----------------------------------------------------------- * Tales of the Navaho behind imagery in Gorman exhibition * Student designers challenge visitors to a novel idea ----------------------------------------------------------- Tales of the Navaho Behind Imagery in Gorman Exhibition Exhibition title: Leatrice Mikkelsen: A Retrospective Date: May 12-June 20 Where: Carl Gorman Museum 1316 Hart Hall University of California, Davis Hours: Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday Artist: Leatrice Mikkelsen Artist's reception: 3-6 p.m., Saturday, May 12 1316 Hart Hall Light refreshments The Carl Gorman Museum's next exhibit, Leatrice Mikkelsen: A Retrospective, features California artist Mikkelsen's watercolors, dolls and small prints, all in the Navaho style. Certain themes and imagery flow through the artwork of Mikkelsen, who is Navaho, Cherokee and Wyandott. Central to her work are the Navaho stories about the emergence of the Dineh as they moved from each succeeding world into the present world and the birth of White Shell Woman. White Shell Woman is a Dineh holy person who represents fertility, creation and growth. Mikkelsen's attraction to the spiral line and the symbols of the four directions in her artwork are related to the shell, water and sun elements in White Shell Woman's story. Mikkelsen's images are influenced by many sources, from pictographs to tribal histories. She chooses the shell because it has a deeper meaning to her: "In itself, it is incomprehensible -- an animate and inanimate object, hollowed dead shell, smooth, sensuous, death reality, magnificence, a debris linked with many living moments. It is powerful in many meanings. ... The shell was a link to myself; I held it. From this contact, I began to paint." Born in Oregon and raised in Arizona and California, Mikkelsen has a background in art and music. She attended Dominican University in San Rafael on a music scholarship, since she is an accomplished violinist in addition to being an artist. She received her bachelor's degree from Dominican in 1959 and proceeded on to San Francisco State University, where she received her master's degree in art and anthropology in 1963. She immediately began producing art for local galleries and by the 1980s was exhibiting nationwide. Mikkelsen lives in Eureka, where she owns a small business and continues to create art and play her violin. Media contact: -- Joel Scinicariello, C.N. Gorman Museum, (530) 752-6567, jdscinicariello@ucdavis.edu Design Students Challenge Visitors to a Novel Idea Exhibition title: Matching Game of Fictional Characters Dates: Noon-5 p.m. May 21-25 Where: Design Gallery 145 Walker Hall University of California, Davis It may be a design class, but the students in environmental design professor Dolph Gotelli's class have a novel idea: Attract fiction lovers to a design exhibition. The class, Visual Presentation: Installation and Design, will present an installation titled Who's Who: A Matching Game of Fictional Characters. Visitors will be provided a list of fictional characters from literature. As they tour the exhibition, visitors will be asked to study each student's installation and determine which character from the list is represented. Media contact: -- Rhonda O'Brien, Design Gallery, (530) 752-6223, rrobrien@ucdavis.edu