Friday, March 6, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

Faces: Inspiration from Within -- Works by Erin Boyle
Westcott Community Center

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

Cutting away from traditional portraiture, Erin creates edgy images that offer more expressive descriptions.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

Lecture and Performance: Aaron Jay Kernis
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Aaron Jay Kernis, largely self taught on violin, piano, and composition, attended the San Francisco Conservatory, the Manhattan School of Music, and Yale University, working along the way with a diverse array of teachers. The brilliance of his work rests on the exuberant splay of his instrumental palette (even when writing solo or chamber music) crossed with a brooding, poetic depth cut in sharp relief: wild, visceral, violent passages against calm, prayer-like quietude. This performance is a part of a consortium with SUNY Oswego and LeMoyne College.

Colleen Kattau and Eudy Fernandez
ArtRage Gallery

Price: $10-$25 sliding scale suggested donation
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

To bid a loving farewell to our visiting artist, Jafeth Gómez Ledesma, and to help support ArtRage, Colleen and "Some Guys" and the Eudy Fernandez Latin Jazz Band will play at a concert/dance party during our current exhibit of Jafeth's paintings: Hope In a Time of Turmoil. Join us to eat, drink, dance and generally celebrate life with Jafeth and the gang!

Colleen Kattau, a bilingual singer songwriter of New Song and Nueva canción, performs original alternative acoustic music in a splendidly energetic mix of poetry and rhythm. Her voice can be both strong and tender and has been likened to that of Joni Mitchell, Natalie Merchant, and Shawn Colvin. Colleen has performed for diverse audiences at colleges and universities, women's festivals, environmental festivals, and Latin American and labor solidarity events.

Nationally, she has toured with the acclaimed multi-media project Sing it down!, a music/video/discussion program designed as part of the movement to educate about the infamous US Army School of the Americas. Along with Pete Seeger, Colleen has shared the stage with folks such as Bruce Cochburn, Holly Near, and Tom Paxton. Colleen combines music and activism, recognizing the guitarra armada or 'armed guitar' concept of Latin American troubadours like Mercedes Sosa and Silvio Rodriguez who know that the guitar and voice are mightier than the sword.

Ellis Paul
Folkus Project

Price: $18
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A master songwriter and charismatic storyteller with captivating vocals.

Wise, tender, brilliant and biting, Ellis Paul is one of the leading voices in American songwriting. His joyful enthusiasm and sweet voice make him one of the folk circuit's most popular performers. Paul has built a vast catalog of music which weds striking poetic imagery and philosophical introspection with hook-laden melodies. A generation of artists have been influenced by his infectious melodicism, literate lyrics, and honest performing style. Paul was a key figure in what has become known as the Boston school of songwriting, a literate, provocative and urbanely romantic folk-pop style that helped ignite the folk revival of the 1990s. He has won an unprecedented 13 Boston Music Awards in the category of Outstanding Singer/Songwriter.

Graduate Voice Recital
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Lillian Choi, mezzo-soprano

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

A recital of early (pre-1740) and new (post-1990) music, performed by Lillian Choi, mezzo-soprano with help from Bonnie Choi, harpsichord; Emily Gibson, soprano; Benjamin Hoffman, piano; Juan Velasquez, violin; Amanda Lieberman, violin; Gina Gilbert, cello.

Romeo and Juliet
Syracuse Opera

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

Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet is based on Shakespeare's story of clandestine love, rivalries, and miscommunication. Sung in French with projected English translations.

Read a review!

Book Release Party
Downtown Writer's Center
Featuring Philip Memmer

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Book release party for DWC director Philip Memmer's Lucifer: A Hagiography.

Lucifer: A Hagiography (which was awarded the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry from Lost Horse Press) was published in January. Of the collection, acclaimed poet and translator Charles Martin says, "With unflagging inventiveness and mordant wit, Philip Memmer's Lucifer: A Hagiography explores the not-inconsiderable span of time between just before Creation and the End of Days, as experienced by God the Father's other son. The cosmos that Memmer creates is both singularly strange and strangely familiar, and the character of Lucifer, a kind of existential hero for all time, instructs and delights us equally."

Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $40 includes dinner and show
Inn of the Seasons
4311 W. Seneca Tpke., Syracuse

Neil Simon's tale of a man yearning for a romantic fling to spice up his boring married life, which results in one disaster after another.

Read a review!

Exit the Body
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

Price: $15 adults; $12 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

A mystery writer rents a New England house that is the rendezvous point for some jewel thieves. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at 2:00 AM when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. Not since the days of Mark Sennett has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

Preview: The Pillowman
Simply New Theatre

Price: $15
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Playwright Martin McDonagh has been called "one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century" by The New Republic. While still in his 20s, the Anglo-Irish playwright filled houses in New York and London, was showered with the theater world's most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. His latest drama, The Pillowman, continues this trajectory, winning the 2004 Oliver Award for Best Play. With echoes of Stoppard, Kafka, and the Brothers Grimm, The Pillowman centers on a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. The result is an urgent work of theatrical bravura - an unflinching examination of the very nature and purpose of art that is sure to "be staged for generations to come" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).

Read a Review!

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Aesop's Fables
Open Hand Theater
Featuring Steve Abrams

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

Visit a brave mouse, a lazy fox and a very determined turtle who all live in Steve's suitcase. Award-winning puppeteer and past president of Puppeteers of America, Steve Abrams is a one-man troublemaker. Children roar with utter delight as they scheme with Steve about turning dirty socks into puppets and get involved in stories about values, manners and language.

Little Red Riding Hood
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive version of the children's classic.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $40 includes dinner and show
Inn of the Seasons
4311 W. Seneca Tpke., Syracuse

Neil Simon's tale of a man yearning for a romantic fling to spice up his boring married life, which results in one disaster after another.

Read a review!

Exit the Body
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

Price: $15 adults; $12 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

A mystery writer rents a New England house that is the rendezvous point for some jewel thieves. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at 2:00 AM when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. Not since the days of Mark Sennett has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

The Pillowman
Simply New Theatre

Price: $30 (includes show and after-party)
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Playwright Martin McDonagh has been called "one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century" by The New Republic. While still in his 20s, the Anglo-Irish playwright filled houses in New York and London, was showered with the theater world's most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. His latest drama, The Pillowman, continues this trajectory, winning the 2004 Oliver Award for Best Play. With echoes of Stoppard, Kafka, and the Brothers Grimm, The Pillowman centers on a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. The result is an urgent work of theatrical bravura - an unflinching examination of the very nature and purpose of art that is sure to "be staged for generations to come" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).

Read a Review!

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Film Series: The Education of Shelby Knox
Everson Museum of Art

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

Lubbock, Texas has an abstinence-only sex education policy in its schools and some of the highest teen pregnancy and STD infection rates in the nation. Shelby Knox is a devout Baptist teenager who has pledged abstinence until marriage. When her interest in politics leads her to get involved in a campaign for comprehensive sex education in her town's public schools, and then to a fight for a gay-straight alliance, she must make a choice: Stand by and let others be hurt, or go against her parents, her pastor, and her peers to do what she knows is right.

This documentary presents an exceptionally timely and intimate look at the cultural wars from the perspective of a young woman's life. The Education of Shelby Knox won the Sundance Best Cinematography Award and the SXSW Audience Award.

