Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Sanarás mañana: An exhibit of works by Aimee Lee
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artist Statement:

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and book arts media, interested in personal storytelling. My work has covered topics of human intimacy, internal defenses, and the isolating properties of language. Because my work thrives in moments of vulnerability, its manifestations occur subtly and often go unnoticed: a survival kit buried in the ground, a sound recording of whistles tied to a football goalpost, a book whose prints darken and fade to mimic the life cycle of a bruise. I relate to what falls between the cracks, and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the outside world and how humans participate in it.

Storytelling: An Experiment In Visual Narrative -- Works by Pedro Roth
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, following two superbly triumphant solo exhibitions at the Sivori Museum and at the prestigious Recoleta Center this year, Pedro Roth comes to The Point of Contact Gallery to present "Storytelling...an experiment in visual narrative.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he presented in Argentina, "Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets, and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again..." writes the show's curator, Pedro Cuperman.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Works by Marianne Smith Dalton
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Through a combination of techniques utilizing traditional oil, acrylic, spray paint and marker, stories unfold from deep within my own consciousness, each relating to a memory, image or event that haunts and intrigues me. - Marianne Smith Dalton

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Viewpoints II 16" x 20": 2nd Collaborative Collection of the Syracuse Photographers Association
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Photography Association proudly presents a collection of photographic images at their 2nd Annual collaborative gallery exhibit.

Creatively capturing images from the commonplace to the unexpected, photographers catch the light and special moments in time. This collection of images, all 16" x 20", will serve to captivate your eye and draw you in closer to view a new world in each color or black and white photo.

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

Read a review!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 ages 12 and younger
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

The delicious aroma of ginger and candy waft through the air as the second floor gallery is transformed into a festive 1800s street scene, with over 40 gingerbread creations on display in storefront windows. These sweet creations are made locally by professional and amateur bakers.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

Price: Free
The Warehouse Link Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

Read a review!

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

Read a review!

SU Concert Choir
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-443-2191.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Sanarás mañana: An exhibit of works by Aimee Lee
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artist Statement:

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and book arts media, interested in personal storytelling. My work has covered topics of human intimacy, internal defenses, and the isolating properties of language. Because my work thrives in moments of vulnerability, its manifestations occur subtly and often go unnoticed: a survival kit buried in the ground, a sound recording of whistles tied to a football goalpost, a book whose prints darken and fade to mimic the life cycle of a bruise. I relate to what falls between the cracks, and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the outside world and how humans participate in it.

Storytelling: An Experiment In Visual Narrative -- Works by Pedro Roth
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, following two superbly triumphant solo exhibitions at the Sivori Museum and at the prestigious Recoleta Center this year, Pedro Roth comes to The Point of Contact Gallery to present "Storytelling...an experiment in visual narrative.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he presented in Argentina, "Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets, and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again..." writes the show's curator, Pedro Cuperman.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Works by Marianne Smith Dalton
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Through a combination of techniques utilizing traditional oil, acrylic, spray paint and marker, stories unfold from deep within my own consciousness, each relating to a memory, image or event that haunts and intrigues me. - Marianne Smith Dalton

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Viewpoints II 16" x 20": 2nd Collaborative Collection of the Syracuse Photographers Association
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Photography Association proudly presents a collection of photographic images at their 2nd Annual collaborative gallery exhibit.

Creatively capturing images from the commonplace to the unexpected, photographers catch the light and special moments in time. This collection of images, all 16" x 20", will serve to captivate your eye and draw you in closer to view a new world in each color or black and white photo.

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

Read a review!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 ages 12 and younger
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

The delicious aroma of ginger and candy waft through the air as the second floor gallery is transformed into a festive 1800s street scene, with over 40 gingerbread creations on display in storefront windows. These sweet creations are made locally by professional and amateur bakers.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

Price: Free
The Warehouse Link Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

Read a review!

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

Read a review!

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Preview: Della's Diner: Blue Plate Special
Appleseed Productions
Moe Harrington, director

Price: $10 adult, $8 students
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

See where it all began...the very first episode of Tom Edward's Della's Diner musical country soap opera series. The lights come up on Christmas Eve at Della's diner and by the time they go down, you'll have learned a few things, including: Who IS Joey's real daddy? And who is Ramona's mama? Will Ronnie Frank and Ramona D-I-V-O-R-C-E? Will Preacher Larry marry? Even amid the excitement of a visit from a famous country-music-singing star and brain surgery, there's still time to visit the jukebox and sing the greatest country standards. This karaoke-style musical country soap opera will leave you laughing in the aisles.

Read a Review!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Sanarás mañana: An exhibit of works by Aimee Lee
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artist Statement:

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and book arts media, interested in personal storytelling. My work has covered topics of human intimacy, internal defenses, and the isolating properties of language. Because my work thrives in moments of vulnerability, its manifestations occur subtly and often go unnoticed: a survival kit buried in the ground, a sound recording of whistles tied to a football goalpost, a book whose prints darken and fade to mimic the life cycle of a bruise. I relate to what falls between the cracks, and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the outside world and how humans participate in it.

Storytelling: An Experiment In Visual Narrative -- Works by Pedro Roth
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, following two superbly triumphant solo exhibitions at the Sivori Museum and at the prestigious Recoleta Center this year, Pedro Roth comes to The Point of Contact Gallery to present "Storytelling...an experiment in visual narrative.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he presented in Argentina, "Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets, and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again..." writes the show's curator, Pedro Cuperman.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Works by Marianne Smith Dalton
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Through a combination of techniques utilizing traditional oil, acrylic, spray paint and marker, stories unfold from deep within my own consciousness, each relating to a memory, image or event that haunts and intrigues me. - Marianne Smith Dalton

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Viewpoints II 16" x 20": 2nd Collaborative Collection of the Syracuse Photographers Association
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Photography Association proudly presents a collection of photographic images at their 2nd Annual collaborative gallery exhibit.

