Saturday, June 9, 2007

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Art for the Soul
Delavan Art Gallery

Price: Free
Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The exhibit features acrylic paintings by Hope Irvine, photography by Richard Schultz, and watercolor paintings by members of the Art and Soul Watercolor Group.

Over the years, Hope Irvine, Ph.D. has become an accomplished painter as well as an innovative educator and community leader. Delavan Art Gallery is pleased to exhibit Dr. Irvine's sedimentary landscape acrylic paintings. "My paintings result from confrontations with vistas, especially in the American Southwest, Alaska and Iceland," Dr. Irvine explains in her artist statement. Since 1982, Dr. Irvine has held the position of Chair of the Department of Art Education while maintaining dual tenure and full professorships in both the College of Visual & Performing Arts and the School of Education at Syracuse University. Her commitment to the arts and education of others was rewarded by the Manhattan Borough President on June 22, 1982 when he declared the date "Hope Irvine Day."

Richard Schultz's photography ranges in subject from the commonplace to the absurd. Schultz writes in his artist statement, "It's a wild and wacky world that we encounter every day. Photography has been one way for me to express my reactions to the visceral stimuli of daily life." The photographer is Vice President of the David B. Schultz Insurance Agency and a proud native of Syracuse, NY. The majority of the photographs in this exhibit were shot between 2004 and 2007 and are shown exactly as they were when the artist came across the scene.

Also in this exhibition are watercolor paintings by 12 members of the Art and Soul Watercolor Group of Onondaga County: Sharon Daniels-Duerr, Pam Dischinger, Sharon H. Gibbons, Bonnie Goetzke, Rita Keller, Loie Mechetti, Geraldine Meday, Joanne Neff, Virginia Raner, Nancy Shampine, Jan Waters and Kathryn Wehrung. The Art and Soul Watercolor Group is a collective of artists who meet weekly to discuss, share and study art together, using each other as inspiration and encouragement in the arts. The group supports Vera House, the Crisis Pregnancy Center in Mexico and Ophelia's Place along with other notable causes.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Balloon Festival

Price: $5 adults; $1 children; ages 5 and younger free
Jamesville Beach
Apulia Rd., Jamesville

6:00am: Balloon launch (weather permitting)
6:00 - 7:30pm: Balloon launch (weather permitting)

Main Stage Entertainment
1:15pm: Whiskey Mae
2:30pm: Los Blancos
4:00pm: Boys Like Girls
5:00pm: Under the Gun
6:15pm: Frostbit Blue
7:30pm: Candid

For more information, syracuseballoonfest.com.

Greek Cultural Festival

Price: Free
St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church
325 Waring Rd., Syracuse

1:00pm-2:00pm: Byzantine Music lecture
1:00pm: Children's Dance Group
1:30pm: Church Tour
2:00pm-3:00pm: Touch of Culture lecture
3:00pm-4:00pm: Touring Greece lecture
3:00pm: Children's Dance Group
3:30pm: Church Tour
4:00pm-5:00pm: Greek Cuisine lecture
5:00pm-6:00pm: The Art of the Dance lecture
5:00pm: Children's Dance Group
6:00pm: St. Sophia Dance Group
6:30pm: Church Tour
7:30pm: St. Sophia Dance Group
8:00pm: Church Tour

Polish Festival

Price: Free
Clinton Square
Downtown, Syracuse

12:00 pm -- Punani Cin Cin Band (Syracuse rock band)
12:40 pm -- Stella-Polonia Dance Group from Toronto
1:10 pm -- Stephanie & Her Honky Band from Buffalo
2:00 pm -- Little Poland Dance Ensemble, from Utica
3:00 pm -- Stephanie & Her Honky Band
4:00 pm -- The Tatry Polish Folklore Ensemble from Montreal
5:00 pm -- Stephanie & Her Honky Band from Buffalo
6:00 pm -- Lechowia Toronto's Polish Canadian Dance Company, from Toronto
7:00 pm -- Lenny Gomulka & Chicago Push and Tatry Polish Folklore Ensemble
8:00 pm -- Lenny Gomulka & Chicago Push and Pole of the Year presentation
9:00 pm -- Lennty Gomulka & Chicago Push and Lechowia Polish Canadian Dance Company
10:00 pm -- Lennty Gomulka & Chicago Push

A Soiree with Peter and Kathleen Van De Graaff
WCNY

Price: $20 non-members
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-453-2424.

**POSTPONED -- Maureen McGovern in Concert with the Spirit of Syracuse Chorus
Spirit of Syracuse Chorus
Nancy Field, conductor

Price: $60 limited reserved seating; $30-$55 general admission ($5 student/senior discount)
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Tickets are available through the OnCenter Box Office, by calling 315-435-2121, or through TicketMaster at 315-472-0700 or www.ticketmaster.com.

