Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Windows Project: Waking from Dreams of India
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Upstate New York photographer Neil Chowdhury has created works consisting of three digital photomontages (fit to the dimensions of the windows in the Window Projects) and a multichannel video installation (displayed in the Window Projects space) with a soundtrack of Indian classical music, Hindi pop music, and ambient street sound that address contemporary India as well as clichés and the artist's origins.

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

Silk: Photographs by Courtney Rile
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

La Colección/The Collection: Exhibit 2
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A special program to commemorate Point of Contact's 35th anniversary and The Point of Contact Gallery's 5th -- a show of the entire permanent collection in five exhibitions starting in September 2010.

This second exhibit of the program presents contemporary photography by Maureen Connor, Rimma Gerlovina & Valeriy Gerlovin, Joseph Kugielsky, and intaglios by Nancy Graves.

The Silent Scream: Conflict in Novels Without Words
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

The Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library has always had a keen interest in all forms of book illustration, and not surprisingly, novels without words became a significant collecting area. Over time, we have amassed a considerable number of the classic specimens in the genre, and the main practitioners of the art form are well represented within our holdings. We developed this exhibition in keeping with the Syracuse Symposium theme for the coming year, "conflict." The artists upon whom we focused are William Gropper, Laurence Hyde, Frans Masereel, Giacomo Patri, John Vassos, and Lynd Ward.

In addition to conflict, novels without words often portray a quest on the part of the individual. This may assume the form of a journey or a saga about the search for self-fulfillment in artistic or purely personal terms, or the quest may have as its primary objective achieving social justice in a particular context. Because of the historical period in which many of these wordless novels were born, they often depict a struggle between the individual and the industrialized world. Industrialization and, by extension, capitalism, may be seen as forces that are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the individual and of society in general. Similarly, the law, the police, and the armed forces may all be viewed as instruments of repression in novels without words.

The creators of novels without words also tend to scrutinize the brutal forms of war and tyranny that are made possible by industrialization. In truth, any injustice may become the subject of such works, and perhaps just the cruel nature of our existential struggle to survive in an inherently hostile environment is all the background that is needed to provide the inspiration for the creation of a novel without words.

Honoring The Masters: Works of Ann Milner and Phil DeMocker
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

"Honoring the Masters," featuring Ann Milner's oriental brush painting and Phil DeMocker's origami, is a tribute to artists of the past setting the standards for today's active artists and gallery goers. Highlighted will be "masters" from noted dynasties. The "Mustard Seed Garden Manual, first published in the mid-1600s, will be the reference for some techniques in both learning and creating pieces of Oriental brush painting. Reproductions of work from ancient and more recent masters will show the background and heritage next to current representations of classical subjects and composition.

Origami pieces will represent Phil's favorite designer/folders and will be labeled to explain why he has chosen those artists.

As with most art, copying the work of an established artist is considered distasteful and cheap. While the art of the Orient to copy a master is considered one highest forms of art. Ann Milner is painting in the Sumie style from the Mustard Seed Manual, a comprehensive work of style, structure and form. Phil DeMocker is working from the works of both past and present masters of origami.

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Dogs in Transition: Pit Bulls and Mill Dogs
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Cyrus Mejia's art focuses on activism and reflects the ideals of kindness and compassion while shining a light on "speciesism, ignorance and cruelty." Mejia is also co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals near the town of Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is especially known for rehabilitating 22 of the pit bulls rescued from NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

"Pits and Perception" is the first series on view, which portrays pit bulls in a manner that challenges modern-day perceptions of the breed. With increased attention toward dog fighting in the media, many view the pit bull as a vicious and aggressive dog. Through his paintings, Mejia challenges these beliefs by forcing the observer to take a closer look and question public perception.

The second collection, "Mill Dogs Revenge," features dogs rescued from commercial breeding facilities, colloquially known as "puppy mills." Victims of physical abuse, emotional trauma and neglect, these dogs are often subjected to cruel conditions because of human greed for profit. Mejia hopes to raise awareness of the cruelty of puppy mills through his art.

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Archipelago: Works by Yolanda del Amo
Light Work Gallery

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

Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. In her series Archipelago, artist Yolanda del Amo depicts the powerful forces between people—their conflicting needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality. In Archipelago, these competing needs seem to have reached a peaceful if temporary stasis. These beautiful images show people who, although in the presence of another, appear surrounded on all sides not by water but by silence.

Del Amo leaves the relationships of her subjects to each other deliberately vague, which makes her images all the more universal and compelling. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when two people—whether they are mother and son, husband and wife, or simply friends—momentarily live alone, together.

Read a review!

Diane Banks and Adam Francey Recent Works
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Diane Banks' specimen series sculptures and drawings are inspired by the fragileness of nature and the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength. Her sculptures are created through the combination of organic and found plastic materials. Through the use of these materials, Banks reveals her fascination how nature protects itself from physical harm caused by man's intrusion, and the many ways it contorts itself to survive.

Working with related and unrelated imagery, Adam Francey layers and edits his paintings until an abstracted composition emerges. These are not works about a concrete idea; rather they provide an opportunity for unlimited readings, depending on point-of-view or frame of reference. Snippets from overheard conversations are peppered in the compositions. These works alternate between toughness and humor, with vibrant colors that appear at any moment, ready to leap off of the surface.

Emerging Women of CNY #1
Redhouse

Price: Free
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Artwork by Taye Wright-hirry, Maria Janina Rizzo, Alexandara Crosby, and Kristie Hayes.

Read a review!

Christian Dior 1947-1957
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Seven original designs by the late fashion icon Christian Dior are on view in the exhibition "Christian Dior 1947-1957." The exhibition documents and honors the memory of Dior, who began his design house in 1947 in post-World War II Paris and ruled the fashion world until his death in 1957. The outfits featured are taken from the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection and the Martha M. Caldwell Costume Collection, which are housed in the fashion design program at Syracuse University.

Unique: Objects Created by Artists with Disabilities
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Longtime Delavan Center manager Caroline Szozda celebrates the opening of her new gallery with this exhibit of work from the 10th anniversary of Unique, a magazine produced by ARISE showcasing work by artists with disabilities.

Bill Viola Video Art
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Everson was the first museum to collect video art, beginning in the early 1970s. Bill Viola, now one of the world's leading video artists, studied at Syracuse University and began his career at the Everson. A selection of historic videos by Bill Viola from the Everson's pioneering video collection will be shown in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court in conjunction with the Urban Video Project (UVP), which will also be featuring Viola this fall.

On My Own Time
Everson Museum of Art
CNY Arts

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

Since 1974, the Cultural Resources Council, in collaboration with the Everson, has presented On My Own Time. A celebration of artwork created by employees of local businesses on their own time, the exhibition is meant to promote creativity and artistic endeavors by those who are not full-time artists.

Works of Cui Fei
The Warehouse Gallery

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

Born in Jinan, China, Cui received her BFA degree in painting from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China (now China National Academy of Fine Arts) in 1993, and her MFA degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Nature is a recurring theme in Cui's work; an artist mainly known for her abstract Chinese calligraphy and related installations using twigs or thorns. For this exhibit, she will create works on paper using thorns and an installation consisting of salt, as a reference to Syracuse's history. Her work comments on the central role of nature, her Chinese origins, and current practices in the West. The vault will display a healing piece using sand referring to the tradition of sand paintings by Native Americans, Tibetan monks, Indians, Australian Aborigines, and Latin Americans. Though widely exhibited, this is Cui's first solo museum exhibition.

Read a review!

New Formula
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

An artistic examination of C2's molecular fusion with design firm Lock 49 and artist Brendan Rose.

Half the Sky
University Lectures
Featuring Nicholas D. Kristof

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Kristof graduated from Harvard College, Phi Beta Kappa, and then won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 140 countries. After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a correspondent in Los Angeles and as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign and is the author of the chapter on Bush in the reference book The Presidents. He later was associate managing editor of the Times, responsible for Sunday editions.

In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Kristof and WuDunn are also authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, and Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Haunted by what he has seen in Darfur, Kristof has traveled to the region four times to provide coverage of the genocide that is unfolding there. In 2006, he won his second Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." The lecture is co-sponsored by Karl Solibakke for the Bachman Conference, the School of Education, the Newhouse School of Public Communication, and the Syracuse University's Humanities Center.

Reduced-rate parking for the event is available in the Irving Avenue parking garage.

Sangeetha Ekambaram and Sabine Krantz, sopranos
Civic Morning Musicals

Price: Free
Hosmer Auditorium, Everson Museum
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

A delightful program of varied folk music of Irish, Spanish, Swedish, and Norwegian origins. Sangeetha Ekambaram and Sabine Krantz will sing as an ensemble, accompanied by Cindy Josbena, piano, Katarina Hege, violin, and Emmett van Slyke, guitar. Music of Dvorak, Britten, Bartok, and van Slyke will also be part of this wonderfully varied program.

Phillip Memmer, poetry
Raymond Carver Reading Series

Price: Free
Gifford Auditorium, Huntington Beard Crouse Hall
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Philip Memmer's three books of poems include Lucifer: A Hagiography (Lost Horse Press 2009), winner of the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry; Threat of Pleasure (Word Press 2008), winner of the 2008 Adirondack Literary Award in Poetry; and Sweetheart, Baby, Darling (Word Press 2004). His work has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Epoch, and Mid-American Review, and in several anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. He is founder and director of the YMCA's Downtown Writer's Center in Syracuse.

The reading will be preceded by a question and answer session from 3:45-4:30. The public is welcome.

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Windows Project: Waking from Dreams of India
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Upstate New York photographer Neil Chowdhury has created works consisting of three digital photomontages (fit to the dimensions of the windows in the Window Projects) and a multichannel video installation (displayed in the Window Projects space) with a soundtrack of Indian classical music, Hindi pop music, and ambient street sound that address contemporary India as well as clichés and the artist's origins.

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

Silk: Photographs by Courtney Rile
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The Silent Scream: Conflict in Novels Without Words
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

The Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library has always had a keen interest in all forms of book illustration, and not surprisingly, novels without words became a significant collecting area. Over time, we have amassed a considerable number of the classic specimens in the genre, and the main practitioners of the art form are well represented within our holdings. We developed this exhibition in keeping with the Syracuse Symposium theme for the coming year, "conflict." The artists upon whom we focused are William Gropper, Laurence Hyde, Frans Masereel, Giacomo Patri, John Vassos, and Lynd Ward.