Creatively capturing images from the commonplace to the unexpected, photographers catch the light and special moments in time. This collection of images, all 16" x 20", will serve to captivate your eye and draw you in closer to view a new world in each color or black and white photo.

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

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Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 ages 12 and younger
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

The delicious aroma of ginger and candy waft through the air as the second floor gallery is transformed into a festive 1800s street scene, with over 40 gingerbread creations on display in storefront windows. These sweet creations are made locally by professional and amateur bakers.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

Price: Free
The Warehouse Link Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Wild Card Exhibition: Syracuse Ceramic Guild
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

A collective display of members' works is part of the organization's mission to promote awareness and understanding of the ceramic medium. Featured artists include Carol Adamec, Lory Black, Walt Black, Sue Canizares, Megan Connor, Miyo Hirano, Amy Komar, Sabrina Nedell, and Wes Weiss.

Elements
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paintings by Lynette Blake, ceramics by Amy Haven, and paintings by James Van Hoven

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Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

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The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Holiday Celebration
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Gallery 54 artists invite you to join them for their first holiday celebration featuring ceramics and mosaics by their newest owner/member, Terry Askey-Cole of Skaneateles, as well as refreshments. For more information, phone 315-685-5470.

Overcoming the Spectacle: A Cinema of Pure Means
Redhouse

Price: $5 suggested donation
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Craig Baldwin: Mock Up on Mu (2008)
This radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and horror genres, cobbles together a feature length "collage-narrative" based on mostly true stories of California's post-War subcultures of rocket pioneers, alternative religions, and Beat lifestyles.

Dr. Jackie Orr, Associate Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University, will lead a discussion of the film following the screening.

"Overcoming the Spectacle: A Cinema of Pure Means" explores the role of cinema as a medium for political transformation by way of an examination of the medium itself and the act of what it means to "watch" a film.

The films included in this series all critique the spectacle/spectator relation inherent in the structure of cinema and attempt to imagine new relationships between the medium and the viewer. Taking its conceptual grounding from what Giorgio Agamben refers to as the cinema of "Pure Means," this series will look specifically at cinematic strategies that refute fabricated meanings, thoughts and desires. It is through the work of the cinema that the cinema, too, has to be destroyed.

"Overcoming the Spectacle: A Cinema of Pure Means" is curated by Lawrence Kumpf.

...all the days and nights: Lecture and Book Signing with Doug DuBois
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Watson Theater, Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave. (Syracuse University), Syracuse

Doug DuBois will give a lecture about his work and will sign copies of ...all the days and nights, which is part of the Light Work 2010 Subscription Program. DuBois examines the complexities of family life within the fragility of daily emotions. His book is the result of decades-long observation, during which he followed his family through joyous celebrations and devastating losses.

Cooperate and No One Gets Hurt! The Value of Cooperative Commerce in a Capitalist World
University Neighbors Lecture Series
Featuring Travis Hance

Price: $10 regular, $5 with student ID
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Travis Hance grew up in Brasher Falls, NY. His early years in that small community taught him the values of independence and interdependence, but led him to dream of life in the big city. While studying Classical guitar at Onondaga Community College, Travis took a job in the conventional grocery sector. After two years learning about natural foods and fresh produce, Travis applied for an opening at his local Food Co-op.

Ten years later, Travis is completely hooked on the idea of co-operative businesses, and envisions two futures for America: Wal-mart or co-op. Travis believes that the seven international co-operative principles as well as the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others have the potential to reshape the worlds economy for the benefit of all.

Music Evening @ Artrage: Jesse Collins and John Heard
ArtRage Gallery

Price: $5 suggested donation
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This monthly concert series consists of a two-set performance by Jesse Collins and John Heard and a third set, a "New York City-style jam session," that will be hosted by the band. It's a great way to support both the ArtRage Gallery and local musicians! The music-loving public is invited to bring their interest and instruments to the jam session or to just come to listen and enjoy!

Jesse Collins, saxophone, has performed and studied with a Who's Who list of the legends of jazz and is a 2003 JazzTimes Magazine "Critics-Pic Top Ten" award recipient for "Introducing Jesse Collins" (Lat Cat Records). John Heard, percussion, has been playing African-American percussion for 30 years, teaching an after-school program for the Syracuse City School District for seven years, has recorded with many CNY artists, and is also a visual artist.

OCC Percussion Ensemble
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Bad Kitty: A Holiday Whodunnit
Acme Mystery Company

Price: $25.95 plus tax and gratuities (includes meal and show)
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Everyone who is anyone in the high-stakes, competitive world of professional cat showing is here tonight for the annual Catalina Cat Club holiday dinner and awards banquet. This once tiny event has grown from a friendly competition into an international frenzy of flying fur and flashing claws: and that's just the owners (especially Marielle Ann DeVozz). Founder and host, Cy Ameze, invites you to come and raise a glass to this year's winner of the prestigious, jewel-encrusted Kitty Cup. That is, if you're still alive by the end of the evening.