The Little Mermaid
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive adaption of the children's favorite.

Miss Nelson is Missing
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Miss Nelson's class is the worst behaved in the whole school. Spitballs flying across the room, paper airplanes sailing every which way and uncontrollable children send the gentle, long-suffering teacher, Miss Nelson, over the edge. But the students of Room 207 are in for a surprise when Miss Nelson turns up missing and is replaced by the mean, mysterious Miss Viola Swamp, the scariest substitute teacher on the face of the earth. Miss Swamp assigns tons of homework and wields her ruler with dangerous authority. In desperation, the students set out to find their beloved Miss Nelson ... and they'll do whatever it takes to bring her back!

The Gifford Family Theatre proudly presents this witty, wacky musical adaptation of the award-winning children's favorites by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Originally commissioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, the adaptation by Joan Cushing (book, music and lyrics) was named the winner of the 2003 National Childrens Theatre Festival.

The Unexpected Guest
Syracuse Stage
Robert Moss, director

Price: $40, $36, $22 (adults); $18 (teens); $15 (children)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A foggy night and a car runs off the road into a ditch. The driver gropes his way to a nearby house. He taps on the window. No answer. He enters the well-appointed study to find a man dead in a wheelchair. Nearby stands the dead man's wife, revolver in hand, and ready to confess to murder. Case open, but with Agatha Christie, it's far from shut. Great fun from the master of mystery herself.

Read a Review!

Miss Nelson is Missing
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Miss Nelson's class is the worst behaved in the whole school. Spitballs flying across the room, paper airplanes sailing every which way and uncontrollable children send the gentle, long-suffering teacher, Miss Nelson, over the edge. But the students of Room 207 are in for a surprise when Miss Nelson turns up missing and is replaced by the mean, mysterious Miss Viola Swamp, the scariest substitute teacher on the face of the earth. Miss Swamp assigns tons of homework and wields her ruler with dangerous authority. In desperation, the students set out to find their beloved Miss Nelson ... and they'll do whatever it takes to bring her back!

The Gifford Family Theatre proudly presents this witty, wacky musical adaptation of the award-winning children's favorites by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Originally commissioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, the adaptation by Joan Cushing (book, music and lyrics) was named the winner of the 2003 National Childrens Theatre Festival.

Death With Chocolate

Price: $15
Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Interactive murder mystery, featuring historical scenes where chocolate has played a role. Audience members will be able to sample a wide variety of chocolate treats.

For more information, phone 315-428-1864, ext. 312.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare---Abridged
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park

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

All of Shakespeare's plays presented in 110 minutes.

Read a review!

Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Aubry Ludington, director

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

The fashion for transforming movies into stage musicals may well have hit rock bottom with Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical, an adaptation of the '70s pornographic movie. Calling it a musical is going a bit far. It is closer to an extended revue skit, a scrappy, smutty spoof of a porn movie that strips out the hardcore, replacing it with musical numbers suggestive of the acts taking place. The plot and dialogue that remain are, to say the least, flaccid. Debbie Benton, typical of all-American teens, is "saving herself for marriage" and dreaming of becoming a football cheerleader. Accepted for the Texas Cowgirls squad, she has only two weeks to earn the fare to Dallas. An after-school job paying $2.90 an hour won't cover it, and her boss suggests other ways in which to serve him. Each time, she sings, she is "Another Ten Dollars Closer to Dallas." Her girlfriends join in and their company, Teen Services, has no difficulty finding men willing to pay for services rendered. The songs, by Andrew Sherman, are bright and peppy, with one or two nice ballads such as "Small Town Girl" and "God Must Love a Fool" that would be worthy of a real musical. For the most part, though, they are there to serve as a musical pointers to the sex content - ditties such as "The Dildo Rag," performed by the proprietor of a candle shop (a Mr. Hardwick, of course) and "Dallas I'm Coming," as poignant a song about being deflowered as you've ever heard.

No one under 18 will be admitted.

Read a Review!

A Picasso
Simply New Theatre

Price: $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

1941: Picasso has been summoned from his favorite Paris cafe by German occupation forces for interrogation.

Read a Review!

The Unexpected Guest
Syracuse Stage
Robert Moss, director

Price: $44, $39, $22 (adults); $18 (teens); $15 (children)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A foggy night and a car runs off the road into a ditch. The driver gropes his way to a nearby house. He taps on the window. No answer. He enters the well-appointed study to find a man dead in a wheelchair. Nearby stands the dead man's wife, revolver in hand, and ready to confess to murder. Case open, but with Agatha Christie, it's far from shut. Great fun from the master of mystery herself.