In addition to conflict, novels without words often portray a quest on the part of the individual. This may assume the form of a journey or a saga about the search for self-fulfillment in artistic or purely personal terms, or the quest may have as its primary objective achieving social justice in a particular context. Because of the historical period in which many of these wordless novels were born, they often depict a struggle between the individual and the industrialized world. Industrialization and, by extension, capitalism, may be seen as forces that are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the individual and of society in general. Similarly, the law, the police, and the armed forces may all be viewed as instruments of repression in novels without words.

The creators of novels without words also tend to scrutinize the brutal forms of war and tyranny that are made possible by industrialization. In truth, any injustice may become the subject of such works, and perhaps just the cruel nature of our existential struggle to survive in an inherently hostile environment is all the background that is needed to provide the inspiration for the creation of a novel without words.

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Dogs in Transition: Pit Bulls and Mill Dogs
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Cyrus Mejia's art focuses on activism and reflects the ideals of kindness and compassion while shining a light on "speciesism, ignorance and cruelty." Mejia is also co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals near the town of Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is especially known for rehabilitating 22 of the pit bulls rescued from NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

"Pits and Perception" is the first series on view, which portrays pit bulls in a manner that challenges modern-day perceptions of the breed. With increased attention toward dog fighting in the media, many view the pit bull as a vicious and aggressive dog. Through his paintings, Mejia challenges these beliefs by forcing the observer to take a closer look and question public perception.

The second collection, "Mill Dogs Revenge," features dogs rescued from commercial breeding facilities, colloquially known as "puppy mills." Victims of physical abuse, emotional trauma and neglect, these dogs are often subjected to cruel conditions because of human greed for profit. Mejia hopes to raise awareness of the cruelty of puppy mills through his art.

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Archipelago: Works by Yolanda del Amo
Light Work Gallery

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

There will be an opening reception this evening 5:00-7:00 pm.

Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. In her series Archipelago, artist Yolanda del Amo depicts the powerful forces between people—their conflicting needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality. In Archipelago, these competing needs seem to have reached a peaceful if temporary stasis. These beautiful images show people who, although in the presence of another, appear surrounded on all sides not by water but by silence.

Del Amo leaves the relationships of her subjects to each other deliberately vague, which makes her images all the more universal and compelling. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when two people—whether they are mother and son, husband and wife, or simply friends—momentarily live alone, together.

Read a review!

Diane Banks and Adam Francey Recent Works
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Diane Banks' specimen series sculptures and drawings are inspired by the fragileness of nature and the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength. Her sculptures are created through the combination of organic and found plastic materials. Through the use of these materials, Banks reveals her fascination how nature protects itself from physical harm caused by man's intrusion, and the many ways it contorts itself to survive.

Working with related and unrelated imagery, Adam Francey layers and edits his paintings until an abstracted composition emerges. These are not works about a concrete idea; rather they provide an opportunity for unlimited readings, depending on point-of-view or frame of reference. Snippets from overheard conversations are peppered in the compositions. These works alternate between toughness and humor, with vibrant colors that appear at any moment, ready to leap off of the surface.

Emerging Women of CNY #1
Redhouse

Price: Free
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Artwork by Taye Wright-hirry, Maria Janina Rizzo, Alexandara Crosby, and Kristie Hayes.

Read a review!

Unique: Objects Created by Artists with Disabilities
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Longtime Delavan Center manager Caroline Szozda celebrates the opening of her new gallery with this exhibit of work from the 10th anniversary of Unique, a magazine produced by ARISE showcasing work by artists with disabilities.

A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape
Gandee Gallery

Price: Free
Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

"A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape" is a different kind of landscape exhibition. The show features painting, photography, and mixed-media art by Central New York artists that explores the interaction between the local landscape and human activity.

Exhibiting artists include Steven Barbash, Rayburn Beale, Willson Cummer, Brenda Edwards, Bob Gates, Nancy Kramer, Jared Landberg, Sarah McCoubrey, Diane Menzies, Phil Parsons, and Lucie Wellner.

On My Own Time
Everson Museum of Art
CNY Arts

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

Since 1974, the Cultural Resources Council, in collaboration with the Everson, has presented On My Own Time. A celebration of artwork created by employees of local businesses on their own time, the exhibition is meant to promote creativity and artistic endeavors by those who are not full-time artists.

Bill Viola Video Art
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Everson was the first museum to collect video art, beginning in the early 1970s. Bill Viola, now one of the world's leading video artists, studied at Syracuse University and began his career at the Everson. A selection of historic videos by Bill Viola from the Everson's pioneering video collection will be shown in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court in conjunction with the Urban Video Project (UVP), which will also be featuring Viola this fall.

VPA Faculty Show
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition featuring work by faculty in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Works of Cui Fei
The Warehouse Gallery

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

Born in Jinan, China, Cui received her BFA degree in painting from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China (now China National Academy of Fine Arts) in 1993, and her MFA degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Nature is a recurring theme in Cui's work; an artist mainly known for her abstract Chinese calligraphy and related installations using twigs or thorns. For this exhibit, she will create works on paper using thorns and an installation consisting of salt, as a reference to Syracuse's history. Her work comments on the central role of nature, her Chinese origins, and current practices in the West. The vault will display a healing piece using sand referring to the tradition of sand paintings by Native Americans, Tibetan monks, Indians, Australian Aborigines, and Latin Americans. Though widely exhibited, this is Cui's first solo museum exhibition.

Read a review!

Opening Reception: New Formula
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

There will be an opening reception and one-year anniversary celebration 5:00-9:00 pm, with live acoustic music by The David Wax Museum at 7:00 pm.

An artistic examination of C2's molecular fusion with design firm Lock 49 and artist Brendan Rose.

Eva Davidova: Location One & Two, 2005
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

(Digital animation loop, 2:12 minutes) These very short videos are photography-based animation loops, where movement, time, and spatial relationship are defined by the deliberate distortions in the process of blending a photo sequence. The pixels from one image are smoothly dragged and melted into those of the next one. Buildings and objects acquire impossible organic qualities, and the animations become almost sculptural. The affordances of spaces and structures are only dependent on the emotional state of the subject, and on the inner logic, or absurdity of each piece. Through invented and artificial, yet extremely realistic-looking movements, as well as by changing the perception of time, Davidova searches for hidden patterns and looks into states of mind unconditioned by the "possible".

Davidova's work has been exhibited internationally, including at Magnan Projects Gallery, New York; Instituto Cervantes, Sofia, Bulgaria; Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; N2 Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; and many others. She received a 2006 BANCAJA International Contest Award for Digital Art, the 2008 M-tel Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art, and the 2009 Djerassi Honorary Fellowship. In 2009 she participated in the Moscow Biennale and in the Living and Dreaming exhibition at the Bronx Museum, NY.

Cliff Evans: Untitled (Sketch for a monument to J.G. Ballard) #3, 2009
Urban Video Project

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

(1-minute loop) This composite of video footage is the first in a series of three "sketches," from which elements will later be taken to create a much larger virtual monument to the author J.G. Ballard. Within the video, disparate shots of an array of motorway overpasses and exchanges are stitched together in order to create a complex landscape of concrete, smoke, and automobiles. The images hurtle through a dense arterial chaos of constructed time and sibilance, dissolving into a column of smoke and revealing their destination as circular and contained.

Evans is a multimedia artist whose work focuses primarily on political, popular, and internet culture using appropriation and photomontage animation. His multi-channel installations and video objects have been shown internationally, including at the Chelsea Art Museum, Luxe Gallery, and Scope NY in New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Scope Miami in Miami; and the Chinese International Gallery Exposition in Beijing, China; among many others. He has also been an artist-in-residence at Boston Symphony Orchestra Tanglewood, Lenox, MA; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA; and Location One International Residency Program, New York, NY.

Yolanda del Amo Gallery Reception
Light Work Gallery

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

Gallery reception to celebrate Light Work's exhibition "Archipelago", featuring photographs by Yolanda del Amo.

Andrew Shapter, filmmaker
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Lender Auditorium, Whitman School of Management
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Filmmaker Andrew Shapter, who won critical acclaim for his 2006 documentary Before the Music Dies, will present a lecture. Shapter graduated from Texas State University in 1992 and began a career as a professional photographer specializing in music and fashion photography. As he began to garner recognition from magazine editors and ad agencies in New York City and abroad, his career gained momentum that led to work in other markets, including Barcelona, London and Los Angeles.

After working for 15 years in the photography market, Shapter turned his attention to his first passion: filmmaking. His first effort, Before the Music Dies, featured such prominent musicians as Dave Matthews, Eric Clapton, Erykah Badu, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt and Questlove and was a hit with music fans worldwide. His follow-up film, Happiness Is (2009), explores the truths and myths of the "pursuit of happiness" in America.

Shapter is currently working on The Teller and the Truth, a film project about a legendary Texas bank robbery. He also shoots music videos and works with such television networks as National Geographic.

Parking is available for $5 in the University Avenue Garage. For more information, contact the Bandier Program at 315-443-1388.

A Reading
University Neighbors Lecture Series
Featuring George Saunders

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

George Saunders, is the author of six books (including the short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation) and, most recently, the essay collection The Braindead Megaphone. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Harper's, and GQ. In 2006, he was awarded both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches at Syracuse University.

John Bellinger, poet
The Palace Poetry Group

Books and Melodies
2600 James St., Syracuse

John M. Bellinger is a lifetime resident of Dewitt, now living in East Syracuse in a 100-year-old house by the side of the railroad. He has been writing poetry since the age of 17. A former member of the seminal Comstock Writer's Group, he was the Managing Editor of The Comstock Review from 2006 through 2008. He has been published in CR, as well as The Blue Unicorn, Syracuse Seasons, and Small Pond Magazine.

Edges
Fowler High School Drama Club

Price: $5 at door, $3 advance
Fowler High School
227 Magnolia St., Syracuse

For more information, visit www.fowlerarts.com

My Dead Lady
Acme Mystery Company

Price: $32.50 plus tax and gratuities (includes meal and show)
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Interactive comedy/mystery dinner theater.