(Directed by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, 2005, 74 minutes)

Jonathan English, tenor
Joyful Noise Concert Series

Price: Free (donations accepted)
Liverpool First United Methodist Church
604 Oswego St., Liverpool

Tenor Jonathan English, a native of Syracuse and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, has performed in a wide range of musical styles -- from opera and oratorio to art song, choral, Broadway, and modern vocal chamber music. He is especially proud of his association with new music, premiering works by Samuel Adler, Steven Albert, Warren Benson, Sydney Hodkinson, Daniel Pinkham, and others. He has appeared with Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, Rochester Opera Theatre, Opera Theatre of Syracuse, Oswego Opera, Rochester Philharmonic and others. He is also a critically-praised stage director. Mr. English is on the voice faculties of Syracuse University and Le Moyne College, is the Education and Company Manager for Syracuse Opera, the Director of Music for the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Syracuse, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Joyful Noise Concert Series for the Community, and Syracuse's Civic Morning Musicals.

There will be a pre-concert talk with the performer at 3:00 at Liverpool Public Library, across the street.

Romeo and Juliet
Syracuse Opera

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

Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet is based on Shakespeare's story of clandestine love, rivalries, and miscommunication. Sung in French with projected English translations.

Read a review!

Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $40 includes dinner and show
Inn of the Seasons
4311 W. Seneca Tpke., Syracuse

Neil Simon's tale of a man yearning for a romantic fling to spice up his boring married life, which results in one disaster after another.

Read a review!

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Exit the Body
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

Price: $15 adults; $12 students/seniors
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

A mystery writer rents a New England house that is the rendezvous point for some jewel thieves. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at 2:00 AM when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. Not since the days of Mark Sennett has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Monday, March 9, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

Faces: Inspiration from Within -- Works by Erin Boyle
Westcott Community Center

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

Cutting away from traditional portraiture, Erin creates edgy images that offer more expressive descriptions.

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

Faces: Inspiration from Within -- Works by Erin Boyle
Westcott Community Center

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

Cutting away from traditional portraiture, Erin creates edgy images that offer more expressive descriptions.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

American Change: From Slavery to the Presidency
Museum of Young Art

Price: Suggested donation: $4 adults, $3 students
Museum of Young Art
110 W. Fayette St., One Lincoln Center, Syracuse

If you could become an inspirational historical figure, who would you choose? How would becoming that person, even for a few moments, affect you?

In this show, students take on the personae of inspirational historical and current figures to truly immerse themselves in history.

The project, "American Change: from Slavery to the Presidency," features written, spoken and photographic illustrations of key figures and events in US history created by 4th grade students at Van Duyn Elementary. The work was inspired by and created in collaboration with CNY photographer Brantley Carroll.

Carroll worked with the students in a similar process to the one he used for his acclaimed project "The Whipping Post," which examined the slave trade by casting contemporary Americans in portraits of historical figures.

The partnership with Mr. Carroll is just one of the many arts-based learning projects that are happening this year at Van Duyn, which is one of six Syracuse City School District (SCSD) schools participating in the Arts in Mind initiative. Arts in Mind is a collaboration between schools, cultural organizations and funders that is working to make it easier for teachers in all SCSD schools to bring the arts into their classrooms as a way to strengthen student engagement and achievement. You can read more about Arts in Mind at www.artsinmind.net.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Rob Bridge and Jeff Moore, percussion
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Music for percussion. For more information, phone 315-498-2054.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

Faces: Inspiration from Within -- Works by Erin Boyle
Westcott Community Center

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

Cutting away from traditional portraiture, Erin creates edgy images that offer more expressive descriptions.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

American Change: From Slavery to the Presidency
Museum of Young Art

Price: Suggested donation: $4 adults, $3 students
Museum of Young Art
110 W. Fayette St., One Lincoln Center, Syracuse

If you could become an inspirational historical figure, who would you choose? How would becoming that person, even for a few moments, affect you?

In this show, students take on the personae of inspirational historical and current figures to truly immerse themselves in history.

The project, "American Change: from Slavery to the Presidency," features written, spoken and photographic illustrations of key figures and events in US history created by 4th grade students at Van Duyn Elementary. The work was inspired by and created in collaboration with CNY photographer Brantley Carroll.