Read a Review!

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Balloon Festival

Price: $5 adults; $1 children; ages 5 and younger free
Jamesville Beach
Apulia Rd., Jamesville

6:00am: Balloon launch (weather permitting)
6:00 - 7:30pm: Balloon launch (weather permitting)

Main Stage Entertainment
1:15pm: Dave Hanlon's Cookbook
2:30pm: Cute Is What We Aim For
3:30pm: Joe Whiting Band
4:30pm: Kimberley Locke
5:30pm: Grupo Pagan

For more information, syracuseballoonfest.com.

Polish Festival

Price: Free
Clinton Square
Downtown, Syracuse

12:00 pm -- Salt City Brass, Syracuse band
1:00 pm -- Lechowia, Toronto's Polish Canadian Dance Company
2:00 pm -- Salt City Brass
3:00 pm -- Lechowia
4:00 pm -- Miss Polonia Awards and Anya
5:00 pm -- Salt City Brass

Greek Cultural Festival

Price: Free
St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church
325 Waring Rd., Syracuse

12:30pm-1:30pm: Touch of Culture lecture
1:00pm: Church Tour
1:00pm: Children's Dance Group
1:30pm-2:30pm: Touring Greece lecture
2:30pm-3:30pm: The Art of the Dance lecture
3:00pm: Children's Dance Group

A Cavalcade of Popular Music
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring Phil Klein, piano

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

One-man show highlighting the best in American song of the last 125 years.

Reservations are recommended -- phone 315-469-4675.

Schubert's Mass in G Major
The combined choirs of Fairmount Community Church and Bellevue Heights United Methodist Church
Nancy James, conductor

Price: Free
Bellevue Heights United Methodist Church
2112 S. Geddes St., Syracuse

The performance features Sandra Murphy, soprano; Thomas Sauve, tenor; and Jimi James, baritone; with members of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. Reception to follow. For more information, phone 315-475-0011.

World Citizen Summer Solstice Concert
Syracuse Community Choir
Karen Mihalyi, conductor

Price: $10 - $25 sliding scale adults; free for children 12 and under
Erwin First United Methodist Church
920 Euclid Ave., Syracuse

The choir will sing songs that acknowledge and embrace our individual and collective connection to each other and the world as caretakers, guardians and activists. For more information, phone 315-428-8151.

A Picasso
Simply New Theatre

Price: $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

1941: Picasso has been summoned from his favorite Paris cafe by German occupation forces for interrogation.

Read a Review!

The Unexpected Guest
Syracuse Stage
Robert Moss, director

Price: $40, $36, $22 (adults); $18 (teens); $15 (children)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A foggy night and a car runs off the road into a ditch. The driver gropes his way to a nearby house. He taps on the window. No answer. He enters the well-appointed study to find a man dead in a wheelchair. Nearby stands the dead man's wife, revolver in hand, and ready to confess to murder. Case open, but with Agatha Christie, it's far from shut. Great fun from the master of mystery herself.

Read a Review!

Kelly Kinsella Live!

Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Liverpool native Kelly Kinsella performs her one-woman show as a preview to her "Kelly Kinsella Live! Under Broadway" which will be performed for seven days during The New York International Fringe Festival in Manhattan in August. She will perform monologues based on real-life characters she has worked with in her nine years as a dresser on Broadway. Excerpts from her hour-and-a-half show will make up this 30 minute performance.

Seating is limited. To reserve tickets, phone 315-695-2708.

Kelly Kinsella Live!

Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Liverpool native Kelly Kinsella performs her one-woman show as a preview to her "Kelly Kinsella Live! Under Broadway" which will be performed for seven days during The New York International Fringe Festival in Manhattan in August. She will perform monologues based on real-life characters she has worked with in her nine years as a dresser on Broadway. Excerpts from her hour-and-a-half show will make up this 30 minute performance.

Seating is limited. To reserve tickets, phone 315-695-2708.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Glass and Abstracts
Delavan Art Gallery

Price: Free
Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The exhibit features glass works by Jerome R. Durr and R Jason Howard along with abstract paintings by Thomas Barnes, Linda Bigness and Jeff Schuessler.

With a geometric vision, Thomas Barnes began his career as a student of math and sciences during the Cold War. He was always interested in studying art, but it was not until he met Professor Frank Goodnow at Syracuse University in a night class that he finally found a direction for his art studies. Thirty-five years later Barnes has developed into a prolific artist with a solid style of hard-edged geometric shapes and colors used to create acrylic paintings of abstracts and landscapes.