Little Women
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

What we cherish most—family, sacrifice, determination, hope, and love—never goes out of style. All of Louisa May Alcott's classic characters are here: warm and loving Marmee, vivacious Amy, sweet and dreamy Meg, tender-hearted Beth, handsome and charming Laurie, Aunt March, Professor Bhaer, and of course, the passionate and funny Jo. Brimming with 20 beautiful songs, this new musical captures all the struggle, romance and deep emotions of Alcott's beloved tale. Celebrate your holidays with the March family.

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The Man Who: A Theatrical Research and General of Hot Desire
Black Box Players

Price: Free
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research is based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks' best-selling collection of case histories about the neurologically impaired. The play looks inside a series of doctor/patient fables including autism, Tourette's, and the very famous visual agnosis case, where a man pulled on his wife's head thinking it was his hat. The Man Who explores the unknown world of the brain and tries to understand its complicated workings. The play is a journey in which each new discovery is both fascinating and deeply moving. By Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, directed by Lindsey Van Horn.

General of Hot Desire, by John Guare, is a one-act play inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 153 and 154. Nine young people take on the task of interpreting the sonnet and making a play from it. Each character has a different point of view of what the right answer is. But their goals do not end at solving the sonnets but finding the deeper meaning of love and God. Enjoy a play that travels through stories from the Bible, Torah, Qur'an, and modern times where everyone is going in different directions but searching inherently for the same thing. Directed by Kristin Kelly.

Preview: A Christmas Survival Guide
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $10
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

This intimate revue takes a wry and knowing look at a stressful season. Armed with a copy of "A Christmas Survival Guide" and an optimistic attitude, the characters charge into an urban holiday landscape searching for the true essence of Christmas.

Written by James Hindman and Ray Roderick. Music arranged by John Glaudin. Musical Director Jeff Unaitis. Cast includes Jimmy Curtin, Sunny Hernandez, Peter Irwin, Dana Sovocool, Sara Weiler, and Kathleen Wrinn.

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Friday, December 4, 2009

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Sanarás mañana: An exhibit of works by Aimee Lee
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artist Statement:

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and book arts media, interested in personal storytelling. My work has covered topics of human intimacy, internal defenses, and the isolating properties of language. Because my work thrives in moments of vulnerability, its manifestations occur subtly and often go unnoticed: a survival kit buried in the ground, a sound recording of whistles tied to a football goalpost, a book whose prints darken and fade to mimic the life cycle of a bruise. I relate to what falls between the cracks, and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the outside world and how humans participate in it.

Storytelling: An Experiment In Visual Narrative -- Works by Pedro Roth
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, following two superbly triumphant solo exhibitions at the Sivori Museum and at the prestigious Recoleta Center this year, Pedro Roth comes to The Point of Contact Gallery to present "Storytelling...an experiment in visual narrative.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he presented in Argentina, "Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets, and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again..." writes the show's curator, Pedro Cuperman.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Works by Marianne Smith Dalton
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Through a combination of techniques utilizing traditional oil, acrylic, spray paint and marker, stories unfold from deep within my own consciousness, each relating to a memory, image or event that haunts and intrigues me. - Marianne Smith Dalton

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium
2 Clinton Square, Syracuse

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Viewpoints II 16" x 20": 2nd Collaborative Collection of the Syracuse Photographers Association
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Photography Association proudly presents a collection of photographic images at their 2nd Annual collaborative gallery exhibit.

Creatively capturing images from the commonplace to the unexpected, photographers catch the light and special moments in time. This collection of images, all 16" x 20", will serve to captivate your eye and draw you in closer to view a new world in each color or black and white photo.

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

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Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 ages 12 and younger
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

The delicious aroma of ginger and candy waft through the air as the second floor gallery is transformed into a festive 1800s street scene, with over 40 gingerbread creations on display in storefront windows. These sweet creations are made locally by professional and amateur bakers.

Merry Bells Ring: The Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, free for children 5 and under
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This Syracuse tradition features more than 100 artfully decorated trees, wreathes, and special displays creating a magical holiday wonderland. The decorations and displays are all for sale. Enjoy live entertainment provided by local school and musical groups. Stop into the special holiday store where you're sure to find the perfect gift.

Opening: The Beauty Is in the Details
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

There will be an opening reception from 6:00-9:00pm. The Usual Suspects, an old-time string band, will perform; hors d'oeuvres will be provided by the Blue Danube.

The gallery will feature the work of ceramic artist Sarah Panzarella and printmaker James Skvarch throughout the month of December.

Panzarella, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery, which opened this past summer. Although she says nature is the primary inspiration for her work, she also draws from the Arts and Crafts Movement—and its focus on craftsmanship, function and quality—and the Art Nouveau aesthetic.

James Skvarch, of Syracuse, has won more than 30 awards for his etchings, which depict caprices, landscapes, interiors, cars, trains, ships and boats. He also works in the medium of oil painting.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Opening: Intimacy & Vastness
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Price: Free
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

An opening reception will be held from 6:00-8:00 pm.

A show of paintings by Sharon Gordon and Aida Khalil and ceramic works by Errol Willett.

Sharon Gordon's new oil paintings feature her ongoing exploration of the dynamic relationship of earth and sky. Her dreamlike landscape paintings engage the play of light over vast surfaces and suspended water droplets.

Aida Khalil's mixed media paintings are from her "Boat of Hours" series. Through the intimate scale of er small canvases, the artist transforms vistas into personal landscapes of slowed down moments of light and weather.

Errol Willett's pottery and ceramic forms are influenced by painting, sculpture and architecture. The artist is interested in how art can forge ahead, from being something other than our known world, and crosses into a new locus.

Read a review!

