It's summer, so the Mondavi is on break, as are all the fabulous concerts we usually have at UC Davis through the Pitzer Center. But you can still get your art on. Whether on campus or beyond campus. Read on.

Art Spark Summer

Carol and Gerry Parker Art Studio, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art
10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays
July 20 – Sept. 8 

You’re the featured artist! Our galleries will be closed as of July 16, but the Manetti Shrem Museum’s drop-in studio is open for your creative exploration on Thursdays and Fridays beginning July 20. A rotation of activities suitable for a wide range of ages and skill levels will be offered.

Art Spark can also accommodate camps and groups of 10 to 25 people by advance appointment from 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Monday–Friday. By-appointment visits start Monday, July 17. 

Activities are Free for All!

July: Art Comes Through You
Catch the final weeks of Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965-1985 and make art using creativity exercises inspired by interviews with Professor Emeritus Mike Henderson.

 

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

Through July 15

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.

WHAT DEATH DOES: Time, Scale and Anonymity at Verge

Through Sept. 17,  lecture July 22, 2 p.m., Verge Center for the Arts, 625 S St., Sacramento 95811 

What death does: What Death Does, 18x24,” Stephen Kaltenbach (Courtesy, Verge)

Verge Center for the Arts announces its second solo exhibition by Stephen Kaltenbach, an alum of UC Davis and a recent exhibitor at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. 

This show in Sacramento brings together several different bodies of work and modes of making from Kaltenbach’s more than 55-year career. The exhibition will focus on his career-long interest in time and scale. The centerpiece of the show is What Death Does, a stage set of a furnished living room. Throughout the run of the exhibition, simulated rain falls into the room. Decay sets in at an accelerated pace with the aid of manufactured precipitation. Geological time becomes heightened and condensed into theatrical entropy. Deep time becomes visible through human perception. 

The show also brings together a group of works exploring time and scale in a much different manner. Throughout the late 1960’s, Kaltenbach used strategies of anonymity, aliases, and tactical lies to create works that slowly spread as historians, curators, viewers, and students unearthed them and tied the work back to his practice. The exhibition will include work by Kaltenbach’s aliases Es Que and Clyde Dillon. It will also feature work from his anonymous Artforum micro manifestos and lies that circulated through the readership of the Village Voice and Arts magazine.

Kaltenbach’s divergent strategies put the viewer in a precarious position. They will be confronted by an ever changing visceral sculptural work while simultaneously being asked to engage with weightless unmeasurable works that have not yet come fully into focus. We as viewers are stretched between the physical and the cerebral and are asked to create a strategy to hold room for both. 

Kaltenbach graduated with a bachelor's degree from UC Davis in 1966, followed by a master of arts degree in 1967. His work has been exhibited at the UC Davis Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.

Check out Ansel Adams at de Young ... or Davis

The UC Davis Arts Blog wrote a review of the Ansel Adams Exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco last week. Read that blog here, and learn more about the great photographer's ties to University of California. The exhibit in San Francisco runs through July 23, and as the Arts Blog review says, it is well worth the trip.

Don't have time (or gas money or train fare) to drive down there? Check out a mini exhibit in the stairwell of Mrak Hall, which offers a collection of Adams prints from the time UC president Clark Kerr hired him (in 1963) to photograph different aspects of UCs, including Davis.