This is the last week to catch a genuinely spectacular show at the Nelson Gallery--Out in Space: Sculptures, Drawings, Paintings by Dave Lane. The gallery is crowded with Lane's work, dense as a patch of rainforest. Although rather than slashing your way through knotted vines and screeching gibbons, you find yourself amidst flora that's been salvaged from industrial scrapheaps, and the soundtrack (emitted from a speaker tucked discreetly in a corner) is one of soothing evening sounds. It feels like dusk: night, with all its numinous spangles, is about to be born. The space is dominated by large sculptures that... Read More

"You See" gathers the work of five faculty who were instrumental in making a name for the UC Davis Art Department in the 60s and 70s - an anomalously avant-garde core of teachers at a rural school, then chiefly noted for its veterinary and agricultural programs. The group - Manuel Neri, Roy DeForest, William T. Wiley, Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Arneson - created idiosyncratic work largely independent of the dominant art fashions of the time. They raised the fumes of glazes, plasters, oils and thinners alongside the university's antiseptic tang of formaldehyde and the methane emissions of cattle. Full disclosure:... Read More