Chicana and Native California Artists Exhibit at Gorman Exhibition title: Hermanas de Conciencia y Corazón (Sisters of Heart and Conscience) Dates: April 6-May 4 Where: C.N. Gorman Museum 1316 Hart Hall University of California, Davis Hours: Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday Artists: Jean LaMarr and Nora Chapa Mendoza The C.N. Gorman Museum, in conjunction with the Chicana/Latina Research Center, is hosting an exhibition of two artists committed to their communities' social struggles and cultural creativity. The exhibit will feature the prints of Jean LaMarr of Susanville, Calif., and the acrylics and oil paintings of Nora Chapa Mendoza of West Bloomfield, Mich. "Both artists focus on honoring their communities and empowering women," explains curator Inés Hernández Ávila, associate professor of Native American studies and co-director of the Chicana/Latina Research Center. Considered by many the finest printmaker among California Native artists, LaMarr is a Paiute/Ilmawi band member of the Pitt River Tribe living on the Susanville Indian Rancheria. Her work has ranged from social critique of the Indian boarding school to celebrating the cultural strengths of her people through depiction of the Bear Dance. More recently, she has taken up the issue of the stereotypes commonly held of Native American women by the non-native world. LaMarr's prints have been exhibited in museums from San Francisco to New York City. Mendoza, a native Texan, began painting in a realist style using oils but has transitioned to abstract expressionism in acrylics and oils on various media, embedding concrete forms within the abstract. Among the topics that Mendoza addresses are indigenous women workers and migrant workers. Her recent work incorporates found objects into expressions of solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Southern Mexico and the Zapatista movement. Media contact: -- Joel Scinicariello, C.N. Gorman Museum, (530) 752-6567, jdscinicariello@ucdavis.edu Nelson Features New York Artist's Camera-less Photos Exhibition title: Kunié Sugiura: Dark Matters/Light Affairs Dates: April 8-May 18 Where: Nelson Gallery 124 Art Building University of California, Davis Hours: Noon-5 p.m. weekdays, 2-5 p.m. Sundays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Picnic Day, Saturday, April 21 Closed holidays Opening reception 6-8 p.m. Friday, April 6 and gallery talk: with a gallery talk at 6:30 p.m. Nelson Gallery No admission charge A dialogue between Kunié Sugiura and Lisa Tamiris Becker (Richard L. Nelson Gallery interim director/curator) This exhibition features some 30 major works produced in the past dozen years by New York artist Kunié Sugiura (b. Nagoya, Japan, 1942). Sugiura, who has had many one-artist shows and been a featured participant in New Photography 13 (1997), is an artist of international renown. Her chosen medium is the "photogram," a camera-less photograph made by placing objects (which often in Sugiura's work are living beings) in front of photographic paper and exposing them to light. The images of preserved shadows of flowers, land and sea creatures, and even boxers frozen in mid-fight resonate with a sense of immediacy and discovery. At the same time, Sugiura follows a long Japanese visual tradition grounded in the haunting, economical beauty of the silhouette. Skeins of swirling photographic chemicals, intentionally fixed at the printing stage, suspend Sugiura's subjects in the otherworldly present tense of the darkroom. Her lush positive and negative renderings prompt reconsideration of the photogram as a vehicle of illusionism. The traveling exhibition is organized by Pamela Auchincloss Arts Management Services. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalog, distributed by the University of Washington Press. Essays by Bill Arning of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and Joel Smith of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center are featured. Media contact: -- Lisa Tamiris Becker, Nelson Gallery, (530) 754-6590, lbecker@ucdavis.edu Artist Recycles Materials Into Creative Structures Exhibition title: Spirit Now and Then: Recent Works by Katherine Westphal Dates: April 8-May 11 Where: Design Gallery 145 Walker Hall University of California, Davis Hours: Noon-5 p.m. weekdays, 2-4 p.m. Sundays Closed holidays Lecture: 1 p.m. Sunday, April 8 176 Everson Hall Speaker: Pat Hickman, fiber artist, University of Hawaii $10 guests; free to Design Alliance members and students Opening reception: 2-4 p.m. Sunday, April 8 Design Gallery 145 Walker Hall No admission charge Internationally renowned artist and educator Katherine Westphal will exhibit her newest three-dimensional assemblages alongside some favorite textile pieces over the next month. Westphal and her husband, Ed Rossbach, are seminal figures in the contemporary fiber arts movement. She is a professor emerita at UC Davis, where she taught from 1966 to 1979. The works show Westphal's imaginative uses of surprising materials, creative manipulations of imagery and colorful patterned surfaces. She is known for her transformative uses of ordinary substances, while simultaneously changing perceptions about artists' materials and challenging traditional hierarchies of value. Through her work, viewers learn to see the potential beauty of an iceberg lettuce wrapper, a piece of cardboard packing material or a scrap of shiny trash. Westphal says "Never throw anything away, it might come in handy," and her recycled goods certainly do, as they mutate from small constructions and bits of former and borrowed images into three-dimensional shrines that celebrate memories past and fantasies of the present. Some of her sculptures evoke experiences and interactions with faraway places and people of diverse cultures, while others reflect on popular cultural icons. The exhibition opens on Sunday, April 8, with a talk on Westphal's work by noted textiles artist and professor Pat Hickman of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu. Hickman studied at UC Berkeley and exhibits, lectures and writes about textiles. Media contact: -- Rhonda O'Brien, Design Gallery, (530) 752-6223, rrobrien@ucdavis.edu Professor Explores Social Values, Gender Roles in Resin Exhibition title: Party Mix: Sculpture by Lucy Puls Dates: April 16-May 25 Where: The Memorial Union Art Gallery Second floor of the Memorial Union University of California, Davis Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday Gallery talk: 3 p.m. Monday, April 16, in the gallery Opening reception: 4-6 p.m. Monday, April 16 The Memorial Union Art Gallery will be exhibiting the work of Northern California artist Lucy Puls, a UC Davis art professor since 1985. Puls casts mass-produced objects in blocks of resin that ask viewers to question the ways in which gender roles and social values are transmitted and reinforced by the objects used every day. By physically altering these familiar and mundane articles, she places them in new contexts, compelling us to see and think about them differently. Party Mix, an eclectic grouping of old and new sculptural works, is Puls' first exhibition at the Memorial Union Art Gallery. Puls received her master's degree in fine art from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1980, and is now represented by Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco. Media contact: -- Martha Brundin, Memorial Union Art Gallery, (530) 752-0992, mebrundin@ucdavis.edu UC Davis' Art Gallery Hosts Ann Arbor Film Festival Title: 39th Ann Arbor Film Festival Dates: 8-10 p.m. April 27-28 Where: 1100 Social Sciences and Humanities Building University of California, Davis The 39th Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour is presenting at UC Davis 22 of the 40 prize-winning new works by independent filmmakers as part of a four-hour cross-country traveling program. The festival will be hosted by the Memorial Union Art Gallery. Funds raised during the gallery's annual Fall Quarter Poster Sale on the MU Patio are used to sponsor the tour. The touring program is traveling the country to some 30 locations to feature the latest in 16 mm independent and experimental film from all over the United States and the world. During a six-day festival in March, 125 films were screened in Ann Arbor, Mich. A mix of every category was screened, including animation, experimental, documentary, narrative and personal documentary and of those, 40 filmmakers were selected to receive cash prizes. The event is open to the public and free of charge. Media contact: -- Martha Brundin, Memorial Union Art Gallery, (530) 752-0992, mebrundin@ucdavis.edu