Professor Barry Biggins has a problem. Azalia Dimwittle has completely failed every attempt to elevate her from Cockney flower girl to aristocratic lady. She simply hasn’t gotten it, never will get it, and now everyone has just about had it. To make matters worse, she’s invited you and the rest of her conniving family over to the Professor's house for her father's birthday party. By George, I think she's going to get it (if she doesn't get them first).

It's a Wonderful Life
Skaneateles High School Drama Program

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors
Skaneateles High School
49 E. Elizabeth St., Skaneateles

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Blood Wedding
LeMoyne College

Price: $12 regular, $8 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Based on a true story of love, lust, and betrayal, Blood Wedding is one of the most powerful and innovative plays written this century. Federico Garcia Lorca wrote this play after reading a newspaper account of a young bride in Andalusia who abandoned her husband-to-be on their wedding day to escape with her childhood sweetheart. Lorca evokes the spectacle of human passion through sophisticated and often surrealistic poetic technique, elevating the love story to a tragedy of fate.

Lorca's image as a revolutionary artist made him a political symbol and his plays shocked theatergoers with their explicit overtones of forbidden love and freedom of thought. August 9, 1936, soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Franco's Fascists dragged the Spanish poet and playwright into a field, shot him, and tossed his body into an unmarked grave. His books were prohibited, his name forbidden.

Since then he has become the most-translated Spanish writer in history, widely recognized as poet of genius and possibly the foremost poetic dramatist of our time.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Windows Project: Waking from Dreams of India
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Upstate New York photographer Neil Chowdhury has created works consisting of three digital photomontages (fit to the dimensions of the windows in the Window Projects) and a multichannel video installation (displayed in the Window Projects space) with a soundtrack of Indian classical music, Hindi pop music, and ambient street sound that address contemporary India as well as clichés and the artist's origins.

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

Silk: Photographs by Courtney Rile
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

La Colección/The Collection: Exhibit 2
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A special program to commemorate Point of Contact's 35th anniversary and The Point of Contact Gallery's 5th -- a show of the entire permanent collection in five exhibitions starting in September 2010.

This second exhibit of the program presents contemporary photography by Maureen Connor, Rimma Gerlovina & Valeriy Gerlovin, Joseph Kugielsky, and intaglios by Nancy Graves.

The Silent Scream: Conflict in Novels Without Words
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

The Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library has always had a keen interest in all forms of book illustration, and not surprisingly, novels without words became a significant collecting area. Over time, we have amassed a considerable number of the classic specimens in the genre, and the main practitioners of the art form are well represented within our holdings. We developed this exhibition in keeping with the Syracuse Symposium theme for the coming year, "conflict." The artists upon whom we focused are William Gropper, Laurence Hyde, Frans Masereel, Giacomo Patri, John Vassos, and Lynd Ward.

In addition to conflict, novels without words often portray a quest on the part of the individual. This may assume the form of a journey or a saga about the search for self-fulfillment in artistic or purely personal terms, or the quest may have as its primary objective achieving social justice in a particular context. Because of the historical period in which many of these wordless novels were born, they often depict a struggle between the individual and the industrialized world. Industrialization and, by extension, capitalism, may be seen as forces that are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the individual and of society in general. Similarly, the law, the police, and the armed forces may all be viewed as instruments of repression in novels without words.

The creators of novels without words also tend to scrutinize the brutal forms of war and tyranny that are made possible by industrialization. In truth, any injustice may become the subject of such works, and perhaps just the cruel nature of our existential struggle to survive in an inherently hostile environment is all the background that is needed to provide the inspiration for the creation of a novel without words.

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Dogs in Transition: Pit Bulls and Mill Dogs
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Cyrus Mejia's art focuses on activism and reflects the ideals of kindness and compassion while shining a light on "speciesism, ignorance and cruelty." Mejia is also co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals near the town of Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is especially known for rehabilitating 22 of the pit bulls rescued from NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

"Pits and Perception" is the first series on view, which portrays pit bulls in a manner that challenges modern-day perceptions of the breed. With increased attention toward dog fighting in the media, many view the pit bull as a vicious and aggressive dog. Through his paintings, Mejia challenges these beliefs by forcing the observer to take a closer look and question public perception.

The second collection, "Mill Dogs Revenge," features dogs rescued from commercial breeding facilities, colloquially known as "puppy mills." Victims of physical abuse, emotional trauma and neglect, these dogs are often subjected to cruel conditions because of human greed for profit. Mejia hopes to raise awareness of the cruelty of puppy mills through his art.

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Works of Michael DiGiorgio
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

There will be an opening reception 6:00-9:00 p.m., with refreshments and musical entertainment provided. The event is part of Skaneateles' First Friday art night.

Nationally recognized nature artist Michael DiGiorgio is known for bird paintings that emphasize the character of the bird and its relationship to the environment. DiGiorgio, of Madison, CT, has been painting birds since the age of 5. His paintings and drawings have appeared in a variety of nature books and journals, including "Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil: The Pantanal and Cerrado of Central Brazil," "The Breeding Bird Atlas of Connecticut and of New York," "“Master's Guide to Birding," "Audubon Field Guide to Birds (Eastern and Western Regions)," Audubon Magazine, and Audubon Nature Yearbook.

He also has painted numerous covers for Bird Watcher's Digest and has been featured in Sanctuary magazine, a Massachusetts Audubon publication. Currently, he is illustrating bird plates for "The Birds of South America, Vol. III," with Robert Ridgely and Guy Tudor.

DiGiorgio won the first-ever endowment award from the Academy of Natural Sciences, in 2004, in recognition of his bird illustration work. The award was given in memory of Don Eckelberry, under whom he studied. DiGiorgio, whose style reflects his keen observations in the field, is committed to painting from life. He has traveled extensively to create field sketches of birds, plants and habitat from Central America, the West Indies, Trinidad and the Outer Islands of Britain. In addition, numerous trips to the western United States and national parks have allowed him to record a full range of American birdlife.

Archipelago: Works by Yolanda del Amo
Light Work Gallery

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

Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. In her series Archipelago, artist Yolanda del Amo depicts the powerful forces between people—their conflicting needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality. In Archipelago, these competing needs seem to have reached a peaceful if temporary stasis. These beautiful images show people who, although in the presence of another, appear surrounded on all sides not by water but by silence.

Del Amo leaves the relationships of her subjects to each other deliberately vague, which makes her images all the more universal and compelling. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when two people—whether they are mother and son, husband and wife, or simply friends—momentarily live alone, together.

Read a review!

Diane Banks and Adam Francey Recent Works
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Diane Banks' specimen series sculptures and drawings are inspired by the fragileness of nature and the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength. Her sculptures are created through the combination of organic and found plastic materials. Through the use of these materials, Banks reveals her fascination how nature protects itself from physical harm caused by man's intrusion, and the many ways it contorts itself to survive.

Working with related and unrelated imagery, Adam Francey layers and edits his paintings until an abstracted composition emerges. These are not works about a concrete idea; rather they provide an opportunity for unlimited readings, depending on point-of-view or frame of reference. Snippets from overheard conversations are peppered in the compositions. These works alternate between toughness and humor, with vibrant colors that appear at any moment, ready to leap off of the surface.

Emerging Women of CNY #1
Redhouse

Price: Free
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Artwork by Taye Wright-hirry, Maria Janina Rizzo, Alexandara Crosby, and Kristie Hayes.

Read a review!

Unique: Objects Created by Artists with Disabilities
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Longtime Delavan Center manager Caroline Szozda celebrates the opening of her new gallery with this exhibit of work from the 10th anniversary of Unique, a magazine produced by ARISE showcasing work by artists with disabilities.

A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape
Gandee Gallery

Price: Free
Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

"A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape" is a different kind of landscape exhibition. The show features painting, photography, and mixed-media art by Central New York artists that explores the interaction between the local landscape and human activity.

Exhibiting artists include Steven Barbash, Rayburn Beale, Willson Cummer, Brenda Edwards, Bob Gates, Nancy Kramer, Jared Landberg, Sarah McCoubrey, Diane Menzies, Phil Parsons, and Lucie Wellner.

56nd Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts, Inc.

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

The show and sale features paintings, pottery, jewelry, stained glass, and more. It's the perfect place to find special holiday gifts for your friends and family.

Bill Viola Video Art
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Everson was the first museum to collect video art, beginning in the early 1970s. Bill Viola, now one of the world's leading video artists, studied at Syracuse University and began his career at the Everson. A selection of historic videos by Bill Viola from the Everson's pioneering video collection will be shown in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court in conjunction with the Urban Video Project (UVP), which will also be featuring Viola this fall.

On My Own Time
Everson Museum of Art
CNY Arts

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

Since 1974, the Cultural Resources Council, in collaboration with the Everson, has presented On My Own Time. A celebration of artwork created by employees of local businesses on their own time, the exhibition is meant to promote creativity and artistic endeavors by those who are not full-time artists.

VPA Faculty Show
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition featuring work by faculty in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Works of Cui Fei
The Warehouse Gallery

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

Born in Jinan, China, Cui received her BFA degree in painting from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China (now China National Academy of Fine Arts) in 1993, and her MFA degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Nature is a recurring theme in Cui's work; an artist mainly known for her abstract Chinese calligraphy and related installations using twigs or thorns. For this exhibit, she will create works on paper using thorns and an installation consisting of salt, as a reference to Syracuse's history. Her work comments on the central role of nature, her Chinese origins, and current practices in the West. The vault will display a healing piece using sand referring to the tradition of sand paintings by Native Americans, Tibetan monks, Indians, Australian Aborigines, and Latin Americans. Though widely exhibited, this is Cui's first solo museum exhibition.

Read a review!

New Formula
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

An artistic examination of C2's molecular fusion with design firm Lock 49 and artist Brendan Rose.

Opening: Resin*ating Metal: Arlene Abend Retrospective
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

The sculpture of Arlene Abend, representing over 30 years of creating in resin, bronze, and steel

Read a Review!

Satan's Lemonade
Salt City Improv Theater

Price: $10 regular, $8 students
Salt City Improv Theatre
Shoppingtown Mall, Sears Wing, Dewitt

The SCiT house team performs their own special brand of long-form improvision, as only they can do it.

Eva Davidova: Location One & Two, 2005
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

(Digital animation loop, 2:12 minutes) These very short videos are photography-based animation loops, where movement, time, and spatial relationship are defined by the deliberate distortions in the process of blending a photo sequence. The pixels from one image are smoothly dragged and melted into those of the next one. Buildings and objects acquire impossible organic qualities, and the animations become almost sculptural. The affordances of spaces and structures are only dependent on the emotional state of the subject, and on the inner logic, or absurdity of each piece. Through invented and artificial, yet extremely realistic-looking movements, as well as by changing the perception of time, Davidova searches for hidden patterns and looks into states of mind unconditioned by the "possible".

Davidova's work has been exhibited internationally, including at Magnan Projects Gallery, New York; Instituto Cervantes, Sofia, Bulgaria; Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; N2 Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; and many others. She received a 2006 BANCAJA International Contest Award for Digital Art, the 2008 M-tel Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art, and the 2009 Djerassi Honorary Fellowship. In 2009 she participated in the Moscow Biennale and in the Living and Dreaming exhibition at the Bronx Museum, NY.

Cliff Evans: Untitled (Sketch for a monument to J.G. Ballard) #3, 2009
Urban Video Project

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

(1-minute loop) This composite of video footage is the first in a series of three "sketches," from which elements will later be taken to create a much larger virtual monument to the author J.G. Ballard. Within the video, disparate shots of an array of motorway overpasses and exchanges are stitched together in order to create a complex landscape of concrete, smoke, and automobiles. The images hurtle through a dense arterial chaos of constructed time and sibilance, dissolving into a column of smoke and revealing their destination as circular and contained.

Evans is a multimedia artist whose work focuses primarily on political, popular, and internet culture using appropriation and photomontage animation. His multi-channel installations and video objects have been shown internationally, including at the Chelsea Art Museum, Luxe Gallery, and Scope NY in New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Scope Miami in Miami; and the Chinese International Gallery Exposition in Beijing, China; among many others. He has also been an artist-in-residence at Boston Symphony Orchestra Tanglewood, Lenox, MA; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA; and Location One International Residency Program, New York, NY.

Syracuse Symphony Orchestra Woodwind Quintet
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

A wind quintet includes bassoon, horn, clarinet, oboe, and flute. Composers have long recognized the potential of this combination of instruments for great expressiveness and variety of mood. The music for wind quintet was written in the last 200 years, though arrangements of earlier music are often played to great effect.

Roy Book Binder
Folkus Project

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

Roy Book Binder is a blues singer, a virtuoso guitar player, a comedian, a folklorist and a master storyteller. For more than 40 years, the "Book" has been traveling the country in a motor home and his songs are rich with wry observations on the rambling lifestyle. His eclectic repertoire includes blues, ragtime, bluegrass, folk, and popular songs that originated in Tin Pan Alley. With his dry, self-deprecating humor, Book Binder regales his audiences with tales of life on the road and the eccentric characters he's met on his travels. "I make people smile," he says, "My greatest joy is to have an audience laugh."

Songs of Love Benefit

Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

A night of music theater songs performed by first and second year medical students of SUNY Upstate Medical University, with proceeds to benefit the Songs of Love organization.

Classics Series: Brahms' Choral Masterpiece
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Syracuse University Oratorio Society, Syracuse Children's Choir
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Janet Brown, soprano; Timothy LeFebvre, baritone

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

Copland Old American Songs
Brahms A German Requiem, op. 45

Wendy Mnookin
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Wendy Mnookin is the author of The Moon Makes Its Own Plea (BOA Editions, 2008) and three other collections, What He Took, To Get Here, and Guenever Speaks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Greensboro Review, Harvard Review, POOL, Prairie Schooner and Rhino. She has won a book award from the New England Poetry Club and a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street, a non-profit writing center in Boston.

Don't Dress for Dinner
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $36 includes show, dinner buffet, tax, and tip
Sunset Ridge Golf Club
2814 W. Seneca Tpke., Marcellus

Don't Dress for Dinner is a comedic case of mistaken identity involving a married couple, an old friend, a mistress, and a cook.

Proceeds benefit the Onondaga Free Library. For reservations, phone 315-673-2255.

Edges
Fowler High School Drama Club

Price: $5 at door, $3 advance
Fowler High School
227 Magnolia St., Syracuse

For more information, visit www.fowlerarts.com

Witness for the Prosecution
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
John LaCasse, director

First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

Witness for the Prosecution is a 1957 American courtroom drama movie based on a short story and later a play by Agatha Christie. The original movie deals with a man accused of murder and starred Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester.

Wilfred Robarts, a master defense attorney, accepts the case of Leonard Vole who is accused of murdering Ms Emily French, a rich, older woman who became infatuated with the younger man. Circumstantial evidence points to Vole as the killer. His German wife, Romaine, is his only alibi and Robarts finds her cold and self-possessed.

At trial, Vole's alibi falls apart when Romaine changes her story on the stand. The prosecutor and Robarts parry and thrust their way through the convoluted trial. Plot twists abound as new evidence surfaces in the third act. And then the plot thickens...but the Guild will adhere to the final message the movie gave back in 1957: "The management of this theater suggests that for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending to Witness for the Prosecution."

A local celebrity will be playing the cameo role of Jury Foreperson each night of the run.

It's a Wonderful Life
Skaneateles High School Drama Program

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors
Skaneateles High School
49 E. Elizabeth St., Skaneateles

Luther
Appleseed Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

What moves a man like Martin Luther—the man who initiated the Protestant Reformation? This exciting play reveals the man beneath the cowl and the mind behind the dramatic split in Christianity. Through all Luther's self-doubts, bodily ailments and brilliant intellectual achievements, he is helped by the kind and rational superiors of his order. Here, then, is Luther the man, monk, and mind in all its doubts, honesty and clarity of purpose. Luther, before the assembled dignitaries, lifts his book in his hand and says, "Here I stand!" By John Osborne.

Read a Review!

Blood Wedding
LeMoyne College

Price: $12 regular, $8 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Based on a true story of love, lust, and betrayal, Blood Wedding is one of the most powerful and innovative plays written this century. Federico Garcia Lorca wrote this play after reading a newspaper account of a young bride in Andalusia who abandoned her husband-to-be on their wedding day to escape with her childhood sweetheart. Lorca evokes the spectacle of human passion through sophisticated and often surrealistic poetic technique, elevating the love story to a tragedy of fate.

Lorca's image as a revolutionary artist made him a political symbol and his plays shocked theatergoers with their explicit overtones of forbidden love and freedom of thought. August 9, 1936, soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Franco's Fascists dragged the Spanish poet and playwright into a field, shot him, and tossed his body into an unmarked grave. His books were prohibited, his name forbidden.

Since then he has become the most-translated Spanish writer in history, widely recognized as poet of genius and possibly the foremost poetic dramatist of our time.

*CANCELLED* Christmas With the Calamari Sisters
Redhouse

Price: $30 cabaret seating; $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Red House Arts Center regretfully announces the cancellation of Christmas with the Calamari Sisters. "The production company for Calamari Sisters, Lively Arts Productions, called us Monday morning to inform us that they are not able to fulfill their contractual obligation with Red House," explains Administrative Director Mike Intaglietta. "We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of our customers."

Red House will refund all tickets purchased for the run of the show and Red House staff will attempt to contact all ticket purchasers as soon as possible. For further information or to inquire regarding a refund, please contact Mike Intaglietta at 315-425-0405 or email press@theredhouse.org.

Master Class
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Frank Fiumano, director

Price: $20
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Terrence McNally's play based on singing classes given by world-famous opera star Maria Callas.

Cathleen O'Brien stars as Maria Callas, with Richard Koons, Robin Lounsbury, Crystal Sikora, Josh Smith, and Bill Ali.

Read a Review!

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Windows Project: Waking from Dreams of India
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Upstate New York photographer Neil Chowdhury has created works consisting of three digital photomontages (fit to the dimensions of the windows in the Window Projects) and a multichannel video installation (displayed in the Window Projects space) with a soundtrack of Indian classical music, Hindi pop music, and ambient street sound that address contemporary India as well as clichés and the artist's origins.

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

Resin*ating Metal: Arlene Abend Retrospective
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

The sculpture of Arlene Abend, representing over 30 years of creating in resin, bronze, and steel

Read a Review!

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

New Formula
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

An artistic examination of C2's molecular fusion with design firm Lock 49 and artist Brendan Rose.

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

On My Own Time
Everson Museum of Art
CNY Arts

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

Since 1974, the Cultural Resources Council, in collaboration with the Everson, has presented On My Own Time. A celebration of artwork created by employees of local businesses on their own time, the exhibition is meant to promote creativity and artistic endeavors by those who are not full-time artists.

Bill Viola Video Art
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Everson was the first museum to collect video art, beginning in the early 1970s. Bill Viola, now one of the world's leading video artists, studied at Syracuse University and began his career at the Everson. A selection of historic videos by Bill Viola from the Everson's pioneering video collection will be shown in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court in conjunction with the Urban Video Project (UVP), which will also be featuring Viola this fall.

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Works of Michael DiGiorgio
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Nationally recognized nature artist Michael DiGiorgio is known for bird paintings that emphasize the character of the bird and its relationship to the environment. DiGiorgio, of Madison, CT, has been painting birds since the age of 5. His paintings and drawings have appeared in a variety of nature books and journals, including "Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil: The Pantanal and Cerrado of Central Brazil," "The Breeding Bird Atlas of Connecticut and of New York," "“Master's Guide to Birding," "Audubon Field Guide to Birds (Eastern and Western Regions)," Audubon Magazine, and Audubon Nature Yearbook.

He also has painted numerous covers for Bird Watcher's Digest and has been featured in Sanctuary magazine, a Massachusetts Audubon publication. Currently, he is illustrating bird plates for "The Birds of South America, Vol. III," with Robert Ridgely and Guy Tudor.

DiGiorgio won the first-ever endowment award from the Academy of Natural Sciences, in 2004, in recognition of his bird illustration work. The award was given in memory of Don Eckelberry, under whom he studied. DiGiorgio, whose style reflects his keen observations in the field, is committed to painting from life. He has traveled extensively to create field sketches of birds, plants and habitat from Central America, the West Indies, Trinidad and the Outer Islands of Britain. In addition, numerous trips to the western United States and national parks have allowed him to record a full range of American birdlife.

Unique: Objects Created by Artists with Disabilities
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Longtime Delavan Center manager Caroline Szozda celebrates the opening of her new gallery with this exhibit of work from the 10th anniversary of Unique, a magazine produced by ARISE showcasing work by artists with disabilities.

Dogs in Transition: Pit Bulls and Mill Dogs
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Cyrus Mejia's art focuses on activism and reflects the ideals of kindness and compassion while shining a light on "speciesism, ignorance and cruelty." Mejia is also co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals near the town of Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is especially known for rehabilitating 22 of the pit bulls rescued from NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

"Pits and Perception" is the first series on view, which portrays pit bulls in a manner that challenges modern-day perceptions of the breed. With increased attention toward dog fighting in the media, many view the pit bull as a vicious and aggressive dog. Through his paintings, Mejia challenges these beliefs by forcing the observer to take a closer look and question public perception.

The second collection, "Mill Dogs Revenge," features dogs rescued from commercial breeding facilities, colloquially known as "puppy mills." Victims of physical abuse, emotional trauma and neglect, these dogs are often subjected to cruel conditions because of human greed for profit. Mejia hopes to raise awareness of the cruelty of puppy mills through his art.

A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape
Gandee Gallery

Price: Free
Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

"A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape" is a different kind of landscape exhibition. The show features painting, photography, and mixed-media art by Central New York artists that explores the interaction between the local landscape and human activity.

Exhibiting artists include Steven Barbash, Rayburn Beale, Willson Cummer, Brenda Edwards, Bob Gates, Nancy Kramer, Jared Landberg, Sarah McCoubrey, Diane Menzies, Phil Parsons, and Lucie Wellner.

56nd Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts, Inc.

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

The show and sale features paintings, pottery, jewelry, stained glass, and more. It's the perfect place to find special holiday gifts for your friends and family.

Diane Banks and Adam Francey Recent Works
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Diane Banks' specimen series sculptures and drawings are inspired by the fragileness of nature and the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength. Her sculptures are created through the combination of organic and found plastic materials. Through the use of these materials, Banks reveals her fascination how nature protects itself from physical harm caused by man's intrusion, and the many ways it contorts itself to survive.

Working with related and unrelated imagery, Adam Francey layers and edits his paintings until an abstracted composition emerges. These are not works about a concrete idea; rather they provide an opportunity for unlimited readings, depending on point-of-view or frame of reference. Snippets from overheard conversations are peppered in the compositions. These works alternate between toughness and humor, with vibrant colors that appear at any moment, ready to leap off of the surface.

VPA Faculty Show
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition featuring work by faculty in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Works of Cui Fei
The Warehouse Gallery

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

Born in Jinan, China, Cui received her BFA degree in painting from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China (now China National Academy of Fine Arts) in 1993, and her MFA degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Nature is a recurring theme in Cui's work; an artist mainly known for her abstract Chinese calligraphy and related installations using twigs or thorns. For this exhibit, she will create works on paper using thorns and an installation consisting of salt, as a reference to Syracuse's history. Her work comments on the central role of nature, her Chinese origins, and current practices in the West. The vault will display a healing piece using sand referring to the tradition of sand paintings by Native Americans, Tibetan monks, Indians, Australian Aborigines, and Latin Americans. Though widely exhibited, this is Cui's first solo museum exhibition.

Read a review!

Opening Reception: Tonto Revisited: Native American Stereotypes
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

What do Land 'o Lakes, Argo Cornstarch and Syracuse minor league baseball have in common? Stereotyped images of Native Americans. This exhibit is curated by Tom Huff, a Seneca/Cayuga artist living and working in his sculpture studio on the Onondaga Nation. It exposes the cultural mythology surrounding Native Americans. The images and objects associated with "Indians" are dictated and defined by the dominant non-Indian culture. Many of the resulting representations are culturally and socially incorrect, even racist, with exaggerated misrepresentations of Native Americans.

Huff's collection of portrayals of menacing warriors wielding tomahawks, knives, and bows and arrows found in posters, advertisements, toys, sports logos and more will be on display. He has been collecting "Indian Kitsch" for over 25 years. While many may not think of them individually as destructive, this exhibit helps to illustrate how these pervasive negative preconceptions trivialize the tragedy wrought on indigenous peoples everywhere. We hope to both dispel the myths surrounding Native Americans and to encourage a new understanding of native peoples.

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!

Eva Davidova: Location One & Two, 2005
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

(Digital animation loop, 2:12 minutes) These very short videos are photography-based animation loops, where movement, time, and spatial relationship are defined by the deliberate distortions in the process of blending a photo sequence. The pixels from one image are smoothly dragged and melted into those of the next one. Buildings and objects acquire impossible organic qualities, and the animations become almost sculptural. The affordances of spaces and structures are only dependent on the emotional state of the subject, and on the inner logic, or absurdity of each piece. Through invented and artificial, yet extremely realistic-looking movements, as well as by changing the perception of time, Davidova searches for hidden patterns and looks into states of mind unconditioned by the "possible".

Davidova's work has been exhibited internationally, including at Magnan Projects Gallery, New York; Instituto Cervantes, Sofia, Bulgaria; Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; N2 Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; and many others. She received a 2006 BANCAJA International Contest Award for Digital Art, the 2008 M-tel Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art, and the 2009 Djerassi Honorary Fellowship. In 2009 she participated in the Moscow Biennale and in the Living and Dreaming exhibition at the Bronx Museum, NY.

Cliff Evans: Untitled (Sketch for a monument to J.G. Ballard) #3, 2009
Urban Video Project

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

(1-minute loop) This composite of video footage is the first in a series of three "sketches," from which elements will later be taken to create a much larger virtual monument to the author J.G. Ballard. Within the video, disparate shots of an array of motorway overpasses and exchanges are stitched together in order to create a complex landscape of concrete, smoke, and automobiles. The images hurtle through a dense arterial chaos of constructed time and sibilance, dissolving into a column of smoke and revealing their destination as circular and contained.

Evans is a multimedia artist whose work focuses primarily on political, popular, and internet culture using appropriation and photomontage animation. His multi-channel installations and video objects have been shown internationally, including at the Chelsea Art Museum, Luxe Gallery, and Scope NY in New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Scope Miami in Miami; and the Chinese International Gallery Exposition in Beijing, China; among many others. He has also been an artist-in-residence at Boston Symphony Orchestra Tanglewood, Lenox, MA; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA; and Location One International Residency Program, New York, NY.

Senior Voice recital
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Gyasi Barber

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

Barber, a senior music education and voice performance major, will perform works by Mozart, Halevy, D'Mello, Dvorak, and Kern. The recital will also feature Patrick Behringer on piano and Alyssa LoPresti on clarinet.

Free parking is available in the Harrison or Lehman Lots.

Upper State Independent Awards

Price: $20
Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

The essence of the Upper State Independent Awards show is to acknowledge independent musicians from all genres and backgrounds, showing appreciation for work by independent musicians, poets, models, designers, comedians, photographers, choreographers, movie makers/DVD, on-line radio shows, and television shows.

For more information, visit usiawards.com or phone 315-422-1406.

Songs of Love Benefit

Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

A night of music theater songs performed by first and second year medical students of SUNY Upstate Medical University, with proceeds to benefit the Songs of Love organization.

Classics Series: Brahms' Choral Masterpiece
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Syracuse University Oratorio Society, Syracuse Children's Choir
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Janet Brown, soprano; Timothy LeFebvre, baritone

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

Copland Old American Songs
Brahms A German Requiem, op. 45

Rusted Root, with special guests
Westcott Theater

Price: $25
Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

The Legend of the Banana Kid
Open Hand Theater
Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers

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

Alice in Wonderland
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive comedic retelling of the classic tale.

It's a Wonderful Life
Skaneateles High School Drama Program

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors
Skaneateles High School
49 E. Elizabeth St., Skaneateles

*CANCELLED* Christmas With the Calamari Sisters
Redhouse

Price: $30 cabaret seating; $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Red House Arts Center regretfully announces the cancellation of Christmas with the Calamari Sisters. "The production company for Calamari Sisters, Lively Arts Productions, called us Monday morning to inform us that they are not able to fulfill their contractual obligation with Red House," explains Administrative Director Mike Intaglietta. "We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of our customers."

Red House will refund all tickets purchased for the run of the show and Red House staff will attempt to contact all ticket purchasers as soon as possible. For further information or to inquire regarding a refund, please contact Mike Intaglietta at 315-425-0405 or email press@theredhouse.org.

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Don't Dress for Dinner
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $36 includes show, dinner buffet, tax, and tip
Sunset Ridge Golf Club
2814 W. Seneca Tpke., Marcellus

Don't Dress for Dinner is a comedic case of mistaken identity involving a married couple, an old friend, a mistress, and a cook.

Proceeds benefit the Onondaga Free Library. For reservations, phone 315-673-2255.

Edges
Fowler High School Drama Club

Price: $5 at door, $3 advance
Fowler High School
227 Magnolia St., Syracuse

For more information, visit www.fowlerarts.com

Witness for the Prosecution
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
John LaCasse, director

First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

Witness for the Prosecution is a 1957 American courtroom drama movie based on a short story and later a play by Agatha Christie. The original movie deals with a man accused of murder and starred Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester.

Wilfred Robarts, a master defense attorney, accepts the case of Leonard Vole who is accused of murdering Ms Emily French, a rich, older woman who became infatuated with the younger man. Circumstantial evidence points to Vole as the killer. His German wife, Romaine, is his only alibi and Robarts finds her cold and self-possessed.

At trial, Vole's alibi falls apart when Romaine changes her story on the stand. The prosecutor and Robarts parry and thrust their way through the convoluted trial. Plot twists abound as new evidence surfaces in the third act. And then the plot thickens...but the Guild will adhere to the final message the movie gave back in 1957: "The management of this theater suggests that for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending to Witness for the Prosecution."

A local celebrity will be playing the cameo role of Jury Foreperson each night of the run.

It's a Wonderful Life
Skaneateles High School Drama Program

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors
Skaneateles High School
49 E. Elizabeth St., Skaneateles

An Evening with the BBC (Bard Booster Club)
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park

Price: $25
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Benefit the Bard: Ye Olde Sundae Shop, live characters, tarot readings, your picture with Shakespeare, MEB Music -- there's only one place you can get all of these in an evening of fun and that's at Syracuse Shakespeare Festival's 2010 fundraising spectacular. You can buy tickets in advance at our website, or by cash or check at the door.

You'll be treated to the smooth sounds of the Mike Estep Band, Anne Dougherty will read your Shakespearean Tarot cards to give you a glimpse into your future, and actors dressed as characters from famous Shakespearean plays will play along with you as you enjoy the festivities. You can have your picture taken in our Shakespeare cutout while you're enjoying delicious Gannon's Isle ice cream with brownies, delightful toppings and smooth beverages.

Luther
Appleseed Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

What moves a man like Martin Luther—the man who initiated the Protestant Reformation? This exciting play reveals the man beneath the cowl and the mind behind the dramatic split in Christianity. Through all Luther's self-doubts, bodily ailments and brilliant intellectual achievements, he is helped by the kind and rational superiors of his order. Here, then, is Luther the man, monk, and mind in all its doubts, honesty and clarity of purpose. Luther, before the assembled dignitaries, lifts his book in his hand and says, "Here I stand!" By John Osborne.

Read a Review!

Blood Wedding
LeMoyne College

Price: $12 regular, $8 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Based on a true story of love, lust, and betrayal, Blood Wedding is one of the most powerful and innovative plays written this century. Federico Garcia Lorca wrote this play after reading a newspaper account of a young bride in Andalusia who abandoned her husband-to-be on their wedding day to escape with her childhood sweetheart. Lorca evokes the spectacle of human passion through sophisticated and often surrealistic poetic technique, elevating the love story to a tragedy of fate.

Lorca's image as a revolutionary artist made him a political symbol and his plays shocked theatergoers with their explicit overtones of forbidden love and freedom of thought. August 9, 1936, soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Franco's Fascists dragged the Spanish poet and playwright into a field, shot him, and tossed his body into an unmarked grave. His books were prohibited, his name forbidden.

Since then he has become the most-translated Spanish writer in history, widely recognized as poet of genius and possibly the foremost poetic dramatist of our time.

*CANCELLED* Christmas With the Calamari Sisters
Redhouse

Price: $30 cabaret seating; $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Red House Arts Center regretfully announces the cancellation of Christmas with the Calamari Sisters. "The production company for Calamari Sisters, Lively Arts Productions, called us Monday morning to inform us that they are not able to fulfill their contractual obligation with Red House," explains Administrative Director Mike Intaglietta. "We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of our customers."

Red House will refund all tickets purchased for the run of the show and Red House staff will attempt to contact all ticket purchasers as soon as possible. For further information or to inquire regarding a refund, please contact Mike Intaglietta at 315-425-0405 or email press@theredhouse.org.

Master Class
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Frank Fiumano, director

Price: $20
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Terrence McNally's play based on singing classes given by world-famous opera star Maria Callas.

Cathleen O'Brien stars as Maria Callas, with Richard Koons, Robin Lounsbury, Crystal Sikora, Josh Smith, and Bill Ali.

Read a Review!

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Archipelago: Works by Yolanda del Amo
Light Work Gallery

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

Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. In her series Archipelago, artist Yolanda del Amo depicts the powerful forces between people—their conflicting needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality. In Archipelago, these competing needs seem to have reached a peaceful if temporary stasis. These beautiful images show people who, although in the presence of another, appear surrounded on all sides not by water but by silence.

Del Amo leaves the relationships of her subjects to each other deliberately vague, which makes her images all the more universal and compelling. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when two people—whether they are mother and son, husband and wife, or simply friends—momentarily live alone, together.

Read a review!

Unique: Objects Created by Artists with Disabilities
Szozda Gallery

Szozda Gallery
Delavan Center, 501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Longtime Delavan Center manager Caroline Szozda celebrates the opening of her new gallery with this exhibit of work from the 10th anniversary of Unique, a magazine produced by ARISE showcasing work by artists with disabilities.

A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape
Gandee Gallery

Price: Free
Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

"A Sense of Place: The Real Central New York Landscape" is a different kind of landscape exhibition. The show features painting, photography, and mixed-media art by Central New York artists that explores the interaction between the local landscape and human activity.

Exhibiting artists include Steven Barbash, Rayburn Beale, Willson Cummer, Brenda Edwards, Bob Gates, Nancy Kramer, Jared Landberg, Sarah McCoubrey, Diane Menzies, Phil Parsons, and Lucie Wellner.

Works of Michael DiGiorgio
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Nationally recognized nature artist Michael DiGiorgio is known for bird paintings that emphasize the character of the bird and its relationship to the environment. DiGiorgio, of Madison, CT, has been painting birds since the age of 5. His paintings and drawings have appeared in a variety of nature books and journals, including "Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil: The Pantanal and Cerrado of Central Brazil," "The Breeding Bird Atlas of Connecticut and of New York," "“Master's Guide to Birding," "Audubon Field Guide to Birds (Eastern and Western Regions)," Audubon Magazine, and Audubon Nature Yearbook.

He also has painted numerous covers for Bird Watcher's Digest and has been featured in Sanctuary magazine, a Massachusetts Audubon publication. Currently, he is illustrating bird plates for "The Birds of South America, Vol. III," with Robert Ridgely and Guy Tudor.

DiGiorgio won the first-ever endowment award from the Academy of Natural Sciences, in 2004, in recognition of his bird illustration work. The award was given in memory of Don Eckelberry, under whom he studied. DiGiorgio, whose style reflects his keen observations in the field, is committed to painting from life. He has traveled extensively to create field sketches of birds, plants and habitat from Central America, the West Indies, Trinidad and the Outer Islands of Britain. In addition, numerous trips to the western United States and national parks have allowed him to record a full range of American birdlife.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This year's version will feature toys from the 1970s. Do you remember playing Pong on Atari, getting your first Luke Skywalker figure, or just wishing to have your own Malibu Barbie? Then you won't want to miss this journey into the decade of Charlie's Angels, Richard Nixon and a gallon of gasoline at fifty cents.

Bill Viola Video Art
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Everson was the first museum to collect video art, beginning in the early 1970s. Bill Viola, now one of the world's leading video artists, studied at Syracuse University and began his career at the Everson. A selection of historic videos by Bill Viola from the Everson's pioneering video collection will be shown in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court in conjunction with the Urban Video Project (UVP), which will also be featuring Viola this fall.

On My Own Time
Everson Museum of Art
CNY Arts

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

Since 1974, the Cultural Resources Council, in collaboration with the Everson, has presented On My Own Time. A celebration of artwork created by employees of local businesses on their own time, the exhibition is meant to promote creativity and artistic endeavors by those who are not full-time artists.

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

VPA Faculty Show
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition featuring work by faculty in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Cliff Evans: Untitled (Sketch for a monument to J.G. Ballard) #3, 2009
Urban Video Project

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

(1-minute loop) This composite of video footage is the first in a series of three "sketches," from which elements will later be taken to create a much larger virtual monument to the author J.G. Ballard. Within the video, disparate shots of an array of motorway overpasses and exchanges are stitched together in order to create a complex landscape of concrete, smoke, and automobiles. The images hurtle through a dense arterial chaos of constructed time and sibilance, dissolving into a column of smoke and revealing their destination as circular and contained.

Evans is a multimedia artist whose work focuses primarily on political, popular, and internet culture using appropriation and photomontage animation. His multi-channel installations and video objects have been shown internationally, including at the Chelsea Art Museum, Luxe Gallery, and Scope NY in New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Scope Miami in Miami; and the Chinese International Gallery Exposition in Beijing, China; among many others. He has also been an artist-in-residence at Boston Symphony Orchestra Tanglewood, Lenox, MA; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA; and Location One International Residency Program, New York, NY.

Eva Davidova: Location One & Two, 2005
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

(Digital animation loop, 2:12 minutes) These very short videos are photography-based animation loops, where movement, time, and spatial relationship are defined by the deliberate distortions in the process of blending a photo sequence. The pixels from one image are smoothly dragged and melted into those of the next one. Buildings and objects acquire impossible organic qualities, and the animations become almost sculptural. The affordances of spaces and structures are only dependent on the emotional state of the subject, and on the inner logic, or absurdity of each piece. Through invented and artificial, yet extremely realistic-looking movements, as well as by changing the perception of time, Davidova searches for hidden patterns and looks into states of mind unconditioned by the "possible".

Davidova's work has been exhibited internationally, including at Magnan Projects Gallery, New York; Instituto Cervantes, Sofia, Bulgaria; Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; N2 Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; and many others. She received a 2006 BANCAJA International Contest Award for Digital Art, the 2008 M-tel Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art, and the 2009 Djerassi Honorary Fellowship. In 2009 she participated in the Moscow Biennale and in the Living and Dreaming exhibition at the Bronx Museum, NY.

Mozart and the Clarinet
Arts Alive in Liverpool
Ralph D'Mello, Kit Dodd, Kevin Moore, and members of the Syracuse Symphony

Price: Free
Liverpool Public Library
310 Tulip St., Liverpool

Sunday Musicale: Syracuse Chorale Chamber Choir
Fayetteville Free Library

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

Songs of Love Benefit

Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

A night of music theater songs performed by first and second year medical students of SUNY Upstate Medical University, with proceeds to benefit the Songs of Love organization.

Spanish Flair
Onondaga Civic Symphony Orchestra
Erik Kibelsbeck, conductor
Featuring Dawn Pierce, mezzo soprano

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Victor Mallia El Castillo Real (premier of orchestral version)
Georges Bizet Carmen Selections
Manuel de Falla Suite from The Three-Cornered Hat
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov Capriccio Espagnol

The Hawthorne String Quartet: Music from Terezín
Malmgren Concert Series

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

A special concert featuring music from Czech composers incarcerated at the Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp during the Holocaust, as well as staples from the traditional quartet repertoire. Works by Beethoven, Haas, Klein and Ullmann will be performed.

A pre-concert lecture by quartet member Mark Ludwig will be held at 3:30 p.m. in the chapel, prior to the concert, and a reception will follow the concert in the chapel's Noble Room..

This performance is co-sponsored by the Regional Holocaust and Genocide Initiative in SU's School of Education.