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Elements
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paintings by Lynette Blake, ceramics by Amy Haven, and paintings by James Van Hoven

Read a review!

Wild Card Exhibition: Syracuse Ceramic Guild
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

A collective display of members' works is part of the organization's mission to promote awareness and understanding of the ceramic medium. Featured artists include Carol Adamec, Lory Black, Walt Black, Sue Canizares, Megan Connor, Miyo Hirano, Amy Komar, Sabrina Nedell, and Wes Weiss.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

Read a review!

27th Annual Syracuse Holiday Crafts Spectacular

Price: Adults $3, children free
Horticulture Building
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Over 125 exhibitors will display and sell a wide range of their own handcrafted objects: paintings, furniture, leather bags, graphic art, exotic dark chocolate, pottery, jewelry, specialty food products, soaps, photography, and more. A new feature this year will be a sampling of New York State wines which will be available to taste and purchase by the bottle or the case.

For more information, visit www.craftproducers.com.

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

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Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Christmas Around the World

Ska-nonh Great Law of Peace Center
6680 Onondaga Lake Parkway, Liverpool

A magnificent collection of international Santas and decorated trees, celebrating the holidays of the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, and more. Enjoy entertainment, visit the mission site (weather permitting), and browse in the holiday gift shop.

First Friday Holiday Party
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Music by Harvyn Tarkmeel, pianist. Refreshments & wine will be served. Part of the First Friday Skaneateles Art Night.

BTG Scholarship Fund Benefit
Don't Feed the Actors

Price: $15 regular, $13 students/seniors, $12 in advance
Pucello's Restaurant
1 Village Blvd., Baldwinsville

Don't Feed The Actors Improv Comedy troupe headlines a fundraiser for our friends in the Baldwinsville Theater Guild. Made up of heralded local actors, the DFtA crew puts on their unique blend of audience interactive improv where the audience can get involved.

Special Event: The Nutcracker
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
BalletMet Columbus

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra collaborates this year with the extraordinary BalletMet Columbus and local dancers to bring you Tchaikovsky's beloved classic, The Nutcracker, in a fresh, glittering production. Choreographed by Gerard Charles, with a recorded narration by Roger Moore, the ballet tells the story of Clara, who embarks on a wondrous Christmas Eve journey with the help of the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer and his enchanted nutcracker.

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OCC Percussion Ensemble
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

SU Songwriter Showcase
Words and Music Songwriter Showcase

Price: Free
Schine Underground, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Words and Music Songwriter Showcase is a celebration of original music from Central New York and beyond, featuring established and emerging artists of all genres in an up-close-and-personal acoustic setting.

The series host is singer-songwriter, author, and NPR contributor Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers. Each show includes:
* A featured artist performing a full set, plus an opening set of songwriters in the round.
* The Song Schmooze, where musicians and music lovers mingle over a drink and a bite to eat.
* Plus special guests, surprise collaborations, and the Soundbite of the Night, where Rodgers shares a memorable moment from his extraordinary archive of interviews with artists such as Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Jerry Garcia, Ani DiFranco, and Dave Matthews.

Chris Smither
Folkus Project

Price: $15
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Master guitarist and troubadour Chris Smither has made his reputation by transforming blues roots music into modern-day songwriting craft. The songs, literate and emotionally persuasive, are defined by his bright, intricate guitar work and driving foot stomps. Often thought of as a blues artist, Smither is a singer-songwriter who draws deeply from the Mississippi Delta, American folk music, Texas swing, and urban ballads to create songs that are weathered, unhurried, and genuinely passionate. Guitar-heads are drawn to his Lightnin' Hopkins/John Hurt derived fretwork; spiritual seekers nod in recognition at the hard-won knowledge casually tossed off in his lyrics, and just plain music fans who have come to him on their own return again and again.

A John Rutter Christmas
Syracuse Chorale
Warren Ottey, conductor

Erwin First United Methodist Church
920 Euclid Ave., Syracuse

John Rutter's Magnificat and Brother Heinrich's Christmas--with a special appearance by Open Hand Theater--and other music of the season including carols with audience participation.

Come Home for the Holidays
Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus

Price: $18 at the door, $15 in advance
First Unitarian Universalist Society of Syracuse
109 Waring Rd. (at the corner of Nottingham Rd.), Dewitt

The holiday season is full of great tunes by people like Bing Crosby. Holiday songs are endearing, not because of the music or the lyrics, but because of the memories that come flooding into our minds when we hear "White Christmas" or "Jingle Bells." It's these memories that bring us back home and into the arms of our family even when we can't be near them. The Syracuse Gay & Lesbian Chorus welcomes you into their hearts and homes for their annual winter concert.

Purchase your tickets online at www.syrglc.org, at Lavender Inkwell Bookshop, or from any Chorus member. Reduced prices for students and seniors can be arranged.

SU Percussion Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-443-2191.

James Longenbach, poet
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

James Longenbach is the acclaimed author of three books of poems, most recently Draft of a Letter, and of six prose books, most recently The Art of the Poetic Line and The Resistance to Poetry. He teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and at the University of Rochester, where he is the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English.

Little Women
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

What we cherish most—family, sacrifice, determination, hope, and love—never goes out of style. All of Louisa May Alcott's classic characters are here: warm and loving Marmee, vivacious Amy, sweet and dreamy Meg, tender-hearted Beth, handsome and charming Laurie, Aunt March, Professor Bhaer, and of course, the passionate and funny Jo. Brimming with 20 beautiful songs, this new musical captures all the struggle, romance and deep emotions of Alcott's beloved tale. Celebrate your holidays with the March family.

