Faces fascinate Dolph Gotelli. A UC Davis design professor and director of the campus's Design Gallery, Gotelli has explored his interest in faces through three international exhibitions of masks. But this fall, for the first time, he will curate a show about the face with no masks on display. "This show is about perception," Gotelli says. "How do you present the predominant idea of a face?" He describes the exhibition as one where "eye meets eye, face to face." The exhibition, which opens Sunday, Oct. 3, in the Design Gallery, is titled Visage: The International Face. It is a show that's been in the making for nearly four years, Gotelli says, as he walks around the brightly painted gallery space, pointing out where a collage of faces will hang, and where chairs with backs in the shape of exaggerated faces will be placed. Although he's borrowed some of the items, about 175 of the 200 pieces were selected from the thousands of face images in his personal collection. Gotelli is particularly excited about a construction-paper poster made by Sacramento elementary school children in which each child has drawn his or her own face. The poster will be hung near the front part of the gallery. "I wanted to include things from diverse cultures that are handmade --folk art --that accentuate the face and that humanize the non-human form," Gotelli says. The exhibit will include kites, balls, ritual rattles, puppets and even a picture of Mr. Potatohead -- running the gamut from sacred to secular, serious to whimsical. "Both human and animal faces have been depicted on everything from utilitarian objects to great works of art," Gotelli says, noting that the face's power seems to be what moves people and artists from all cultures to focus on it. From a scientific perspective, humans are very face-sensitive, which helps them determine, in part, the intentions of other animals, says Richard Coss, a UC Davis psychology professor who studies the development of aesthetic preferences and how human evolutionary history affects those preferences. And it isn't only humans who pay so much attention to faces. Responsiveness to faces extends from fish to humans. "Species recognize other species by faces," Coss says. In terms of design and art, the face is fascinating, Coss says. "We may see eyes and faces in objects" not even intended to look anything like a face, Coss says. "Think of automobiles. Cars today look as though they are frowning. Carmakers try to make them look powerful, or maybe playful or maybe even titillating." From a theatrical perspective, audience reaction to the face can be very significant. "The face is quite important in a small theater. If an actor goes over the top emotionally, if the eyes are too expressive, it can be disturbing to the audience," says Barbara Sellers-Young, a UC Davis theater professor. "On film, the face becomes even more intimate. An actor has only to flicker an eyelash to express an emotion." Just as the face forms the context for communication within and between species, so it is with the space in which the objects of "Visage" will reside, Gotelli says. "I chose each of the colors of the exhibit cases for its capacity to communicate the intent of the object." Gotelli says he strives to put all of the very different objects --gathered from every continent -- into context to tell the story. "How do these relate? They relate on levels of play, worship, function. It will be like a story. You'll come out of the exhibit with a knowledge gained purely by visual communication."