It is fitting that during Earth Week, and a week before the Whole Earth Festival, the city of Davis will host the region’s largest professional art function that embraces earth —literally. That is earth of the ceramic variety. The John Natsoulas Art Gallery is hosting the 23rd annual California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art (CCACA) in downtown Davis April 27-29. Pronounced “caca,” like the natural fertilizer that animals drop to the earth, the CCACA’s festivities will showcase ceramic art from three Los Rios District colleges, CSU Sacramento, UC Davis and more than 40 West Coast colleges, universities and high schools. Of the 5,000 who attend, 2,000 students will exhibit

"Sculpture doesn't have to answer to society or beauty," Japanese contemporary ceramic artist Takako Araki once said. Referred to by some as sacrilegious, her lifelike tattered Bible sculptures, one of which she made by silkscreening text from the Bible onto fired clay, are part of the Soaring Voices ceramic exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum in Downtown Sacramento. The exhibition opened to the public Saturday and features a collection of more than 80 ceramic pieces by 25 female Japanese artists. Until the 1950s, the world of ceramics in Japan has been a "man's world," exhibit organizer Maya Nishi told an audience at Sunday's gallery talk. She elaborated on how Japanese women had been