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Della's Diner: Blue Plate Special
Appleseed Productions
Moe Harrington, director

Price: $18 regular; $15 students/seniors (price includes dessert and beverage at intermission)
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

See where it all began...the very first episode of Tom Edward's Della's Diner musical country soap opera series. The lights come up on Christmas Eve at Della's diner and by the time they go down, you'll have learned a few things, including: Who IS Joey's real daddy? And who is Ramona's mama? Will Ronnie Frank and Ramona D-I-V-O-R-C-E? Will Preacher Larry marry? Even amid the excitement of a visit from a famous country-music-singing star and brain surgery, there's still time to visit the jukebox and sing the greatest country standards. This karaoke-style musical country soap opera will leave you laughing in the aisles.

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The Man Who: A Theatrical Research and General of Hot Desire
Black Box Players

Price: Free
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research is based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks' best-selling collection of case histories about the neurologically impaired. The play looks inside a series of doctor/patient fables including autism, Tourette's, and the very famous visual agnosis case, where a man pulled on his wife's head thinking it was his hat. The Man Who explores the unknown world of the brain and tries to understand its complicated workings. The play is a journey in which each new discovery is both fascinating and deeply moving. By Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, directed by Lindsey Van Horn.

General of Hot Desire, by John Guare, is a one-act play inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 153 and 154. Nine young people take on the task of interpreting the sonnet and making a play from it. Each character has a different point of view of what the right answer is. But their goals do not end at solving the sonnets but finding the deeper meaning of love and God. Enjoy a play that travels through stories from the Bible, Torah, Qur'an, and modern times where everyone is going in different directions but searching inherently for the same thing. Directed by Kristin Kelly.

A Christmas Survival Guide
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $25
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

This intimate revue takes a wry and knowing look at a stressful season. Armed with a copy of "A Christmas Survival Guide" and an optimistic attitude, the characters charge into an urban holiday landscape searching for the true essence of Christmas.

Written by James Hindman and Ray Roderick. Music arranged by John Glaudin. Musical Director Jeff Unaitis. Cast includes Jimmy Curtin, Sunny Hernandez, Peter Irwin, Dana Sovocool, Sara Weiler, and Kathleen Wrinn.

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White Christmas
The Talent Company
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $30 regular, $25 seniors/students, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

The tale of a couple of song-and-dance men who meet up with a sister act to make sparks fly is based on the beloved 1954 movie musical that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The Broadway hit is full of dancing, romance, laughter, and some of the greatest songs ever written, including Happy Holiday, Sisters, I Love a Piano, Blue Skies, How Deep is the Ocean, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep), and the unforgettable title song, White Christmas.

White Christmas stars Bob Brown as Bob Wallace and Gary Troy as Phil Davis, the song-and-dance men, and Brandi Ozark Weston as Judy Haynes and Colleen Wager as Betty Haynes, the "sister act." The show also features Bill Coughlin as General Henry Waverly and Christine Lightcap as Martha Watson, with Julia Goodman as Susan Waverly, Lou Leonardo as Ralph Sheldrake and Gennaro Parlato as Ezekiel Foster. Rounding out the cast are Jim Baxter, Molly Brown, Camille Chace, Zachary Chase, Cruz Gonzalez, Kimberly Grader, Bobby Hall, Kaleigh Pfohl, Eddie Powers, Korrie Strodel, Josh Taylor, and Rashad Williams.

Read a Review!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

Read a review!

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Wild Card Exhibition: Syracuse Ceramic Guild
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

A collective display of members' works is part of the organization's mission to promote awareness and understanding of the ceramic medium. Featured artists include Carol Adamec, Lory Black, Walt Black, Sue Canizares, Megan Connor, Miyo Hirano, Amy Komar, Sabrina Nedell, and Wes Weiss.

Elements
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paintings by Lynette Blake, ceramics by Amy Haven, and paintings by James Van Hoven

Read a review!

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 ages 12 and younger
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

The delicious aroma of ginger and candy waft through the air as the second floor gallery is transformed into a festive 1800s street scene, with over 40 gingerbread creations on display in storefront windows. These sweet creations are made locally by professional and amateur bakers.

Merry Bells Ring: The Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, free for children 5 and under
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This Syracuse tradition features more than 100 artfully decorated trees, wreathes, and special displays creating a magical holiday wonderland. The decorations and displays are all for sale. Enjoy live entertainment provided by local school and musical groups. Stop into the special holiday store where you're sure to find the perfect gift.

The Beauty Is in the Details
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The gallery will feature the work of ceramic artist Sarah Panzarella and printmaker James Skvarch throughout the month of December.

Panzarella, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery, which opened this past summer. Although she says nature is the primary inspiration for her work, she also draws from the Arts and Crafts Movement—and its focus on craftsmanship, function and quality—and the Art Nouveau aesthetic.

James Skvarch, of Syracuse, has won more than 30 awards for his etchings, which depict caprices, landscapes, interiors, cars, trains, ships and boats. He also works in the medium of oil painting.

Intimacy & Vastness
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Price: Free
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

A show of paintings by Sharon Gordon and Aida Khalil and ceramic works by Errol Willett.

Sharon Gordon's new oil paintings feature her ongoing exploration of the dynamic relationship of earth and sky. Her dreamlike landscape paintings engage the play of light over vast surfaces and suspended water droplets.

Aida Khalil's mixed media paintings are from her "Boat of Hours" series. Through the intimate scale of er small canvases, the artist transforms vistas into personal landscapes of slowed down moments of light and weather.

