In this week's Arts Blog Weekender, you'll find a variety of arts. One of my favorites is the story from the UC Davis Library about their new study room art — acquired in a student art competition. When I was in college, the 24-hour study room was a greige, dismal place with broken furniture. I often thought it should have inspired me to get my work done earlier. I will say I was never distracted by my environment. These works might actually distract you from studying but make the overall experience happier. Read on. Have a great weekend, Karen Nikos-Rose, Arts Blog Editor
Many instruments featured in ensembles at noon concert
Campus Square Dance with the Bluegrass and Old Time String Band
Choruses of UC Davis: Music of the Living at Pitzer Friday
Make your own art at Manetti Shrem Museum this month
Art Spark: Spinning Spiral Sculptures
Continuing: March 14, 21, 28
1-4 p.m.
Drop by the Carol and Gerry Parker Art Studio at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art for an afternoon of art making inspired by works on view in the museum. This month, create a sculpture with found objects on a spiral wire base that twirls, inspired by The Elephant in the Room and other works in Sahar Khoury: Weights & Measures. All materials are provided.
TANA hosts Sacramento Poderosas Mural Project Opening Reception
Saturday, March 14, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., On view: March 12 - May 5, TANA 1224 Lemen Ave., Woodland
Live printing • Live DJ • Antojitos Mexicanos
Blessing & Performance by yAyA Porras
All are invited to join TANA for a powerful evening celebrating the Sacramento Poderosas Mural Project. This exhibition centers the powerful Sacramento Poderosas mural alongside artwork by intergenerational womxn artists, grounding the presentation in social justice, immigrant rights, community empowerment, and the long-standing tradition of muralism within the Xicana/o/x art movimiento. The mural serves as a living her/historical bridge, honoring key members of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) whose cultural and political activism continue to inspire new generations. Presented at TANA, the mural and accompanying works activate the gallery as a communal space for gathering, learning, and collective action. The project honors immigration struggles, celebrates artistic resistance, healing and highlights murals as enduring tools of storytelling, education, and social transformation within Xicanx and Indigenous communities.
The Sacramento Poderosas is a collective of scholars, community activists, artists, cultural bearers, students, and educators dedicated to preserving and uplifting Xicanx, Latinx, and Indigenous herstories and histories. Through a collaborative design and painting process, the collective created a community-owned mural honoring nine Sacramento Xicana and Indigenous activists. Painted in portable sections, the mural has traveled throughout the Sacramento Valley, transforming each site into a space for dialogue, visibility, and empowerment.
Expect an evening filled with art, food, music and community. Stay tuned too for a series of upcoming workshops, panel discussions, legal rights workshops, and additional programs connected to the Sacramento Poderosas theme and mission.
More about the Sacramento Poderosas Project
Learn about the Poderosas
San Francisco Symphony Performs at Mondavi Saturday
The San Francisco Symphony shines under the baton of Italian conductor Daniele Rustioni alongside outstanding German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott.
Rustioni, named “Best Conductor” at the 2022 International Opera Awards, is a major presence at leading opera houses and symphonies, including Opéra National de Lyon, where he is Music Director. Müller-Schott, one of the most in-demand cellists in the world, is praised by The New York Times for his “intensive expressiveness” and “technique to burn.”
Together, they’ll bring Dvořák’s wrenching and radiant Cello Concerto and Brahms’s Second Symphony to life. A work of bittersweet depth, the Second revels in bright sunshine and lingers in cool shadows.
Run time is approximately two hours with an intermission. Ticket information here.
This event has an Uncorked for Inner Circle Members
Program List
Cello Concerto in B Minor, op. 104
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 73
Johannes Brahms
Ongoing Art Exhibitions at UC Davis
Follow the links:
- Manetti Shrem Museum opens digitizing collection, and “Sahar Khoury” continuing
- Design Museum Showcases Village Homes
- Contemporary Native American Art at Gorman Museum and their latest exhibition on the work of Shelley Niro
Student art contest winners create meaningful study spaces for Aggies
The UC Davis Library recently congratulated UC Davis undergraduate winners of the 24-Hour Study Room art contest: Sheridan Greene, Vivian Chang, Jubie Kennedy, Morgan Strong and Muxiao Wu.