Jazz Vespers: Blessings Abound
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring Tish Oney

Price: Free (donations accepted)
Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church
5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

The program will feature internationally acclaimed jazz vocalist and native Syracusan Tish Oney, who tours internationally. She'll be backed by series music director Barry Blumenthal, leading a quartet drawn from the ranks of the CNY Jazz Orchestra.

Jazz Vespers is a combination of inspirational and meditative readings, homily, and jazz played by members of the CNY Jazz Orchestra and various guest vocalists. The jazz selections are drawn from secular and sacred sources, representing a wide range of composers as varied as Duke Ellington, Chick Corea, Cole Porter, and Stephen Foster, and well-known hymns in jazz settings for all to enjoy, singing as they wish. The service is open to those of all faiths.

Ensemble Nordlys
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

Ensemble Nordlys, a chamber ensemble based in Copenhagen, Denmark, will perform works by Bent Sørensen, Carl Nielsen, Zoltan Kodaly, Paul Hindemith, and faculty member and interim co-director Andrew Waggoner. Waggoner's piece was commissioned by Ensemble Nordlys and premiered by the group last spring in Copenhagen.

Hailed in Europe as one of the most exciting young chamber ensembles on the scene, Ensemble Nordlys ("the Northern Lights Ensemble") will stop in Syracuse as part of its U.S. debut tour. Other stops include Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York City and Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island.

Ensemble Nordlys consists of Christine Pryn, violin; Øystein Sonstad, cello; Kristoffer Hyldig, piano; and Viktor Wennesz, clarinet. Since its critically acclaimed debut in 1997, it has performed at prestigious venues around the world, becoming one of the most successful and well-established young Danish ensembles.

Free parking is available in the Irving Garage. For more information, contact the Setnor School at 315-443-2191.

Don't Dress for Dinner
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $36 includes show, dinner buffet, tax, and tip
Sunset Ridge Golf Club
2814 W. Seneca Tpke., Marcellus

Don't Dress for Dinner is a comedic case of mistaken identity involving a married couple, an old friend, a mistress, and a cook.

Proceeds benefit the Onondaga Free Library. For reservations, phone 315-673-2255.

*CANCELLED* Christmas With the Calamari Sisters
Redhouse

Price: $30 cabaret seating; $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Red House Arts Center regretfully announces the cancellation of Christmas with the Calamari Sisters. "The production company for Calamari Sisters, Lively Arts Productions, called us Monday morning to inform us that they are not able to fulfill their contractual obligation with Red House," explains Administrative Director Mike Intaglietta. "We deeply regret the inconvenience to all of our customers."

Red House will refund all tickets purchased for the run of the show and Red House staff will attempt to contact all ticket purchasers as soon as possible. For further information or to inquire regarding a refund, please contact Mike Intaglietta at 315-425-0405 or email press@theredhouse.org.

Master Class
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Frank Fiumano, director

Price: $20
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Terrence McNally's play based on singing classes given by world-famous opera star Maria Callas.

Cathleen O'Brien stars as Maria Callas, with Richard Koons, Robin Lounsbury, Crystal Sikora, Josh Smith, and Bill Ali.

Read a Review!

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Witness for the Prosecution
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
John LaCasse, director

First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

Witness for the Prosecution is a 1957 American courtroom drama movie based on a short story and later a play by Agatha Christie. The original movie deals with a man accused of murder and starred Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester.

Wilfred Robarts, a master defense attorney, accepts the case of Leonard Vole who is accused of murdering Ms Emily French, a rich, older woman who became infatuated with the younger man. Circumstantial evidence points to Vole as the killer. His German wife, Romaine, is his only alibi and Robarts finds her cold and self-possessed.

At trial, Vole's alibi falls apart when Romaine changes her story on the stand. The prosecutor and Robarts parry and thrust their way through the convoluted trial. Plot twists abound as new evidence surfaces in the third act. And then the plot thickens...but the Guild will adhere to the final message the movie gave back in 1957: "The management of this theater suggests that for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending to Witness for the Prosecution."

A local celebrity will be playing the cameo role of Jury Foreperson each night of the run.

The 39 Steps
Syracuse Stage
Peter Amster, director

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

Gunshots, murder, and dastardly plots; seductive spies, thrilling chases and serious flirtation; they're all part of this rollicking comedy/mystery and Broadway hit. Based on the 1935 classic film by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps follows Richard Hannay as he sets out for a night of music hall entertainment only to be ensnared in a dangerous attempt to smuggle top-secret information out of the country. Four actors and ingenious and inventive staging prove that anything movies can do, theatre can do more hilariously. Adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Read a Review!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

Silk: Photographs by Courtney Rile
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Marcus Acevedo Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Artist's Statement: The duality of man, the potential to be both divine and carnal beings, has always interested me. There is a struggle with the expectations associated with these opposing forces: the potential for greatness always present on one hand, and weaknesses inescapable on the other. My work exists to inspire the question of what is the nature of heroes, legends and Gods, and how different is that from the nature of man. My work goes beyond self-analysis and introspection. I use myself as the archetype for the experiences that connect us. I want to explore not only the greatness of man, but the weakness as well. My work demonstrates that we are powerful and that there is no contradiction that this great power can manifest itself in a person that is inadequate, fearful and weak. In my work I am actor and director, puppet and puppet master, mortal and God. I am free to explore all of these relationships, to be whomever and what ever I desire.

La Colección/The Collection: Exhibit 2
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A special program to commemorate Point of Contact's 35th anniversary and The Point of Contact Gallery's 5th -- a show of the entire permanent collection in five exhibitions starting in September 2010.

This second exhibit of the program presents contemporary photography by Maureen Connor, Rimma Gerlovina & Valeriy Gerlovin, Joseph Kugielsky, and intaglios by Nancy Graves.

The Silent Scream: Conflict in Novels Without Words
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

The Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library has always had a keen interest in all forms of book illustration, and not surprisingly, novels without words became a significant collecting area. Over time, we have amassed a considerable number of the classic specimens in the genre, and the main practitioners of the art form are well represented within our holdings. We developed this exhibition in keeping with the Syracuse Symposium theme for the coming year, "conflict." The artists upon whom we focused are William Gropper, Laurence Hyde, Frans Masereel, Giacomo Patri, John Vassos, and Lynd Ward.

In addition to conflict, novels without words often portray a quest on the part of the individual. This may assume the form of a journey or a saga about the search for self-fulfillment in artistic or purely personal terms, or the quest may have as its primary objective achieving social justice in a particular context. Because of the historical period in which many of these wordless novels were born, they often depict a struggle between the individual and the industrialized world. Industrialization and, by extension, capitalism, may be seen as forces that are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the individual and of society in general. Similarly, the law, the police, and the armed forces may all be viewed as instruments of repression in novels without words.

The creators of novels without words also tend to scrutinize the brutal forms of war and tyranny that are made possible by industrialization. In truth, any injustice may become the subject of such works, and perhaps just the cruel nature of our existential struggle to survive in an inherently hostile environment is all the background that is needed to provide the inspiration for the creation of a novel without words.

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Works of Michael DiGiorgio
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Nationally recognized nature artist Michael DiGiorgio is known for bird paintings that emphasize the character of the bird and its relationship to the environment. DiGiorgio, of Madison, CT, has been painting birds since the age of 5. His paintings and drawings have appeared in a variety of nature books and journals, including "Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil: The Pantanal and Cerrado of Central Brazil," "The Breeding Bird Atlas of Connecticut and of New York," "“Master's Guide to Birding," "Audubon Field Guide to Birds (Eastern and Western Regions)," Audubon Magazine, and Audubon Nature Yearbook.

He also has painted numerous covers for Bird Watcher's Digest and has been featured in Sanctuary magazine, a Massachusetts Audubon publication. Currently, he is illustrating bird plates for "The Birds of South America, Vol. III," with Robert Ridgely and Guy Tudor.

DiGiorgio won the first-ever endowment award from the Academy of Natural Sciences, in 2004, in recognition of his bird illustration work. The award was given in memory of Don Eckelberry, under whom he studied. DiGiorgio, whose style reflects his keen observations in the field, is committed to painting from life. He has traveled extensively to create field sketches of birds, plants and habitat from Central America, the West Indies, Trinidad and the Outer Islands of Britain. In addition, numerous trips to the western United States and national parks have allowed him to record a full range of American birdlife.

Archipelago: Works by Yolanda del Amo
Light Work Gallery

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

Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. In her series Archipelago, artist Yolanda del Amo depicts the powerful forces between people—their conflicting needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality. In Archipelago, these competing needs seem to have reached a peaceful if temporary stasis. These beautiful images show people who, although in the presence of another, appear surrounded on all sides not by water but by silence.

Del Amo leaves the relationships of her subjects to each other deliberately vague, which makes her images all the more universal and compelling. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when two people—whether they are mother and son, husband and wife, or simply friends—momentarily live alone, together.

Read a review!

Diane Banks and Adam Francey Recent Works
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Diane Banks' specimen series sculptures and drawings are inspired by the fragileness of nature and the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength. Her sculptures are created through the combination of organic and found plastic materials. Through the use of these materials, Banks reveals her fascination how nature protects itself from physical harm caused by man's intrusion, and the many ways it contorts itself to survive.

Working with related and unrelated imagery, Adam Francey layers and edits his paintings until an abstracted composition emerges. These are not works about a concrete idea; rather they provide an opportunity for unlimited readings, depending on point-of-view or frame of reference. Snippets from overheard conversations are peppered in the compositions. These works alternate between toughness and humor, with vibrant colors that appear at any moment, ready to leap off of the surface.

Emerging Women of CNY #1
Redhouse

Price: Free
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Artwork by Taye Wright-hirry, Maria Janina Rizzo, Alexandara Crosby, and Kristie Hayes.

Read a review!

56nd Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts, Inc.

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

The show and sale features paintings, pottery, jewelry, stained glass, and more. It's the perfect place to find special holiday gifts for your friends and family.

A Matter of Size

Price: Free, but donations accepted
Temple Society of Concord
910 Madison St., Syracuse

A touching, lighthearted comedy about a group of four very overweight friends in the Israeli city of Ramle. They decide to start a sumo wrestling club where their size is an asset in escaping from the dictatorship of diets espoused by their weight loss group. In the process they all experience a "coming out" of a different kind — learning to accept themselves in both life and love. This Israeli film was nominated for 14 Israeli Academy Ofir awards in 2009.

