This weekend, go look at fresh, new wall murals throughout Sacramento while enjoying the great outdoors, and go to TANA’s open house. This event in Woodland will reflect on the difficulties of the past year while engaging in community art making. Read about the exciting new California Studio program at UC Davis starting this fall. Read on.

Lots of murals to see at Wide Open Walls Mural Festival in Sacramento

Artists and muralists from across the world are painting the town on Sacramento streets for the annual Wide Open Walls festival, which kicked off Sept. 9. On the side of storage rooms, brick walls, hidden corners of buildings and parking lots you can spot an artist creating yet another mural. Most are completed now.

Among the 50 artists on this year’s festival roster are creators from Los Angeles, Miami, Mexico, Japan, Australia, Nepal and of course, Sacramento.

Ana Valentine at UC Davis Health

On a curved building at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, less than two miles from her home, Ana Valentine laid down her sketches of tall irises, budding tulips and a daffodil.

Her first mural was for Wide Open Walls in 2020. Much like each of her projects, the creation — located at 2245 Stockton Blvd. — features over two dozen colors, florals and complex patterns. For this year’s mural at the Cancer Center, Valentine is painting blooming and withering flowers, propped up by birds.

“The birds are leading each other out of darkness, which is probably what it feels like to be very ill,” Valentine said in the Sacramento Bee, adding that the mural’s colors reflect the dawn rising on the horizon as it transitions from dark blue to warm yellow.

When it comes to her designs, Valentine said she wants people to envision their own lives.

“None of them adhere to reality,” she said about her art. “They’re all surreal. I invent them from my imagination and by doing that, I want people to be able to come up with bigger ideas of their life.”

Read the full article by The Sacramento Bee here.

 View the artist lineup for Wide Open Walls here, and view Valentine's murals online or find directions to visit them in person here.

TANA’S Reopening Celebration is Friday: Art Heals

Celebrate Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer’s (TANA’s) reopening on Friday, Sept. 24, 5:30-8 p.m. TANA's Fall Open House & Art Heals Celebration will include live printing activities, informal facilities tours, family print activities and information booths featuring local community service organizations including Yolo Food Bank, CommuniCare, Brown Issues and others. 

The event will reflect on the difficulties of the past year while engaging in community art making, which can help us look to the future and alleviate the burden of illness. Enjoy music, food & refreshments with live silkscreen poster making, wood block printing, family print activities, and a free T-shirt and tote print station. Find more information here. TANA is located at 1224 Lemen Ave. Woodland.

TANA is a collaborative partnership between the Chicana/o Studies Program at UC Davis and the greater Woodland community. The gallery offers a fully functioning silkscreen studio, Chicano/Latino Arts exhibition space and a teaching center for the arts. Through exhibiting, printing and teaching, TANA cultivates the cultural and artistic life of the community, viewing the arts as essential to a community's development and well-being.

‘The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies’ launches this fall

• Three-year program features teaching artists-in-residence for a quarter, visiting artists for up to 10 days
• Each artist will give presentation open to public
• Supported by a $750,000 gift from Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem

Internationally known contemporary artists who have exhibited widely their sculptures, performance art, paintings and other works will engage with students and the public beginning this fall as artists and teaching artists-in-residence at the University of California, Davis.

The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies — the Department of Art and Art History’s new three-year program — starts with a lineup in the 2021-22 academic year that includes “spotlight” artists Raúl de Nieves, Jennifer Packer and Ann Hamilton. Additionally, teaching artists-in-residence Tamar Ettun and Beatriz Cortez will instruct classes for a 10-week academic quarter.

The new initiative is believed to be the most extensive artist residency program of its kind in the United States.

Read the full news release here, You'll find all the details on visiting artists and their public lectures too.

Ongoing Exhibitions, Virtual and In-person

 

The fall schedule includes a diverse roster of exhibitions that explore the future of UC Davis’ important history

• Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation celebrates the legacy of the 100-year-old UC Davis professor emeritus by highlighting 19 contemporary artists who have been inspired by Thiebaud as a fellow painter, including a selection of his former students. On view through Nov. 12.
• Arnold Joseph Kemp: I would survive. I could survive. I should survive. This solo exhibition of four works by the Chicago-based artist features paintings, sculpture and photography that asks us to consider the sensorial gestures that form the self and a people, the personal and the political, the historical and the present. On view through Nov. 12.
• Working Proof: Wayne Thiebaud as Printmaker: Drawn from the university’s Fine Arts Collection, numerous printing “proofs,” many worked by hand, underscore the importance of printmaking in Professor Thiebaud’s artistic practice. On view through Nov. 12.
• New Flavors: Collected at the Candy Store is inspired by the beloved Folsom gallery that operated from 1962-92 and gave many greater Sacramento area artists their start. On view through Oct. 24.

Feathered Relations is at C.N. Gorman

“Waiting for Spring,” 2018, monotype on paper, 30”x22” (Courtesy image)

Feathered Relations: Works by Marwin Begaye
C.N. Gorman Museum (virtual)

 “Feathered Relations” explores sacred Indigenous beliefs around birds and their link to nature. Begaye's prints and paintings place a variety of birds in the foreground, depicting them naturally, but also existing on a higher plane. This exhibition is based on his show that was on display at the Gorman when the pandemic forced its closure.  Begaye (Diné) includes prints, wood blocks and multimedia works to create a conceptual homage to birds. For the artist, birds are about our relationships — to nature, to one another, to culture.

Coming up

Shinkoskey Noon Concert debuts new season

Sept. 30, 12:05 - 1 p.m.

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center, UC Davis

Aleck Karis, piano,  distinguished  professor of music at UC San Diego will be performing Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”). The event is free.

Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe, Japan, and China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae, he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His seven solo recordings on Bridge Records are Chopin/Carter/Schumann, Mozart, Stravinsky, Cage, Feldman/Webern/Wolpe, Poulenc, and most recently, Debussy. His two recordings on Roméo Records are titled Music of Philip Glass and Late Chopin. A Distinguished Professor of Music at UC San Diego, he has studied at the Manhattan School and Juilliard, and his teachers include William Daghlian, Artur Balsam, and Beveridge Webster.

Watch the recital on Sept. 30 here.

Demo Day at TANA

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 4 p.m.

Fall Workshop Dates:  Fall ‘21: Sept. 29 - Dec. 11

Demo Day will provide a survey of techniques and practices that participants can explore in an open studio style format during TANA's quarterly workshops.

Registration: 

Quarterly workshops are always free. TANA encourages interested participants to attend demo day to sign up and receive a comprehensive introduction of the process. However, If you are not able to attend, not a problem, drop by during workshop hours and they’ll get you going in no time!

For more information contact Eddie Lampkin at erlampkin@ucdavis.edu

*Stay tuned as well for bi-weekly class style workshops highlight specific techniques including block printing, shirt and fabric printing, reduction printing and other techniques.

Social Media of the Week

Here we feature a social media post that features great art or artists. This one features an artist from Mondavi's upcoming season, beginning next month.