Errol Willett's pottery and ceramic forms are influenced by painting, sculpture and architecture. The artist is interested in how art can forge ahead, from being something other than our known world, and crosses into a new locus.

Read a review!

Holiday Festival of Crafts
Rochester Folk Art Guild

Price: $2
Montessori School of Syracuse
155 Waldorf Parkway, Syracuse

Pottery, folk toys, wooden furniture, natural fiber clothing, note cards, and books for all ages.

27th Annual Syracuse Holiday Crafts Spectacular

Price: Adults $3, children free
Horticulture Building
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Over 125 exhibitors will display and sell a wide range of their own handcrafted objects: paintings, furniture, leather bags, graphic art, exotic dark chocolate, pottery, jewelry, specialty food products, soaps, photography, and more. A new feature this year will be a sampling of New York State wines which will be available to taste and purchase by the bottle or the case.

For more information, visit www.craftproducers.com.

Plowshares Craftsfair

Price: $2 regular students/seniors free or reduced price
Nottingham High School
3100 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-472-5478.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

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Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

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Christmas Around the World

Ska-nonh Great Law of Peace Center
6680 Onondaga Lake Parkway, Liverpool

A magnificent collection of international Santas and decorated trees, celebrating the holidays of the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, and more. Enjoy entertainment, visit the mission site (weather permitting), and browse in the holiday gift shop.

Don't Feed the Actors Dinner Theater
Don't Feed the Actors

Price: Dinner theater: $25 single; $40 couple. Show only: $15 on day of show if seating available
Fire and Ice Banquet Hall, The Locker Room
528 Hiawatha Blvd., Syracuse

Audience-interactive improv comedy with some of Syracuse's finest comedic actors.

Dinner 6:45 pm, show begins at 8:00 pm.

Read a review!

Special Event: The Nutcracker
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
BalletMet Columbus

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra collaborates this year with the extraordinary BalletMet Columbus and local dancers to bring you Tchaikovsky's beloved classic, The Nutcracker, in a fresh, glittering production. Choreographed by Gerard Charles, with a recorded narration by Roger Moore, the ballet tells the story of Clara, who embarks on a wondrous Christmas Eve journey with the help of the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer and his enchanted nutcracker.

Read a review!

Special Event: The Nutcracker
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
BalletMet Columbus

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra collaborates this year with the extraordinary BalletMet Columbus and local dancers to bring you Tchaikovsky's beloved classic, The Nutcracker, in a fresh, glittering production. Choreographed by Gerard Charles, with a recorded narration by Roger Moore, the ballet tells the story of Clara, who embarks on a wondrous Christmas Eve journey with the help of the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer and his enchanted nutcracker.

Read a review!

Artist Demonstration: A Brush with Greatness
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free with same-day exhibition admission
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Renowned landscape painter and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University, Sarah McCoubrey, will delight visitors with a demonstration of her labor-intensive painting technique, which involves many layers of glazes. Her luminous paintings reveal ordinary scenes and places in upstate New York.

Holiday Concert
Skaneateles Community Band

Price: Free
First Presbyterian Church of Skaneateles
97 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

For more information, phone 315-685-0552.

Diane Cluck and Friends
Spark Contemporary Art Space

Price: $7
Spark Contemporary Art Space
1005 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

Diane Cluck accompanied by Jason Schnitt, Sara Cilantro, and Simon Thrasher.

Real Quiet
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Andrew Russo, piano; Felix Fan, cello; and David Cossin, percussion, bring their signature brand of hard-edged contemporary classical music to Red House. This performance will feature the music of CNY composer Marc Mellits.

Concertante
Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music

Price: $20 regular, $15 senior, $10 student, children under 13 free
Lincoln Middle School
1613 James St., Syracuse

"Sumptuous," was the way Alan Kozinn of the New York Times described the "cohesive and beautifully polished sound" of Concertante. As solo performers, the six outstanding musicians who form the core of Concertante have graced the premier stages of the world from New York's Carnegie Hall to London's Royal Festival Hall. As an ensemble, they have won rave reviews across the country.

Elgar Serenade for Strings in E minor
Korngold Sextet in D Major
Brahms String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36

Come Home for the Holidays
Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus

Price: $18 at the door, $15 in advance
First Unitarian Universalist Society of Syracuse
109 Waring Rd. (at the corner of Nottingham Rd.), Dewitt

The holiday season is full of great tunes by people like Bing Crosby. Holiday songs are endearing, not because of the music or the lyrics, but because of the memories that come flooding into our minds when we hear "White Christmas" or "Jingle Bells." It's these memories that bring us back home and into the arms of our family even when we can't be near them. The Syracuse Gay & Lesbian Chorus welcomes you into their hearts and homes for their annual winter concert.

Purchase your tickets online at www.syrglc.org, at Lavender Inkwell Bookshop, or from any Chorus member. Reduced prices for students and seniors can be arranged.

Grandfather Frost
Open Hand Theater

Price: $8 adults; $6 children
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

Silver the Cat is back with his mischief, and with Baba Yaga telling the story of two sisters lost in the Russian forest. They each learn the secrets of the legendary Grandfather Frost in their own particular way. This beautiful folktale is performed with traditional music and imaginative puppetry in a uniquely Russian style, featuring Open Hand's international Artist-in-Residence Vladimir Vasyagin and musician Leslie Archer.

The Little Mermaid
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

Price: $5
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Interaction adaptation of this children's favorite. The audience helps the Mermaid foil the Seawitch and get her voice back.