Linda Bigness creates works on paper and canvas. Her largely abstract works have been exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and can be found in both public and private collections. She has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art, the Cultural Center: The Netherlands, Westmoreland, Cooperstown and in Korea. Public commissions include the Temple B'Rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY and the Governor's Mansion in Florida. Bigness was head of the Visual Arts Department and Director of Gallery 320 at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse before it closed and has continued to curate, teach and write on a regular basis.

Jerome R. Durr began designing and fabricating glass artwork in 1973 for private residential collectors, commercial projects, ecclesiastical commissions and public surroundings. Today Jerome R. Durr Studio specializes in architectural art glass for an impressive list of international clientele. His work can be found throughout the U.S., in France, Italy, Germany, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Durr is on the board of directors of the Stained Glass Association of America and is Director of the Stained Glass School. His expertise includes casting, carving, etching and slumping glass. Durr looks forward to the innovative large or small architectural setting project where he can meld human problem solving with quality of design and fabrication.

R Jason Howard calls his current work "an exploration of change, time, and process." Howard first became enthralled with glass as a senior studying ceramics at Hamilton College. After he graduated he received a scholarship to the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and began studying with several renowned glass artists. Howard acted as a consultant for North Star Glassworks developing colored borosilicate glasses including one of their more popular colors, Onyx. Howard's current work through his studio, Cicada Glassworks, can be seen in galleries around the country. Inspired by nature, he draws on the unique combination of traditional Italian techniques and self-invented processes to create large organic colorful forms that push the boundaries of what flameworked glass can do.

Through various drawings and paintings of circles, seemingly both in motion and dynamically frozen, Jeff Schuessler presents ideas concerning space and time. Through various sized charcoal drawings, he explores both the potential for and the continuation of movement across space and time. He creates tension by providing both a sense of motion and a quiet stillness, often simultaneously. Schuessler holds a B.S. in Advertising and an M.S. in Art Education from Syracuse University. Currently, he is an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School.

CFAC Cinema Thursday
Community Folk Art Center

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

CFAC Cinema Thursday: Been Rich All My Life
Community Folk Art Center

Price: $5 adults, $3 students, $1 toddlers 3 and under
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

CFAC will continue its Cinema Thursday Series with a screening of the film Been Rich All My Life. The film, directed by Heather Lyn MacDonald, tells the story of the Silver Belles, a troupe of women tap dancers, ages 84 to 96. The women met in the 1930s as chorus dancers at the Apollo and the Cotton Club. When the Big Band era ended, the women went into other work. They regrouped in 1985 and are still performing regularly.

Wizard of Words: Songs of Lyricist Yip Harburg
Featuring Karen Oberlin, vocalist

Price: $12
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Join Syracuse-native jazz-pop singer Karen Oberlin for an evening celebrating one of our greatest songwriters, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg. The man who brought the "Rainbow" to Finian and "The Wizard of Oz", Harburg wrote countless gems such as "April In Paris", "It's Only A Paper Moon", and "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" As Harburg said, "I want my songwriting to contribute to the recovery of the human spirit; to reestablish hope." In his lyrics, humor, fantasy and serious social satire glow together like rainbow hues.

To reserve tickets, phone 315-425-5272 or visit www.karenoberlin.com.

Die Another Death
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.

Miss Nelson is Missing
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Miss Nelson's class is the worst behaved in the whole school. Spitballs flying across the room, paper airplanes sailing every which way and uncontrollable children send the gentle, long-suffering teacher, Miss Nelson, over the edge. But the students of Room 207 are in for a surprise when Miss Nelson turns up missing and is replaced by the mean, mysterious Miss Viola Swamp, the scariest substitute teacher on the face of the earth. Miss Swamp assigns tons of homework and wields her ruler with dangerous authority. In desperation, the students set out to find their beloved Miss Nelson ... and they'll do whatever it takes to bring her back!

The Gifford Family Theatre proudly presents this witty, wacky musical adaptation of the award-winning children's favorites by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Originally commissioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, the adaptation by Joan Cushing (book, music and lyrics) was named the winner of the 2003 National Childrens Theatre Festival.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Glass and Abstracts
Delavan Art Gallery

Price: Free
Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The exhibit features glass works by Jerome R. Durr and R Jason Howard along with abstract paintings by Thomas Barnes, Linda Bigness and Jeff Schuessler.

With a geometric vision, Thomas Barnes began his career as a student of math and sciences during the Cold War. He was always interested in studying art, but it was not until he met Professor Frank Goodnow at Syracuse University in a night class that he finally found a direction for his art studies. Thirty-five years later Barnes has developed into a prolific artist with a solid style of hard-edged geometric shapes and colors used to create acrylic paintings of abstracts and landscapes.

Linda Bigness creates works on paper and canvas. Her largely abstract works have been exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and can be found in both public and private collections. She has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art, the Cultural Center: The Netherlands, Westmoreland, Cooperstown and in Korea. Public commissions include the Temple B'Rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY and the Governor's Mansion in Florida. Bigness was head of the Visual Arts Department and Director of Gallery 320 at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse before it closed and has continued to curate, teach and write on a regular basis.

Jerome R. Durr began designing and fabricating glass artwork in 1973 for private residential collectors, commercial projects, ecclesiastical commissions and public surroundings. Today Jerome R. Durr Studio specializes in architectural art glass for an impressive list of international clientele. His work can be found throughout the U.S., in France, Italy, Germany, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Durr is on the board of directors of the Stained Glass Association of America and is Director of the Stained Glass School. His expertise includes casting, carving, etching and slumping glass. Durr looks forward to the innovative large or small architectural setting project where he can meld human problem solving with quality of design and fabrication.

R Jason Howard calls his current work "an exploration of change, time, and process." Howard first became enthralled with glass as a senior studying ceramics at Hamilton College. After he graduated he received a scholarship to the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and began studying with several renowned glass artists. Howard acted as a consultant for North Star Glassworks developing colored borosilicate glasses including one of their more popular colors, Onyx. Howard's current work through his studio, Cicada Glassworks, can be seen in galleries around the country. Inspired by nature, he draws on the unique combination of traditional Italian techniques and self-invented processes to create large organic colorful forms that push the boundaries of what flameworked glass can do.

Through various drawings and paintings of circles, seemingly both in motion and dynamically frozen, Jeff Schuessler presents ideas concerning space and time. Through various sized charcoal drawings, he explores both the potential for and the continuation of movement across space and time. He creates tension by providing both a sense of motion and a quiet stillness, often simultaneously. Schuessler holds a B.S. in Advertising and an M.S. in Art Education from Syracuse University. Currently, he is an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

A Fine Arts Open House

Price: Free
Stone House Gallery
4331 Norton Rd., Syracuse

Alison Fisher-Cullen: paintings and fiber art
Bobbi Lamb: pottery
Roger Morris: paintings
Lorraine Savidge: art embroidery
Michelle DaRin: jewelry
Fran Byrne: ceramics
Shauna Walsh: glass

Opening Night Lecture: African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art
Featuring Dr. Carol Ann Lorenz

Price: $10 non-members; free to museum members
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Dr. Carol Ann Lorenz, Senior Curator of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and lecturer in Art and Art History at Colgate University will discuss the function and artistic style of the objects in this summer's exhibition African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art.

Folkus Project
Andrew & Noah VanNorstrand

Price: $10
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Andrew and Noah VanNorstrand will be celebrating the release of their new CD at a special Folkus concert. The new album, A Certain Tree, features mainly original material with a fresh touch for the duo -- vocals.

Andrew and Noah VanNorstrand are two of the most exciting and creative new faces on the acoustic music scene today. Their stunning abilities as both performers and composers, combined with exuberant performances, have built a large and loyal following. After years of touring, studio work and teaching experience they have managed to carve themselves a unique niche in the modern folk arena. Although still in their teens, they display a mature and seasoned musicality beyond their years and, with their energetic stage presences and cutting-edge arrangements, they truly stand out in a crowd.

A Certain Tree is the fourth CD from this Fulton, NY duo. Andrew and Noah have put out three self-produced recordings; two with The Great Bear Trio, "The Great Bear Trio" and "Dancing Again," and a duo project titled "Driftage." The Great Bear Trio was formed in 2000 with their mother Kim on piano. Great Bear has since become one of the hottest contradance bands on the circuit and has performed for enthusiastic fans at festivals across the country. In 2004 Andrew and Noah appeared on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" as finalists in the nationwide "Talent from Twelve to Twenty" contest. Their music has also been featured on NPR's "Open Mic" and "The Thistle and Shamrock" with Fiona Ritchie.

For reservations, email tickets@folkus.org or call 315-440-7444.

American Rhythms
Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus
Carl Johengen, conductor

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

This special event will include a post-concert reception and drawing for door prizes. Tickets can be reserved by calling 315-476-4329, and also available at The Lavender Inkwell, 304 N. McBride St., Syracuse.

Miss Nelson is Missing
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Miss Nelson's class is the worst behaved in the whole school. Spitballs flying across the room, paper airplanes sailing every which way and uncontrollable children send the gentle, long-suffering teacher, Miss Nelson, over the edge. But the students of Room 207 are in for a surprise when Miss Nelson turns up missing and is replaced by the mean, mysterious Miss Viola Swamp, the scariest substitute teacher on the face of the earth. Miss Swamp assigns tons of homework and wields her ruler with dangerous authority. In desperation, the students set out to find their beloved Miss Nelson ... and they'll do whatever it takes to bring her back!

The Gifford Family Theatre proudly presents this witty, wacky musical adaptation of the award-winning children's favorites by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Originally commissioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, the adaptation by Joan Cushing (book, music and lyrics) was named the winner of the 2003 National Childrens Theatre Festival.

Lowdown Lies
Armory Square Playwrights

Price: $15 regular; $12 studetns/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Lowdown Lies is a full-length, non-musical comedy written by Post-Standard humor columnist Jeff Kramer, about the mess a man creates after backing out of a vasectomy without telling his wife.

Read a Review!

Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Aubry Ludington, director

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

The fashion for transforming movies into stage musicals may well have hit rock bottom with Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical, an adaptation of the '70s pornographic movie. Calling it a musical is going a bit far. It is closer to an extended revue skit, a scrappy, smutty spoof of a porn movie that strips out the hardcore, replacing it with musical numbers suggestive of the acts taking place. The plot and dialogue that remain are, to say the least, flaccid. Debbie Benton, typical of all-American teens, is "saving herself for marriage" and dreaming of becoming a football cheerleader. Accepted for the Texas Cowgirls squad, she has only two weeks to earn the fare to Dallas. An after-school job paying $2.90 an hour won't cover it, and her boss suggests other ways in which to serve him. Each time, she sings, she is "Another Ten Dollars Closer to Dallas." Her girlfriends join in and their company, Teen Services, has no difficulty finding men willing to pay for services rendered. The songs, by Andrew Sherman, are bright and peppy, with one or two nice ballads such as "Small Town Girl" and "God Must Love a Fool" that would be worthy of a real musical. For the most part, though, they are there to serve as a musical pointers to the sex content - ditties such as "The Dildo Rag," performed by the proprietor of a candle shop (a Mr. Hardwick, of course) and "Dallas I'm Coming," as poignant a song about being deflowered as you've ever heard.

No one under 18 will be admitted.

Read a Review!

A Picasso
Simply New Theatre

Price: $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

1941: Picasso has been summoned from his favorite Paris cafe by German occupation forces for interrogation.

Read a Review!

Lucky Stiff
The Talent Company
Sharee Lemos, director

Price: $25 regular, $22 students/seniors, $14 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Lucky Stiff, a zany, offbeat and hilarious musical murder mystery by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once On This Island, My Favorite Year, Ragtime), concerns Harry Witherspoon whose dreary existence is turned upside down by being named in his Uncle Tony Hendon's will. If he agrees to fulfill the convoluted terms of the will, including taking his dead uncle on his dream vacation to Monte Carlo (a la "Weekend at Bernie's"), Harry stands to inherit $6 million. If terms are not carried out to the letter of the will, the inheritance reverts to Tony's favorite charity, the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn, whose administrator, Annabel Glick, keeps a watchful eye on Harry's every move. Meanwhile, Rita LaPorta discovers that her lover, casino manager Tony Hendon, has left his nephew the money they embezzled from Rita's casino owner husband. To help recover the money, Rita kidnaps her brother Vinnie DeRuzzio and off they go to Monte Carlo. Added into the Monte Carlo melee are Luigi Gaudi, a sinister looking man who seems to have a keen interest in Harry's activities, and an assortment of more than 24 characters all portrayed by a quartet of actors. Join Harry, the corpse, and all the other zany characters on a vacation of a lifetime!

Read a Review!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Glass and Abstracts
Delavan Art Gallery

Price: Free
Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The exhibit features glass works by Jerome R. Durr and R Jason Howard along with abstract paintings by Thomas Barnes, Linda Bigness and Jeff Schuessler.

With a geometric vision, Thomas Barnes began his career as a student of math and sciences during the Cold War. He was always interested in studying art, but it was not until he met Professor Frank Goodnow at Syracuse University in a night class that he finally found a direction for his art studies. Thirty-five years later Barnes has developed into a prolific artist with a solid style of hard-edged geometric shapes and colors used to create acrylic paintings of abstracts and landscapes.

Linda Bigness creates works on paper and canvas. Her largely abstract works have been exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and can be found in both public and private collections. She has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art, the Cultural Center: The Netherlands, Westmoreland, Cooperstown and in Korea. Public commissions include the Temple B'Rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY and the Governor's Mansion in Florida. Bigness was head of the Visual Arts Department and Director of Gallery 320 at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse before it closed and has continued to curate, teach and write on a regular basis.

Jerome R. Durr began designing and fabricating glass artwork in 1973 for private residential collectors, commercial projects, ecclesiastical commissions and public surroundings. Today Jerome R. Durr Studio specializes in architectural art glass for an impressive list of international clientele. His work can be found throughout the U.S., in France, Italy, Germany, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Durr is on the board of directors of the Stained Glass Association of America and is Director of the Stained Glass School. His expertise includes casting, carving, etching and slumping glass. Durr looks forward to the innovative large or small architectural setting project where he can meld human problem solving with quality of design and fabrication.

