2006). In 2017, she was the inaugural Martha Longenecker Roth Distinguished Artist in Residence at the UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts. Sew Hoy is currently Associate Professor and Ceramics Area Head at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Find more information and purchase tickets here. 

Janet Cardiff: The Telephone Call

March 25 – July 22, Floor 1, SFMOMA

Embark on an unusual journey through SFMOMA by participating in one of the museum’s most innovative commissions, Janet Cardiff’s site-specific video walk The Telephone Call (2001/2023). Using a collage of video images, music, ambient sounds, and her own voice, the Canadian artist narrates an alternate reality of our surroundings. Cardiff’s video walks have long prefigured what today is known as Augmented Reality technology, combining pre-recorded images and sounds with our real-time perception of the same spaces.

On view for the first time since SFMOMA’s expansion in 2016, and newly updated to reflect changes in the museum’s architecture, The Telephone Call offers a layered experience of museum spaces both past and present, including galleries, public spaces, as well as areas normally off limits to visitors. With her captivating voiceover, Cardiff explores, “how our minds invent scenarios from chance meetings between people.”

The Telephone Call is available for viewing Friday–Tuesday from 10 a.m.–2 p.m., and from 1–6 p.m. on free First Thursdays on April 6, May 4, June 1, and July 6. (Note: The Telephone Call will not be on view April 13 – 18 due to Art Bash preparations.)

Check out a smartphone and headphones at the designated kiosk in the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium on Floor 1 to begin your journey. Proof of admission and photo ID is required. This video walk involves accessing several sets of stairways.

Find more information and purchase tickets here.

Coming Up Next Week

Meow Meow cabaret

Friday, March 31, 7:30 p.m., Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center

It might not be too much to say that a Meow Meow cabaret performance is a life-changing event. Named one of the “Top Performers of the Year” by The New Yorker, the spectacular crowd-surfing tragi-comedienne has been called a “diva of the highest order” (New York Post), but one whose insecurities are always simmering just below the surface. Careening from French chanson to Radiohead, with brilliant dashes of Brecht and Weill in between, she’s a remarkable singer and physical comedian who hypnotizes, inspires—and terrorizes—audiences with ease. Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, an evening with Meow Meow will have you holding on to your seats (as she might try to take them from you) and grabbing for handkerchiefs. 

Find more information and purchase tickets here.

Ranky Tanky with Dom Flemons: music traditions of coastal South

Saturday, April 1, 7:30 p.m., Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center

Ranky Tanky (a Gullah phrase for “get funky”) are five lifelong friends from Charleston, South Carolina, who have established themselves as passionate global ambassadors for their local Gullah culture and community. Their deeply grooving music helps to faithfully preserve the traditions originated by African Americans in the coastal South during slavery that are kept alive through the present day. The band’s second album, Good Time, won a Grammy for Best Regional Roots Album. They are joined on this Mondavi Center debut by fellow Grammy-winner, multi-instrumentalist, former Carolina Chocolate Drop and “American Songster” Dom Flemons. 

Find more information and purchase tickets here.

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