Carroll worked with the students in a similar process to the one he used for his acclaimed project "The Whipping Post," which examined the slave trade by casting contemporary Americans in portraits of historical figures.

The partnership with Mr. Carroll is just one of the many arts-based learning projects that are happening this year at Van Duyn, which is one of six Syracuse City School District (SCSD) schools participating in the Arts in Mind initiative. Arts in Mind is a collaboration between schools, cultural organizations and funders that is working to make it easier for teachers in all SCSD schools to bring the arts into their classrooms as a way to strengthen student engagement and achievement. You can read more about Arts in Mind at www.artsinmind.net.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Dinosaurs Had Sharp Teeth! Works of Chris Wildrick
Redhouse

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

For several years Chris Wildrick has been working to become a self-taught professional paleontologist. He specializes in "dinosaur aesthetics," or why we think dinosaurs looked the way we think they looked. What kinds of colors and patterns did they have? How did they move? What did they sound like? How have our conceptions of these things changed over the years?

He creates his work through interactive projects with the public, which take the form of polls, games, and creative activities. For the past several months he has worked as an artist in residence with the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), doing projects at their Museum of the Earth in Ithaca as well as the New York State Fair and local schools.

This exhibition compiles his research into colorful and complex charts and graphs, audio recordings, and sculptures. He will also be doing his interactive projects at the opening and at other points throughout the show, so anyone can join in and share in the creation of the work. Chris will try to guess your favorite dinosaur, ask you to make dinosaur sounds, and challenge you to recast famous movies using only dinosaur species in the actors' roles. Plus, try to beat the reigning champion as you name as many dinosaurs as you can in one minute!

Redhouse Art Radio will feature selections from his audio projects, including interviews with famous dinosaur illustrators, throughout the show.

This show is great for all ages: it's philosophical, experimental, and hey, it has dinosaurs.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Festival Pre-Screening
Syracuse International Film Festival

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Sneak peeks of the 2009 upcoming films and award winning shorts from 2008. Join us for a night of film madness to support independent filmmakers.

Sneak Peeks from Festival 2009:
Famous in 31 Days, by John Gerard. Local newscaster, John Gerard, decides to rise above obscurity and become a famous TV star in 31 days. We share with him the laughter, the rejection, and the fun as he makes his way across the USA to Los Angeles to follow his dream.
Animated American The future collides with the past as a house-hunting executive crosses swords with his realtor.

The Best of 2008:
The Box (Korea, animation) A man sits on a stage with a box on his knees waiting for you to enter a magical phantasmagoria.
The Miracle (USA) A woman who dares to dream past her own physical limits takes us on her journey. Based on a true story.

Total program length is approximately 90 minutes.

Civic Morning Musicals
Jonathan Howell, tenor; John Spradling, piano

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

Benjamin Britten Seven Sonnets of Michaelangelo, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, others

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

There will be artist receptions at 11:00 am and 6:00 pm.

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

Faces: Inspiration from Within -- Works by Erin Boyle
Westcott Community Center

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

Cutting away from traditional portraiture, Erin creates edgy images that offer more expressive descriptions.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

American Change: From Slavery to the Presidency
Museum of Young Art

Price: Suggested donation: $4 adults, $3 students
Museum of Young Art
110 W. Fayette St., One Lincoln Center, Syracuse

If you could become an inspirational historical figure, who would you choose? How would becoming that person, even for a few moments, affect you?

In this show, students take on the personae of inspirational historical and current figures to truly immerse themselves in history.

The project, "American Change: from Slavery to the Presidency," features written, spoken and photographic illustrations of key figures and events in US history created by 4th grade students at Van Duyn Elementary. The work was inspired by and created in collaboration with CNY photographer Brantley Carroll.

Carroll worked with the students in a similar process to the one he used for his acclaimed project "The Whipping Post," which examined the slave trade by casting contemporary Americans in portraits of historical figures.

