Read our spring exhibitions preview.

OPENING TODAY

The Nelson Gallery's spring opening today (March 29) starts with a panel discussion focusing on experimental photography, narrative and truth, in conjunction with one of the gallery's two new shows: Dreams of the Darkest Night.

The forum begins at 4:30 p.m. and the exhibitions — Dreams of the Darkest Night and Bruce Guttin: Headwear Improvisations by a Sculptor — open at 5:30. Admission to the panel and the exhibitions is free and open to the public.

The panel: the Dreams of the Darkest Night artists, Vanessa Marsh and Sean McFarland; and two faculty members Blake Stimson, professor of art history, who is a photography historian; and Youngsuk Suh, assistant professor of art, who teaches photography. Moderator: Renny Pritikin, Nelson director and curator.

The exhibitions are scheduled to run through May 27. The gallery is in Nelson Hall. Regular hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, Saturday-Sunday, and by appointment on Fridays.

• Dreams of the Darkest Night — So, you think photographs don’t lie? Well, not when digital technology has utterly transformed the ability to make photographs do pretty much anything the artists want them to. Not only that, but the Nelson describes a trend in which photographers no longer feel any obligation toward or even have much interest in reflecting objective reality. In this exhibition, Marsh and McFarland present separate suites of nontraditional artworks. Marsh makes sophisticated photograms (images made on photo paper without the use of a lens), creating a sense of dread, showing varieties of calm before the storm. In McFarland's most recent body of work, he presents large color images from nature that are very dark, almost all black, giving the viewer the feeling that he or she is glimpsing a dream in the depths of the darkest night. 

• Bruce Guttin: Headwear Improvisations by a Sculptor —  Guttin, a UC Davis MFA alumnus from the early 1970s, had an interest in headwear even when he was a sculptor working in wood. He now designs extremely simple, inexpensive and charming hats for his own use. The Nelson commissioned Guttin to make a selection of these hats; included will be related drawings and a sculpture.

OPENING NEXT WEEK

• Steeled — Works by Anne Compton, blacksmithing and welding instructor at the Craft Center. April 2-May 4, Craft Center Gallery, South Silo. Reception for the artist, 5-6 p.m. Sunday, April 22. Regular hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.

• Where They Overlap: Sonya Kelliher-Combs — You will know this artist is from Alaska when you look at her work made from things like walrus stomach, seal intestine, reindeer hide, dentalium (tooth or tusk shell), and elk and moose fur. Indeed, she was born in Bethel and raised in Nome, of a cultural background that includes Athabascan, Inupiaq, and a mixture of German and Irish. Working in mixed media painting and sculpture, and drawing on Alaska's native culture, she blends the organic and the synthetic, the traditional and the modern, with acrylic polymer, nylon thread, glass beads, fabric and ink — in her creation of compelling objects, translucent and ambiguous, work that defies expectations in its cultural richness and conceptual interpretations of shape, form and luminosity. April 3-June 8, C.N. Gorman Museum, 1316 Hart Hall. Artist talk and opening reception, 4 p.m. April 3. Regular hours: noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 2-5 p.m. Sunday.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

• 2012 Student Exhibition — Screen prints from five quarterly workshops (winter, spring, summer and fall 2011, and winter 2012) at TANA: Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, or art workshop of the new dawn, run by the Department of Chicana/o Studies. 1224 Lemen Ave., Woodland. Call for hours: (530) 402-1065.

NEW AT SHIELDS LIBRARY

• "Imagination Turns Every Word Into a Bottle Rocket" — A selecvtion of Sherman Alexie's work as a poet, short story writer, novelist and filmmaker. The exhibition's title (from Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of short stories), evokes quintessential Alexie, in whatever format he writes, according to the library staff. "His words challenge, inspire and move the reader."

Exhibition prepared by the General Library Committee on Diversity, with assistance from Adam Siegel, Native American Studies bibliographer.

Presented in conjunction with the 2011-12 Campus Community Book Project, Alexie's novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Read more about the selection and related activities, including Alexie's visit to campus, Wednesday, April 11, when he will participate in an afternoon forum and give an evening talk.

MORE AT SHIELDS LIBRARY

• Happy 150th Birthday, Peter J. Shields — Celebrating the library's namesake — one of the founding fathers of UC Davis — on the occasion of what would have been his 150th birthday. The Peter J. Shields Collection, held in the library's Special Collections, contains his personal correspondence and speeches, as well as the original draft of the legislation that would authorize the purchase of land forr the University Farm. This small exhibit contains images of and quotations from Shields, as well as pages from his bill, titled, "An Act Providing for the Purchase of a University Farm, 1905." Through April 6, two days after Peter J. Shields' birthday. He died in 1962 at the age of 100.

• The Ground Beneath Our Feet: The Nikola P. Prokopovich Papers on Land Subsidence — Manuscript archivist Liz Phillips prepared this exhibition on the papers of engineering geologist Nikola P. Prokopovich (1918-99), who worked as a geologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Mid-Pacific Region. He worked out of the bureau's Sacramento office from 1958 to 1986, investigating the geology and geochemistry of statewide water projects, including the Central Valley Project and the Solano Project. He was an avid field geologist and spent as much time as possible on site, collecting his own data. Prokopovich was particularly interested in the engineering geology of the Central Valley Project's canals and dam sites, and in the effects of state water projects and field irrigation on the surrounding landscape. The collection includes draft reports, memoranda and published writings, as well as nearly 25,000 slides and photographs documenting his work and the land around his work sites.

• Paper Takes: The Power of Uncivil Words — Materials from the library's Walter Goldwater Radical Pamphlets collection, part of the library's Special Collections. The exhibition debuted last fall as part of the campus's Civility Project, and now Paper Takes is on display in the Shields Library lobby through winter quarter. Looking beyond the bounds of the campus, the exhibition explores the ways in which intolerant views are communicated and disseminated through pamphlets. Paper Takes explores the particular rhetoric supporting race-based hatred, gender and sexuality bias, and political divisiveness, to better understand the dominant discourses that frame some of our most uncivil exchanges. Displaying a selection from more than 17,000 items in the leading collection of “extreme” pamphlets in the United States, this exhibition provides historical depth to our understanding of the language of hate and intolerance, traces of which remain potent today.

Read more about Paper Takes and the Walter Goldwater Radical Pamphlets collection.

• Patti Smith — Another exhibition in conjunction with the Distinguished Speakers series at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. Smith's visit to the Mondavi Center is scheduled for Wednesday, May 9. Shields Library describes Smith as "an important countercultural figure" since her seminal punk album, Horses (1975) — and notes that she has been active as a poet and writer as well as a musician. Just Kids, a memoir of her days with Robert Mapplethorpe, won the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Works of hers in the library collection include Seventh Heaven, Witt, Auguries of Innocence, Early Work, The Coral Sea and Ha! Ha! Houdini! (all poetry), Patti Smith Complete (lyrics) and Just Kids.

• The Spirit of New Orleans: Culture, Community, Community, Catastrophe, Construction — In conjunction with The Spirit of New Orleans series (film and music) at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. The exhibition, prepared by Michael Colby, features items from library collections representing scholarship on the history, music, architecture, culture, practices and, most important, the people of New Orleans.

The Shields Library presents its exhibitions 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.