Diane (De Maria) Mengali (B.A. English ’65) recently published The Quicksand of Agoraphobia: A Memoir of Panic Disorder. A resident of Davis, she was co-owner of Mengali’s Florist.

 

Art by Bruce Nauman (M.F.A., studio art, 1966) is featured in a recent story in The New York Times about public art in New York.  “For years, I’ve stopped by this lobby (of the JP Morgan Chase) to see a small, blinking neon by Bruce Nauman, one of the most influential artists of the last half-century,” writes Randy Kennedy. “Mr. Nauman’s neons, which often juxtapose related words or phrases, can be funny, haunting and sometimes brutal (“Raw/War”; “Run From Fear/Fun From Rear.”) This one, which blinks the crossed words “Read” and “Reap” in garish greens, pinks, reds and yellows, is mild by comparison but still provocative for a corporate bank lobby, evoking wholesome thoughts of knowledge alongside slightly sinister connotations of the consequences of knowing." Nauman’s work is in museum collections around the world and the Museum of Modern Art in New York will mount a retrospective of his art in 2018.

Photographer David Freund (B.A., theatre and dance, ’63) has a four-volume book set, Gas Stop, set for release by Steidl Publishers later this year. Gas Stop illustrates the role of the gas station in American culture, landscape and architecture. The photographs were taken in 47 states between 1978 and 1980, the final years of most traditional stations. Freund’s work has been shown at MoMA P.S. 1 and the George Eastman House and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.