Co-sponsored by the UC Davis Library and ASUCD Aggie Arts Committee, the art contest was open to undergrads last fall. Entrants were asked to submit a design concept for Shields Library’s 24-Hour Study Room on the theme “Celebrate Your Environment.”
Five artists were chosen from more than two dozen entries and each received a $75 gift card and a canvas to create their proposed piece, which ranged from garden and interior scenes with family pets, to memories, dreamscapes, and an “everything” bagel sandwich.
“I’m honored that my art was chosen for students to have in their environment while they are studying,” said Sheridan Greene, of their piece Dusk in Her Garden. “I was thinking about the environments that I continually go back to, like my family’s garden, and how my experience with this specific space has changed throughout my life, with different pets and different people.”
On February 12, friends and family of the artists, library staff, and Aggie Arts Committee members gathered to celebrate the artists at an art opening and reception in the 24-Hour Study Room.
It was so rewarding to see all of these pieces, which interpret our theme in such a beautiful variety of styles, displayed all together. We’ve been so excited to show off some of the creative talent we have on campus!”
— Madison Seeman, Aggie Arts Committee Chair
Years in the Making
Fomer ASUCD Aggie Arts Committee Chair Emily Gavidia ‘24, left, and current Chair Madison Seeman, right. (Shanna Punzalan/Aggie Studios)
The student art installation at Shields Library is the culmination of several years of persistence and a continued commitment to fostering creative opportunities on campus, according to former Aggie Arts Committee Chair and UC Davis alumna Emily Gavidia ‘24. After the ASUCD Aggie Public Arts Committee disbanded post-COVID, Gavidia re-established and rebranded the committee in 2022 as the Aggie Arts Committee.
“It’s just incredible seeing how this committee went from words on paper and student volunteers to eventually paid student workers, collaborative meetings with the library, and now this tangible collection of student expression,” said Gavidia. “It’s very inspiring.”
Gavidia also has a personal connection to the library; she worked on the interlibrary loan team as an undergraduate.
“It’s been such a joy to partner with the Aggie Arts Committee on this project,” added Robin Gustafson, head of the library’s Access and Delivery Services Department, who facilitated the library’s collaboration on the project with Alesia McManus, the library’s head of Student Services. “These amazing student art pieces truly enliven the space.”
More information and photos here
Story by Kristin Burns, UC Davis Library
Contest Winners and Their Selected Artworks
Aggies can view the artwork in person in the 24-Hour Study Room (current student ID required to enter).
Sheridan Greene, Dusk in Her Garden, oil on acrylic
(Shanna Punzalan/Aggie Studios)
Muxiao Wu, Cats
(Shanna Punzalan/Aggie Studios)
Vivian Chang, Where the Heart Is, oil on canvas
Shanna Punzalan/Aggie Studios)
Morgan Strong, What’s Left Ain’t Right
(Shanna Punzalan/Aggie Studios)
Jubie Kennedy, Singularity, acrylic on canvas
(Shanna Punzalan/Aggie Studios)
A new generation of UC artists is celebrated in Bay Area
March 14 through April 16, reception is March 21, 3-6 p.m., Sausalito Center for the Arts
Open Inquiry: UC Arts brings together a new generation of artists emerging from the renowned art practice programs of the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis. The art departments at these universities have long been recognized as seminal hubs of artistic experimentation and critical thought, consistently incubating artists who leverage academic investigation with artistic rigor.
Open Inquiry underscores the essential role of public arts education. Across the UC system, art departments cultivate spaces for alternative learning rooted in material experimentation, social justice work, and personal exploration. Within these spaces, artists embrace the creative process as a methodology for challenging dominant narratives or making visible that which is obscured or dismissed, and many retain that research ethos throughout their careers.
“There is an ecosystem of dedicated faculty and ambitious students who draw from the energy of a large research university
to make work that engages deeply with our contemporary moment,” said Open Inquiry’s co-curator Ginny Duncan, formerly of the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis.
The Sausalito Center website has more about the exhibition here.
Media Resources
Karen Nikos-Rose, Arts Blog editor, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu