Exhibits, performances keep campus busy on break

The pace of campus life is slowing as classes wrap up for the semester, students complete projects and papers, and final exams loom. This is a wonderful opportunity to check out the exhibits you intended to see months ago, but were too busy to attend. Carpe diem, people.

“Pareidolia: Inkspill Drawings” by Vesna Jovanovic, Ebling Library, Health Sciences Learning Center, third floor, through Dec. 12

Vesna Jovanovic’s drawings merge science with fantasy — mechanical devices, body parts, color. The surreal result is an unsettling duality of the abstract and the recognizable.

“Seam: Mary Hark, Work From Before, During and After a Year in Kumasi, Ghana,” Design Gallery, Human Ecology, through Dec. 14

These works include recent paintings that combine cloth and handmade paper and address “the poetry in accidental marks, the tenderness of flaw, and the transformative potential of attention and labor.” The works combine handmade flax and kozo papers and cloth into an intricate medium that is stitched with thread and built up with paint, wax, textile dyes, inks and pencil marks. The large works appear to be both delicate and resilient.

“Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas,” Chazen Museum of Art, through Jan. 11

Beautiful and seductive, protective yet dangerous, the African water deity Mami Wata (pidgin English for “Mother Water”) is often portrayed as a mermaid, a snake charmer or a combination of the two. The exhibition explores 500 years of the visual culture and history of Mami Wata, honoring the essential, sacred nature of water.

“Bubbles: An Exhibition of Photographic Works, Crystals for a New Conception of Space and Volume in Architecture” by Steve Preston, Wendt Library Alcove, main floor, through Jan. 16

An alumnus of the engineering program, Preston is studying architecture and visual arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Simple bubbles form the building blocks for boldly geometric, vibrantly hued structures that evoke both the chaos and order of the natural world.

“West African Masquerade: Photographs” by Phyllis Galembo, Chazen Museum of Art, through Feb. 1

The urge to dress up in costumes, for celebration or ceremony, is a universal phenomenon: Masquerading allows for magical transformation and frees the human spirit. Galembo photographs the stunning costumes worn by priests and priestesses, carnival participants, dancers and Haitian vodou practitioners in Africa and the Caribbean. The New York Times recognized the “dignity, conviction, and formal power” in her photographs.

If you need more enticement to make your way to the Chazen, two performances of Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen will feature musicians from the School of Music.

On Sunday, Dec. 14, the Wisconsin Brass Quintet will perform J.S. Bach’s “My Spirit Be Joyful,” four Monteverdi Madrigals and “Selections from Porgy and Bess” by Broadway performer and arranger Jack Gale. Trombonist Mark Hetzler will be featured with Steve Rouse’s “The Flying Boy.” Paul Rowe, professor of voice, will join the quintet to perform John Stevens’ work for baritone voice and brass quintet titled “Footprints.” Stevens is a member of the quintet and the texts are by local Madison poet Ann Arntson. The WBQ has recorded this work on a CD on the Crystal Records label.

More glorious brass will be heard on Sunday, Jan. 11, when the Madison Tuba Consort performs a varied program of works for low brass. The group features Stevens and five of his advanced students. The program includes arrangements of music by Holborne, Bach, Schubert and Maurer, original works by Nelhybel and Payne, and three original compositions by Stevens.

Both concerts are free and begin at 12:30 p.m. in Gallery Three.