The partnership with Mr. Carroll is just one of the many arts-based learning projects that are happening this year at Van Duyn, which is one of six Syracuse City School District (SCSD) schools participating in the Arts in Mind initiative. Arts in Mind is a collaboration between schools, cultural organizations and funders that is working to make it easier for teachers in all SCSD schools to bring the arts into their classrooms as a way to strengthen student engagement and achievement. You can read more about Arts in Mind at www.artsinmind.net.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Dinosaurs Had Sharp Teeth! Works of Chris Wildrick
Redhouse

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

For several years Chris Wildrick has been working to become a self-taught professional paleontologist. He specializes in "dinosaur aesthetics," or why we think dinosaurs looked the way we think they looked. What kinds of colors and patterns did they have? How did they move? What did they sound like? How have our conceptions of these things changed over the years?

He creates his work through interactive projects with the public, which take the form of polls, games, and creative activities. For the past several months he has worked as an artist in residence with the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), doing projects at their Museum of the Earth in Ithaca as well as the New York State Fair and local schools.

This exhibition compiles his research into colorful and complex charts and graphs, audio recordings, and sculptures. He will also be doing his interactive projects at the opening and at other points throughout the show, so anyone can join in and share in the creation of the work. Chris will try to guess your favorite dinosaur, ask you to make dinosaur sounds, and challenge you to recast famous movies using only dinosaur species in the actors' roles. Plus, try to beat the reigning champion as you name as many dinosaurs as you can in one minute!

Redhouse Art Radio will feature selections from his audio projects, including interviews with famous dinosaur illustrators, throughout the show.

This show is great for all ages: it's philosophical, experimental, and hey, it has dinosaurs.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Wild Card Exhibit: Ceramics by Carles Vives
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Fiber Art
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Works include framed batik, cloth colleges, sculptural coiled basketry, quilting, tapestry, and more by artists Wilson Akuamoah-Boateng, Sharon Bottle Souva, Lauren Bristol, Barbara Conte-Gaugel, Linda Esterley, Alice Gant, Hilary Gifford, Mary Kester, and Holly Knott.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

Lecture and Performance: Jacque Kofi
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Jacque Kofi, also known as One Black Voice, is a songwriter, musician and performer. One Black Voice is a guiding musical concept that speaks the languages of unity, freedom, Afrikan heritage, love and justice. It is that voice inside that says our umoja is the key to our return to glory. Kofi lives in Syracuse and is a member of the Pan African Community of Central New York, the National Conference of Editorial Writers, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Elite alumni organization.

Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $40 includes dinner and show
Inn of the Seasons
4311 W. Seneca Tpke., Syracuse

Neil Simon's tale of a man yearning for a romantic fling to spice up his boring married life, which results in one disaster after another.

Read a review!

Death Warmed Over
Acme Mystery Company

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

Interactive mystery/comedy dinner theater. A sleepy village is in for strange events when a famous medium comes to a haunted cottage to run a live seance on his television show.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Preview: Bash
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $5
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

"Atrocity is 'the new black'", says filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute. The play is a dark vision of casual atrocity; "matter of fact brutality" as LaBute puts it, in which understandable individuals with mundane characteristics inflict pain on themselves and others in the name of prosaic goals with socially insignificant results. The work takes the form of an assemblage of three monologues themed around ordinary people who commit murder. The author reinforces the awfulness of the crimes by framing them with stories which lack a sense of redemption or catharsis. Each piece is instead a testament to the creeping horror which has enveloped the murderers (or is poised to) even as life goes on as if what they had done had never happened.

Read a Review!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

Price: Free
Syracuse Technology Garden
235 Harrison St., Syracuse

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

Faces: Inspiration from Within -- Works by Erin Boyle
Westcott Community Center

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

Cutting away from traditional portraiture, Erin creates edgy images that offer more expressive descriptions.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

American Change: From Slavery to the Presidency
Museum of Young Art

Price: Suggested donation: $4 adults, $3 students
Museum of Young Art
110 W. Fayette St., One Lincoln Center, Syracuse

If you could become an inspirational historical figure, who would you choose? How would becoming that person, even for a few moments, affect you?