R Jason Howard calls his current work "an exploration of change, time, and process." Howard first became enthralled with glass as a senior studying ceramics at Hamilton College. After he graduated he received a scholarship to the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and began studying with several renowned glass artists. Howard acted as a consultant for North Star Glassworks developing colored borosilicate glasses including one of their more popular colors, Onyx. Howard's current work through his studio, Cicada Glassworks, can be seen in galleries around the country. Inspired by nature, he draws on the unique combination of traditional Italian techniques and self-invented processes to create large organic colorful forms that push the boundaries of what flameworked glass can do.

Through various drawings and paintings of circles, seemingly both in motion and dynamically frozen, Jeff Schuessler presents ideas concerning space and time. Through various sized charcoal drawings, he explores both the potential for and the continuation of movement across space and time. He creates tension by providing both a sense of motion and a quiet stillness, often simultaneously. Schuessler holds a B.S. in Advertising and an M.S. in Art Education from Syracuse University. Currently, he is an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Suggested donation, $5, adults
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

A Fine Arts Open House

Price: Free
Stone House Gallery
4331 Norton Rd., Syracuse

Alison Fisher-Cullen: paintings and fiber art
Bobbi Lamb: pottery
Roger Morris: paintings
Lorraine Savidge: art embroidery
Michelle DaRin: jewelry
Fran Byrne: ceramics
Shauna Walsh: glass

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Liverpool Arts and Wellness Celebration

Price: Free
Johnson Park
Corner of Vine and Oswego Streets, Liverpool

11:00 am: No Xcuse (a cappella doo-wop 10-voice singing group)
12:00 pm: Gypsy Red (progressive folk-rock)
1:15 pm: Hanna Richardson and Phil Flannigan (jazz-swing)
2:30 pm: Rory O' Bannion, guitarist ('60s folk-rock)
3:30 pm: The Gonstermachers (quirky quartet)
7:00 pm: Gypsy Red (progressive folk-rock)

Artists include:
Louise Woodard, award-winning watercolorist
George Benedict, renowned artist and instructor with oils and drawings
Sandra Fioramonti, watercolor and acrylic landscapes
Two Hawks Gallery, collections of stones, artwork, and jewelry
Barbara Hathaway, ancient art of wire wrapped jewelry
Stone carving artistry, glass paintings, photography, and students from Liverpool Art Center, and much more

Juneteenth

Price: Free
Clinton Square
Downtown, Syracuse

12:00 pm: Abundant Life Mass Choir
12:45 pm: Bells of Harmony
1:45 pm: Rejoicing Voices
2:40 pm: Five to Life
3:15 pm: Rufus Morris
4:15 pm: J Project
5:15 pm: Soulmind Band
6:15 pm: Electric Relaxation
7:15 pm: After EFX Band
8:15 pm: The Black Lites
9:15 pm: The Donna Alfred Jass Band

(A second stage in Hanover Square features children's events and performers.)

Artist Reception and Gallery Talk: Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

Art on the Porches 2007

Price: Free
Ruskin Avenue
Strathmore neighborhood, Syracuse

40 artists will show and sell their work in the historic Strathmore Neighborhood of Syracuse and the block will also be closed to traffic for a street-faire event that includes musicians, dancers, theatre, a free Hands-On Art Center, and delicious food.

This years entertainment line-up includes SAMMY Award winning musicians Ashley Cox and Arty Lenin & Gary Frenay, Indie recording artist Mandate of Heaven, Dixieland Update, Jazz duo Nick Frenay & Noah Kellman, Chaos Productions, Salsa dancers, Irish step dancers, the Maya Tribe Belly Dancers, poetry reading, and much more. The free Hands-On Art Center provides an opportunity for kids to make their own art. There will also be storytelling and dance.

For more info visit www.artontheporches.com.

Spring Concert: Rhythms of Life
Berwald Singers
Ian Kirkpatrick, conductor

Price: $9 adults, $5 children 6-12, under 6 free
Northeast Community Center
716 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-422-6873.

American Rhythms
Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus
Carl Johengen, conductor

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

This special event will include a post-concert reception and drawing for door prizes. Tickets can be reserved by calling 315-476-4329, and also available at The Lavender Inkwell, 304 N. McBride St., Syracuse.

The Little Mermaid
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive adaption of the children's favorite.