White Christmas
The Talent Company
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $30 regular, $25 seniors/students, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

The tale of a couple of song-and-dance men who meet up with a sister act to make sparks fly is based on the beloved 1954 movie musical that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The Broadway hit is full of dancing, romance, laughter, and some of the greatest songs ever written, including Happy Holiday, Sisters, I Love a Piano, Blue Skies, How Deep is the Ocean, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep), and the unforgettable title song, White Christmas.

White Christmas stars Bob Brown as Bob Wallace and Gary Troy as Phil Davis, the song-and-dance men, and Brandi Ozark Weston as Judy Haynes and Colleen Wager as Betty Haynes, the "sister act." The show also features Bill Coughlin as General Henry Waverly and Christine Lightcap as Martha Watson, with Julia Goodman as Susan Waverly, Lou Leonardo as Ralph Sheldrake and Gennaro Parlato as Ezekiel Foster. Rounding out the cast are Jim Baxter, Molly Brown, Camille Chace, Zachary Chase, Cruz Gonzalez, Kimberly Grader, Bobby Hall, Kaleigh Pfohl, Eddie Powers, Korrie Strodel, Josh Taylor, and Rashad Williams.

Read a Review!

Little Women
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

What we cherish most—family, sacrifice, determination, hope, and love—never goes out of style. All of Louisa May Alcott's classic characters are here: warm and loving Marmee, vivacious Amy, sweet and dreamy Meg, tender-hearted Beth, handsome and charming Laurie, Aunt March, Professor Bhaer, and of course, the passionate and funny Jo. Brimming with 20 beautiful songs, this new musical captures all the struggle, romance and deep emotions of Alcott's beloved tale. Celebrate your holidays with the March family.

Read a Review!

Little Women
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

What we cherish most—family, sacrifice, determination, hope, and love—never goes out of style. All of Louisa May Alcott's classic characters are here: warm and loving Marmee, vivacious Amy, sweet and dreamy Meg, tender-hearted Beth, handsome and charming Laurie, Aunt March, Professor Bhaer, and of course, the passionate and funny Jo. Brimming with 20 beautiful songs, this new musical captures all the struggle, romance and deep emotions of Alcott's beloved tale. Celebrate your holidays with the March family.

Read a Review!

Della's Diner: Blue Plate Special
Appleseed Productions
Moe Harrington, director

Price: $18 regular; $15 students/seniors (price includes dessert and beverage at intermission)
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

See where it all began...the very first episode of Tom Edward's Della's Diner musical country soap opera series. The lights come up on Christmas Eve at Della's diner and by the time they go down, you'll have learned a few things, including: Who IS Joey's real daddy? And who is Ramona's mama? Will Ronnie Frank and Ramona D-I-V-O-R-C-E? Will Preacher Larry marry? Even amid the excitement of a visit from a famous country-music-singing star and brain surgery, there's still time to visit the jukebox and sing the greatest country standards. This karaoke-style musical country soap opera will leave you laughing in the aisles.

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The Man Who: A Theatrical Research and General of Hot Desire
Black Box Players

Price: Free
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research is based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks' best-selling collection of case histories about the neurologically impaired. The play looks inside a series of doctor/patient fables including autism, Tourette's, and the very famous visual agnosis case, where a man pulled on his wife's head thinking it was his hat. The Man Who explores the unknown world of the brain and tries to understand its complicated workings. The play is a journey in which each new discovery is both fascinating and deeply moving. By Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, directed by Lindsey Van Horn.

General of Hot Desire, by John Guare, is a one-act play inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 153 and 154. Nine young people take on the task of interpreting the sonnet and making a play from it. Each character has a different point of view of what the right answer is. But their goals do not end at solving the sonnets but finding the deeper meaning of love and God. Enjoy a play that travels through stories from the Bible, Torah, Qur'an, and modern times where everyone is going in different directions but searching inherently for the same thing. Directed by Kristin Kelly.

From the Hip: Syracuse -- Theater Festival

Price: $10
The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

From the Hip combines the concept of a "24 Hour Play Festival" with the idea of using improvisation and collaboration to create plays. Teams are selected randomly by pulling names out of a hat. Actors are then led in a guided improvisation. Playwrights take inspiration from that improvisation to write a ten-minute play—overnight. Actors and director are given a day to rehearse and perform the new play. On performance nights, the audience votes for their favorite play. Performances also regularly involve music, dance, the visual arts, and audience participation.

A Christmas Survival Guide
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $20
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

This intimate revue takes a wry and knowing look at a stressful season. Armed with a copy of "A Christmas Survival Guide" and an optimistic attitude, the characters charge into an urban holiday landscape searching for the true essence of Christmas.

Written by James Hindman and Ray Roderick. Music arranged by John Glaudin. Musical Director Jeff Unaitis. Cast includes Jimmy Curtin, Sunny Hernandez, Peter Irwin, Dana Sovocool, Sara Weiler, and Kathleen Wrinn.

Read a Review!

White Christmas
The Talent Company
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $30 regular, $25 seniors/students, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

The tale of a couple of song-and-dance men who meet up with a sister act to make sparks fly is based on the beloved 1954 movie musical that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The Broadway hit is full of dancing, romance, laughter, and some of the greatest songs ever written, including Happy Holiday, Sisters, I Love a Piano, Blue Skies, How Deep is the Ocean, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep), and the unforgettable title song, White Christmas.