In this show, students take on the personae of inspirational historical and current figures to truly immerse themselves in history.

The project, "American Change: from Slavery to the Presidency," features written, spoken and photographic illustrations of key figures and events in US history created by 4th grade students at Van Duyn Elementary. The work was inspired by and created in collaboration with CNY photographer Brantley Carroll.

Carroll worked with the students in a similar process to the one he used for his acclaimed project "The Whipping Post," which examined the slave trade by casting contemporary Americans in portraits of historical figures.

The partnership with Mr. Carroll is just one of the many arts-based learning projects that are happening this year at Van Duyn, which is one of six Syracuse City School District (SCSD) schools participating in the Arts in Mind initiative. Arts in Mind is a collaboration between schools, cultural organizations and funders that is working to make it easier for teachers in all SCSD schools to bring the arts into their classrooms as a way to strengthen student engagement and achievement. You can read more about Arts in Mind at www.artsinmind.net.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Dinosaurs Had Sharp Teeth! Works of Chris Wildrick
Redhouse

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

For several years Chris Wildrick has been working to become a self-taught professional paleontologist. He specializes in "dinosaur aesthetics," or why we think dinosaurs looked the way we think they looked. What kinds of colors and patterns did they have? How did they move? What did they sound like? How have our conceptions of these things changed over the years?

He creates his work through interactive projects with the public, which take the form of polls, games, and creative activities. For the past several months he has worked as an artist in residence with the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), doing projects at their Museum of the Earth in Ithaca as well as the New York State Fair and local schools.

This exhibition compiles his research into colorful and complex charts and graphs, audio recordings, and sculptures. He will also be doing his interactive projects at the opening and at other points throughout the show, so anyone can join in and share in the creation of the work. Chris will try to guess your favorite dinosaur, ask you to make dinosaur sounds, and challenge you to recast famous movies using only dinosaur species in the actors' roles. Plus, try to beat the reigning champion as you name as many dinosaurs as you can in one minute!

Redhouse Art Radio will feature selections from his audio projects, including interviews with famous dinosaur illustrators, throughout the show.

This show is great for all ages: it's philosophical, experimental, and hey, it has dinosaurs.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

Fiber Art
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Works include framed batik, cloth colleges, sculptural coiled basketry, quilting, tapestry, and more by artists Wilson Akuamoah-Boateng, Sharon Bottle Souva, Lauren Bristol, Barbara Conte-Gaugel, Linda Esterley, Alice Gant, Hilary Gifford, Mary Kester, and Holly Knott.

Wild Card Exhibit: Ceramics by Carles Vives
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

FridayFLICS: Antonia's Line
ArtRage Gallery

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

A Dutch matron founds and, for several generations, watches over a supportive, matriarchal community where feminism and liberalism flourish. Oscar: Best Foreign language Film, Toronto Film Festival: Most Popular Film, Nederland's Film Festival Golden Calf Award. (Directed by Marleen Gorris, 1996)

Festival Pre-Screening
Syracuse International Film Festival

Price: Free
Curtin Auditorium, Onondaga County Public Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Selected shorts from past festivals.

Uwe Kind in Concert

Price: $5
Fayetteville-Manlius High School
8201 E. Seneca Tpke., Manlius

For more information, phone 315-655-5892.

Pops Series: When Swing is King
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Featuring Carl Topilow, conductor/clarinet

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

With energetic selections from the Dixieland and Swing eras, Carl Topilow and his signature red clarinet will pave the way for a vibrant, joyful musical experience you'll long remember.

Writer Dan Roche
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Dan Roche is a writer of essays and memoirs, including Great Expectation: A Father's Diary (Iowa, 2008) and Love's Labor (Riverhead, 1999). His essays have appeared in many journals, including The North American Review and SportsJones. He was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Nonfiction Literature, and he teaches at LeMoyne College.

Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Onondaga Hillplayers
Robert Steingraber, director

Price: $40 includes dinner and show
Inn of the Seasons
4311 W. Seneca Tpke., Syracuse

Neil Simon's tale of a man yearning for a romantic fling to spice up his boring married life, which results in one disaster after another.

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Beauty and the Beast
Fabius-Pompey High School

Price: $8 regular; $5 students/seniors
Fabius-Pompey High School
1211 Mill St., Fabius

Pirates of Penzance
LaFayette High School

Price: $8 adults; $5 students; $25 per family
LaFayette High School
3122 Route 11 North, LaFayette

Exit the Body
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

Price: $15 adults; $12 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

A mystery writer rents a New England house that is the rendezvous point for some jewel thieves. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at 2:00 AM when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. Not since the days of Mark Sennett has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

The Boys Next Door
Appleseed Productions
Sharee Lemos, director

Price: $15 regular; $12 students/seniors
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

In a communal residence in New England, four mentally handicapped men live under the supervision of an earnest, but increasingly "burned out" young social worker named Jack. Norman, who works in a doughnut shop and is unable to resist the lure of the sweet pastries, takes great pride in the huge bundle of keys that dangles from his waist; Lucien P. Smith has the mind of a five-year-old but imagines that he is able to read and comprehend the weighty books he lugs about; Arnold, the ringleader of the group, is a hyperactive, compulsive chatterer, who suffers from deep-seated insecurities and a persecution complex; while Barry, a brilliant schizophrenic, fantasizes that he is a golf pro. Mingled with scenes from the daily lives of these four, where "little things" sometimes become momentous (and often very funny), are moments of great poignancy when, with touching effectiveness, we are reminded that the handicapped, like the rest of us, want only to love and laugh and find some meaning and purpose in the brief time that they are allotted on this earth. written by Tom Griffin.

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Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida
The Jordan-Elbridge Musical Players

Price: $9
Jordan-Elbridge High School
Hamilton Road, Jordan

Come, travel to a time in ancient Egypt and witness a compelling tale of conflicting loyalties and star-crossed lovers in the award-winning Broadway musical, AIDA.

AIDA is a musical bursting with contemporary energy chronicling the love between Aida, a Nubian princess stolen from her country, Amneris, the Egyptian princess she serves and Radames, the soldier they both love. Aida is an epic tale of love, loyalty and betrayal, with an exhilarating Tony and Grammy Award-winning score by Elton John and Tim Rice in their first collaboration since writing the worldwide phenomenon The Lion King.

For ticket information, phone 315-689-8500 x1700 or visit www.jecsd.org. Tickets will be available at the door.

Bash
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $25 (includes post-show reception)
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

"Atrocity is 'the new black'", says filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute. The play is a dark vision of casual atrocity; "matter of fact brutality" as LaBute puts it, in which understandable individuals with mundane characteristics inflict pain on themselves and others in the name of prosaic goals with socially insignificant results. The work takes the form of an assemblage of three monologues themed around ordinary people who commit murder. The author reinforces the awfulness of the crimes by framing them with stories which lack a sense of redemption or catharsis. Each piece is instead a testament to the creeping horror which has enveloped the murderers (or is poised to) even as life goes on as if what they had done had never happened.

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The Pillowman
Simply New Theatre

Price: $20
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Playwright Martin McDonagh has been called "one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century" by The New Republic. While still in his 20s, the Anglo-Irish playwright filled houses in New York and London, was showered with the theater world's most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. His latest drama, The Pillowman, continues this trajectory, winning the 2004 Oliver Award for Best Play. With echoes of Stoppard, Kafka, and the Brothers Grimm, The Pillowman centers on a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. The result is an urgent work of theatrical bravura - an unflinching examination of the very nature and purpose of art that is sure to "be staged for generations to come" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).

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Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

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