I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Syracuse Cinephile Society

Price: $3 regular, $2.50 members
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Betty Grable's only completely dramatic role, featuring the formidable Laird Cregar as a single-minded detective, determined to pin a murder on promoter Victor Mature. One of the great film noir classics. Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone. Cast also includes Carole Landis, Alan Mowbray, Elisha Cook, Jr., and William Gargan.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ed Smith: "The Labors"
LeMoyne College

Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

An exhibition of drawing and sculpture by Guggenheim Fellow Ed Smith. His work has been exhibited here and abroad, including at the British Museum, Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Begium, and at Yale University.

Silk: Photographs by Courtney Rile
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Marcus Acevedo Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Artist's Statement: The duality of man, the potential to be both divine and carnal beings, has always interested me. There is a struggle with the expectations associated with these opposing forces: the potential for greatness always present on one hand, and weaknesses inescapable on the other. My work exists to inspire the question of what is the nature of heroes, legends and Gods, and how different is that from the nature of man. My work goes beyond self-analysis and introspection. I use myself as the archetype for the experiences that connect us. I want to explore not only the greatness of man, but the weakness as well. My work demonstrates that we are powerful and that there is no contradiction that this great power can manifest itself in a person that is inadequate, fearful and weak. In my work I am actor and director, puppet and puppet master, mortal and God. I am free to explore all of these relationships, to be whomever and what ever I desire.

The Silent Scream: Conflict in Novels Without Words
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

The Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library has always had a keen interest in all forms of book illustration, and not surprisingly, novels without words became a significant collecting area. Over time, we have amassed a considerable number of the classic specimens in the genre, and the main practitioners of the art form are well represented within our holdings. We developed this exhibition in keeping with the Syracuse Symposium theme for the coming year, "conflict." The artists upon whom we focused are William Gropper, Laurence Hyde, Frans Masereel, Giacomo Patri, John Vassos, and Lynd Ward.

In addition to conflict, novels without words often portray a quest on the part of the individual. This may assume the form of a journey or a saga about the search for self-fulfillment in artistic or purely personal terms, or the quest may have as its primary objective achieving social justice in a particular context. Because of the historical period in which many of these wordless novels were born, they often depict a struggle between the individual and the industrialized world. Industrialization and, by extension, capitalism, may be seen as forces that are fundamentally antagonistic to the interests of the individual and of society in general. Similarly, the law, the police, and the armed forces may all be viewed as instruments of repression in novels without words.

The creators of novels without words also tend to scrutinize the brutal forms of war and tyranny that are made possible by industrialization. In truth, any injustice may become the subject of such works, and perhaps just the cruel nature of our existential struggle to survive in an inherently hostile environment is all the background that is needed to provide the inspiration for the creation of a novel without words.

Resin*ating Metal: Arlene Abend Retrospective
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

The sculpture of Arlene Abend, representing over 30 years of creating in resin, bronze, and steel

Read a Review!

Invitational with Carl Hoffner
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Dogs in Transition: Pit Bulls and Mill Dogs
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Cyrus Mejia's art focuses on activism and reflects the ideals of kindness and compassion while shining a light on "speciesism, ignorance and cruelty." Mejia is also co-founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which operates the nation's largest sanctuary for homeless animals near the town of Kanab, Utah. Best Friends is especially known for rehabilitating 22 of the pit bulls rescued from NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

"Pits and Perception" is the first series on view, which portrays pit bulls in a manner that challenges modern-day perceptions of the breed. With increased attention toward dog fighting in the media, many view the pit bull as a vicious and aggressive dog. Through his paintings, Mejia challenges these beliefs by forcing the observer to take a closer look and question public perception.

The second collection, "Mill Dogs Revenge," features dogs rescued from commercial breeding facilities, colloquially known as "puppy mills." Victims of physical abuse, emotional trauma and neglect, these dogs are often subjected to cruel conditions because of human greed for profit. Mejia hopes to raise awareness of the cruelty of puppy mills through his art.

Canaltown Suds: Syracuse Breweries of the Canal Era
Erie Canal Museum

Price: Free
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Art Gone Wild: Prints and Paintings by the Animals of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Everson Museum of Art

Rosamond Gifford Zoo
One Conservation Place, Syracuse

Striking and extraordinary works of art created by the creatures of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo illustrate the depth of keeper care and behavioral enrichment vital in maintaining healthy and engaged animals. The Everson will be displaying a selection of these animal created artworks in a satellite exhibition. Art Gone Wild! concludes with an art auction on November 20 at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Presented by the Rosamond Gifford Zoo chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Works of Michael DiGiorgio
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Nationally recognized nature artist Michael DiGiorgio is known for bird paintings that emphasize the character of the bird and its relationship to the environment. DiGiorgio, of Madison, CT, has been painting birds since the age of 5. His paintings and drawings have appeared in a variety of nature books and journals, including "Wildlife Conservation Society Birds of Brazil: The Pantanal and Cerrado of Central Brazil," "The Breeding Bird Atlas of Connecticut and of New York," "“Master's Guide to Birding," "Audubon Field Guide to Birds (Eastern and Western Regions)," Audubon Magazine, and Audubon Nature Yearbook.

He also has painted numerous covers for Bird Watcher's Digest and has been featured in Sanctuary magazine, a Massachusetts Audubon publication. Currently, he is illustrating bird plates for "The Birds of South America, Vol. III," with Robert Ridgely and Guy Tudor.

DiGiorgio won the first-ever endowment award from the Academy of Natural Sciences, in 2004, in recognition of his bird illustration work. The award was given in memory of Don Eckelberry, under whom he studied. DiGiorgio, whose style reflects his keen observations in the field, is committed to painting from life. He has traveled extensively to create field sketches of birds, plants and habitat from Central America, the West Indies, Trinidad and the Outer Islands of Britain. In addition, numerous trips to the western United States and national parks have allowed him to record a full range of American birdlife.

Archipelago: Works by Yolanda del Amo
Light Work Gallery

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

Powerful forces deep below the surface of the earth form archipelagos, which are chains or clusters of individual islands. In her series Archipelago, artist Yolanda del Amo depicts the powerful forces between people—their conflicting needs for intimacy and connection, independence and individuality. In Archipelago, these competing needs seem to have reached a peaceful if temporary stasis. These beautiful images show people who, although in the presence of another, appear surrounded on all sides not by water but by silence.

Del Amo leaves the relationships of her subjects to each other deliberately vague, which makes her images all the more universal and compelling. Each photograph represents a fragile time in any relationship when two people—whether they are mother and son, husband and wife, or simply friends—momentarily live alone, together.

Read a review!

Diane Banks and Adam Francey Recent Works
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Diane Banks' specimen series sculptures and drawings are inspired by the fragileness of nature and the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength. Her sculptures are created through the combination of organic and found plastic materials. Through the use of these materials, Banks reveals her fascination how nature protects itself from physical harm caused by man's intrusion, and the many ways it contorts itself to survive.

Working with related and unrelated imagery, Adam Francey layers and edits his paintings until an abstracted composition emerges. These are not works about a concrete idea; rather they provide an opportunity for unlimited readings, depending on point-of-view or frame of reference. Snippets from overheard conversations are peppered in the compositions. These works alternate between toughness and humor, with vibrant colors that appear at any moment, ready to leap off of the surface.

Emerging Women of CNY #1
Redhouse

Price: Free
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Artwork by Taye Wright-hirry, Maria Janina Rizzo, Alexandara Crosby, and Kristie Hayes.

Read a review!

56nd Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts, Inc.

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

The show and sale features paintings, pottery, jewelry, stained glass, and more. It's the perfect place to find special holiday gifts for your friends and family.

Run and Tell That! New Work from New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Run and Tell That! New Work from New York presents, for the first time in Syracuse, recent and new work by 21 young New York City artists. Included in the exhibition's wide array of media are several installation pieces created specifically for the SUArt Galleries. Co-curated by SU alumnus Eric Gleason, Sales Director at Marlborough Chelsea, and David Prince, Associate Director at the SUArt Galleries, the show illustrates conceptual and aesthetic trends in contemporary art.

Synonymous with "spread the word," Run and Tell That! is a phrase attributed to Antoine Dodson of Huntsville, AL, whose flamboyant July 28, 2010 television interview following the attempted sexual assault on his sister, quickly became an internet sensation. The phrase has since been integrated into contemporary vernacular; a phenomenon that could only happen now, in a time when information is digested and distributed constantly via the internet. The artists in Run and Tell That! take advantage of this wide spectrum of media to develop a conceptual focus that characterizes this younger generation.

Painters Kamrooz Aram, Steven Charles, Inka Essenhigh, Aaron Johnson, Liz Markus, Tom Sanford, Ryan Schneider and Aya Uekawa use personal experience, art history, abstraction, and social commentary to keep the medium fresh and relevant. Sculpture becomes a widely encompassing term as pieces by Robert Lazzarini, Diana Al-Hadid, Will Ryman, and Ethan Greenbaum broaden the definition. In the series of 13 prints entitled Ars Magica, William Powhida continues his astute satirization of the art world by likening its practices to sorcery. In her Mother Goddess series, Turkish photographer Pinar Yolacan examines pre-neolithic deity figures that were the archetype of beauty in her geographic region thousands of years ago.

Site-specific installations include a first-time collaboration between Ethan Greenbaum and Adam Krueger; a dynamic wall-length installation in which a tree violently emerges from a Hudson River School painting by Valerie Hegarty; Virginia Overton's minimal trompe l'oeil construction using only an eight-foot 2 x 4 and two sheets of mirrored plexiglas; Vlatka Horvat's repurposed ceiling fan and aluminum ladder; and individual projects by Wade Kavanagh and Stephen B. Nguyen whose monumental collaborative installation White Stag, 2010 is currently on view at Mass MoCA.

Also in the exhibition will be Rashaad Newsome: Video and Performance, 2005-2010, an intimate retrospective of the artist's multi-media work exploring innovative forms of communication and expression in contemporary African American urban culture. This work was recently featured in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and in Greater New York 2010 at the PS1 Contemporary Arts Center, Long Island City, NY.

Read a review!