White Christmas stars Bob Brown as Bob Wallace and Gary Troy as Phil Davis, the song-and-dance men, and Brandi Ozark Weston as Judy Haynes and Colleen Wager as Betty Haynes, the "sister act." The show also features Bill Coughlin as General Henry Waverly and Christine Lightcap as Martha Watson, with Julia Goodman as Susan Waverly, Lou Leonardo as Ralph Sheldrake and Gennaro Parlato as Ezekiel Foster. Rounding out the cast are Jim Baxter, Molly Brown, Camille Chace, Zachary Chase, Cruz Gonzalez, Kimberly Grader, Bobby Hall, Kaleigh Pfohl, Eddie Powers, Korrie Strodel, Josh Taylor, and Rashad Williams.

Read a Review!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 ages 12 and younger
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

The delicious aroma of ginger and candy waft through the air as the second floor gallery is transformed into a festive 1800s street scene, with over 40 gingerbread creations on display in storefront windows. These sweet creations are made locally by professional and amateur bakers.

Merry Bells Ring: The Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, free for children 5 and under
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This Syracuse tradition features more than 100 artfully decorated trees, wreathes, and special displays creating a magical holiday wonderland. The decorations and displays are all for sale. Enjoy live entertainment provided by local school and musical groups. Stop into the special holiday store where you're sure to find the perfect gift.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Plowshares Craftsfair

Price: $2 regular students/seniors free or reduced price
Nottingham High School
3100 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-472-5478.

27th Annual Syracuse Holiday Crafts Spectacular

Price: Adults $3, children free
Horticulture Building
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Over 125 exhibitors will display and sell a wide range of their own handcrafted objects: paintings, furniture, leather bags, graphic art, exotic dark chocolate, pottery, jewelry, specialty food products, soaps, photography, and more. A new feature this year will be a sampling of New York State wines which will be available to taste and purchase by the bottle or the case.

For more information, visit www.craftproducers.com.

Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

The Beauty Is in the Details
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The gallery will feature the work of ceramic artist Sarah Panzarella and printmaker James Skvarch throughout the month of December.

Panzarella, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery, which opened this past summer. Although she says nature is the primary inspiration for her work, she also draws from the Arts and Crafts Movement—and its focus on craftsmanship, function and quality—and the Art Nouveau aesthetic.

James Skvarch, of Syracuse, has won more than 30 awards for his etchings, which depict caprices, landscapes, interiors, cars, trains, ships and boats. He also works in the medium of oil painting.

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Holiday Festival of Crafts
Rochester Folk Art Guild

Price: $2
Montessori School of Syracuse
155 Waldorf Parkway, Syracuse

Pottery, folk toys, wooden furniture, natural fiber clothing, note cards, and books for all ages.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Special Event: The Nutcracker
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
BalletMet Columbus

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra collaborates this year with the extraordinary BalletMet Columbus and local dancers to bring you Tchaikovsky's beloved classic, The Nutcracker, in a fresh, glittering production. Choreographed by Gerard Charles, with a recorded narration by Roger Moore, the ballet tells the story of Clara, who embarks on a wondrous Christmas Eve journey with the help of the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer and his enchanted nutcracker.

Read a review!

An Eye for the Modern
Everson Museum of Art
Featuring Steven Kern

Price: Free with same-day exhibition admission
Hosmer Auditorium, Everson Museum
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Davies sisters were among the first collectors to focus on Impressionism, but their ranks eventually included prominent figures in Britain, on the Continent, and in the United States. If Impressionism was slow to catch on in France, it took off like a rocket everywhere else. Everson Director Steven Kern will present a lecture which will focus on such pioneering collectors as the Davies sisters, Alfred Barnes, Sterling and Francine Clark, and Samuel Courtauld.

Sunday Musicale: Belle Aire Handbell Choir
Fayetteville Free Library

Price: Free
Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Holiday music performed by the Belle Aire Handbell Choir.

Songs of the Season
Featuring Nancy B. James and Jimi James, vocalists; Rebecca Horning, piano

Price: Suggested donation $10
Fairmount Community Church
4801 W. Genesee St. , Syracuse

A John Rutter Christmas
Syracuse Chorale
Warren Ottey, conductor

St. Paul's Syracuse
220 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

John Rutter's Magnificat and Brother Heinrich's Christmas--with a special appearance by Open Hand Theater--and other music of the season including carols with audience participation.

The Nine Lessons and Carols
Syracuse Children's Chorus
Barbara Marble Tagg, conductor
Featuring James T. Walsh, narrator

Most Holy Rosary Church
111 Roberts Ave., Syracuse

Join the Syracuse Children's Chorus as they celebrate the holiday season with their 15th presentation of the beloved The Nine Lessons and Carols, narrated by the Honorable James T. Walsh. Enjoy the angelic voices of the choristers as they perform excerpts from Ceremony of Carols, with guest harpist Deette Bunn and Carol of the Child featuring Carolyn Weber (mezzo-soprano), Libby Weber (current SCC chorister), the Park Central Presbyterian Church Handbell Choir, and an SCC alumni trio with alumni choristers Lilly Patrick, Samantha Claps, and Katie Weber. Pianists Alice Muzquiz, Michael Copps, Kaitlin Schneekloth, and Glenn Kime accompany the chorus. Be sure to include this centuries-old tradition of readings, carols, and the candlelight singing of Stille Nacht (Silent Night) as part of your holiday season!

Christmas Cantata: And Glory Shone Around

Price: Free
St. Mary's Catholic Church
47 Syracuse St., Baldwinsville

An ensemble of more than 60 voices from area churches.