Miss Nelson is Missing
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Miss Nelson's class is the worst behaved in the whole school. Spitballs flying across the room, paper airplanes sailing every which way and uncontrollable children send the gentle, long-suffering teacher, Miss Nelson, over the edge. But the students of Room 207 are in for a surprise when Miss Nelson turns up missing and is replaced by the mean, mysterious Miss Viola Swamp, the scariest substitute teacher on the face of the earth. Miss Swamp assigns tons of homework and wields her ruler with dangerous authority. In desperation, the students set out to find their beloved Miss Nelson ... and they'll do whatever it takes to bring her back!

The Gifford Family Theatre proudly presents this witty, wacky musical adaptation of the award-winning children's favorites by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Originally commissioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, the adaptation by Joan Cushing (book, music and lyrics) was named the winner of the 2003 National Childrens Theatre Festival.

Miss Nelson is Missing
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Miss Nelson's class is the worst behaved in the whole school. Spitballs flying across the room, paper airplanes sailing every which way and uncontrollable children send the gentle, long-suffering teacher, Miss Nelson, over the edge. But the students of Room 207 are in for a surprise when Miss Nelson turns up missing and is replaced by the mean, mysterious Miss Viola Swamp, the scariest substitute teacher on the face of the earth. Miss Swamp assigns tons of homework and wields her ruler with dangerous authority. In desperation, the students set out to find their beloved Miss Nelson ... and they'll do whatever it takes to bring her back!

The Gifford Family Theatre proudly presents this witty, wacky musical adaptation of the award-winning children's favorites by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Originally commissioned and produced by BAPA's Imagination Stage, the adaptation by Joan Cushing (book, music and lyrics) was named the winner of the 2003 National Childrens Theatre Festival.

Lowdown Lies
Armory Square Playwrights

Price: $15 regular; $12 studetns/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Lowdown Lies is a full-length, non-musical comedy written by Post-Standard humor columnist Jeff Kramer, about the mess a man creates after backing out of a vasectomy without telling his wife.

Read a Review!

Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Aubry Ludington, director

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

The fashion for transforming movies into stage musicals may well have hit rock bottom with Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical, an adaptation of the '70s pornographic movie. Calling it a musical is going a bit far. It is closer to an extended revue skit, a scrappy, smutty spoof of a porn movie that strips out the hardcore, replacing it with musical numbers suggestive of the acts taking place. The plot and dialogue that remain are, to say the least, flaccid. Debbie Benton, typical of all-American teens, is "saving herself for marriage" and dreaming of becoming a football cheerleader. Accepted for the Texas Cowgirls squad, she has only two weeks to earn the fare to Dallas. An after-school job paying $2.90 an hour won't cover it, and her boss suggests other ways in which to serve him. Each time, she sings, she is "Another Ten Dollars Closer to Dallas." Her girlfriends join in and their company, Teen Services, has no difficulty finding men willing to pay for services rendered. The songs, by Andrew Sherman, are bright and peppy, with one or two nice ballads such as "Small Town Girl" and "God Must Love a Fool" that would be worthy of a real musical. For the most part, though, they are there to serve as a musical pointers to the sex content - ditties such as "The Dildo Rag," performed by the proprietor of a candle shop (a Mr. Hardwick, of course) and "Dallas I'm Coming," as poignant a song about being deflowered as you've ever heard.

No one under 18 will be admitted.

Read a Review!

A Picasso
Simply New Theatre

Price: $25 regular; $20 students/seniors
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

1941: Picasso has been summoned from his favorite Paris cafe by German occupation forces for interrogation.

Read a Review!

Lucky Stiff
The Talent Company
Sharee Lemos, director

Price: $25 regular, $22 students/seniors, $14 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Lucky Stiff, a zany, offbeat and hilarious musical murder mystery by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once On This Island, My Favorite Year, Ragtime), concerns Harry Witherspoon whose dreary existence is turned upside down by being named in his Uncle Tony Hendon's will. If he agrees to fulfill the convoluted terms of the will, including taking his dead uncle on his dream vacation to Monte Carlo (a la "Weekend at Bernie's"), Harry stands to inherit $6 million. If terms are not carried out to the letter of the will, the inheritance reverts to Tony's favorite charity, the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn, whose administrator, Annabel Glick, keeps a watchful eye on Harry's every move. Meanwhile, Rita LaPorta discovers that her lover, casino manager Tony Hendon, has left his nephew the money they embezzled from Rita's casino owner husband. To help recover the money, Rita kidnaps her brother Vinnie DeRuzzio and off they go to Monte Carlo. Added into the Monte Carlo melee are Luigi Gaudi, a sinister looking man who seems to have a keen interest in Harry's activities, and an assortment of more than 24 characters all portrayed by a quartet of actors. Join Harry, the corpse, and all the other zany characters on a vacation of a lifetime!

Read a Review!