More Exhibitions, including Happy 150th Birthday, Peter J. Shields

By Dateline staff

The Nelson Gallery this spring asks: In the digital age, can we still trust photography to tell the truth? The C.N. Gorman Museum presents an exhibition by Sonya Kelliher-Combs, whose work in mixed media painting and sculpture is rooted in the cultures of her native Alaska.

The Design Museum presents student work, first in Design by Design, the annual juried competition, and then in the annual Design MFA Graduation Exhibition. The Nelson hosts other visual artists for their MFA exhibition.

Nelson Gallery

The photography exhibition, Dreams of the Darkest Night, will run concurrently with Headwear Improvisations by a Sculptor, work by Davis resident Bruce Guttin, a UC Davis MFA alumnus from the early 1970s.

The Nelson announced a panel discussion, free and open to the public, starting at 4:30 Thursday (March 29), featuring the Dreams of the Darkest Night artists, Vanessa Marsh and Sean McFarland, and focusing on experimental photography, narrative and truth.

The panel also includes: Blake Stimson, professor of art history, who is a photography historian; and Youngsuk Suh, assistant professor of art, who teaches photography; and, as the moderator, Renny Pritikin, Nelson director and curator.

Dreams of the Darkest Night and Headwear Improvisations by a Sculptor are set to open at 5:30, after the panel, and continue 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.

“Like artists working in other mediums, experimental photographers of the 21st century reflect the manufactured and psychologically complex nature of images and how our minds interact with them to create our sense of reality,” Pritikin said.

In this exhibition, Marsh and McFarland, both of whom received Master of Fine Arts degrees from the College of the Arts in San Francisco, 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. A tacit sense that everything is going wrong permeates her work as you look at people packing up cars or staring into the distance, perhaps anticipating invading troops or a gigantic 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. A shred of greenery, an implied hill, a few rocks — this is almost all we usually see, and yet our experience of this kind of site is so ingrained that we impose an order and meaning onto it without even the intention to do so.

A vital piece of information about McFarland’s photographs: They are largely urban scenes, not rural — vacant lots, city parks and similar abandoned pieces of territory, “nonsites” because their appearance is not officially managed nor is their ownership readily apparent, and their meaning is open to interpretation.

The Nelson has prepared a catalog of color and black-and-white images of the artists' work, with essays by Pritikin and Bay Area writer Brandon Brown.

• Bruce Guttin: Headwear Improvisations by a Sculptor — Guttin 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.

• 2012 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition — Work by Daniel Brickman, Kyle Dunn, Danielle Galietti, Katherine Nulicek, Terry Peterson, Erika Romero and Jared Theis. June 8-29. Opening reception, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, June 8.

C.N. Gorman Museum

• Where They Overlap: Sonya Kelliher-Combs — April 3-June 8. The museum is in 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.

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.

Kelliher-Combs 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.

In her artist statement, Kelliher-Combs wrote, “These elements combine to examine their interrelationships and interdependence while also questioning accepted notions of beauty.”

The basis, or “canvas,” for her two- and three-dimensional pieces is animal skin, which she stretches, layers, forms and manipulates to both reveal and obscure, while expressing notions of containment and concealment.

Kelliher-Combs, in working with Alaska’s culturally important hide and skin, leaves them with a muted sense of intimacy and familiarity, even while transforming and reshaping them into tactile and modern objects that seem unknown, holding their secrets.

Kelliher-Combs’ has shown her work in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Alaska and Lower 48. She received the Artistic Innovation Award from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation in 2011 and the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.

Her work is part of the collections of the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska State Museum, the University of Alaska Museum of the North, and the Eiteljorg Museum.

Design Museum

The spring quarter brings two traditions: Design-by-Design, the juried student design competition; and the Design MFA Graduation Exhibition. The museum is in Cruess Hall. Regular hours: noon-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 2-4 p.m. Sunday.

• Design by Design — Timed to coincide with Picnic Day, this exhibition presents a lively survey of student talent and creativity that reflects the multidisciplinary breadth of the Department of Design. April 10-May 5.

• Design MFA Graduation Exhibition — Working with renowned faculty, UC Davis’ Master of Fine Arts candidates explore the broader topic of “design” through a specific design discipline, drawing on collaborations with the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. The graduation exhibition showcases the students’ final research and creative projects. This year's graduates: Esther Kim and Carol Shu. May 21-June 8. Reception, 6-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 23.