Sunday, April 10, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

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"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening 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.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

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

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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From Altar Cloths to Lost Socks: The Fabric of Life
University Neighbors Lecture Series
Featuring Sarah Saulson

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

Sarah Saulson, a weaver since childhood, teaches weaving in the School of Art at SU. She also works with Syracuse-area elementary-age children teaching them to weave through artist's residencies and sells her work at Eureka Crafts in Armory Square. She has maintained an active dyeing and weaving studio near the Westcott Nation for many years. Her interactive lecture will include spinning and weaving demonstrations and a world tour of weaving through space and time.

Operatic Arias
Featuring Luba Lesser, mezzo-soprano; Maryna Mazhukhova, piano

Price: Free (registration required)
Dewitt Community Library
Shoppingtown Mall, Dewitt

For more information or to register, phone 315-446-3578.

Traditional and Historical Songs of New York State

Price: Free (registration required)
Marcellus Free Library
32 Maple St, Marcellus

For more information or to register, phone 315-673-3221.

Menahem Pressler in Recital
Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: $25 adults, $10 students
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio for more than five decades, Menahem Pressler is among the world's most honored musicians. His performances continue to captivate audiences worldwide.

Beethoven Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, op. 110
Debussy Estampes
Schubert Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960

Graduate Piano Recital
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Jianan Yu, piano

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

Jianan Yu, a graduate piano performance major, will perform a recital that include Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV 903, Mozart's Fantasy in C Minor, K.475, Barber's Nocturne Op.33, and Schumann's Carnaval Op.9.

Free parking is available in the Irving Garage.

Anniversary Concert Series: DCC Chancel Choir and Members of the SSO
DeWitt Community Church
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra

Price: $10 ($5 with a ticket for a cancelled SSO performance))
Dewitt Community Church
3600 Erie Blvd. East, Dewitt

As part of the 50th Anniversary of the SSO and the 200th Anniversary of Dewitt Community Church Celebration Series, the expanded Dewitt Chancel Choir will present the John Rutter Requiem, accompanied by 28 SSO players conducted by Travis Newton. The concert will also include Bach's Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, featuring Andy Zaplatynsky.

Paul Roberts, theater organ
Syracuse Wurlitzer

Price: $15 adults, $2 children
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Paul Roberts has been delighting audiences in many parts of the world with his excellent musicianship and superb abilities as an entertainer. Paul has an extensive musical education including studies of classical organ, piano, clarinet, music theory and performance. His organ studies have provided him with access to a large variety of instruments from the Royal Festival Hall to the Tower Ballroom Wurlitzer in Blackpool. Paul's theatre organ tours extend beyond the United Kingdom to the Channel Islands, Holland, and Canada. He tours the United States regularly two times a year, and last year he completed a world tour to Australia and New Zealand. Paul has also made several broadcasts on the BBC and appearing on the popular radio program, "The Organist Entertains." He has produced several LP, tapes, and CD albums and several videos. Come and enjoy a wonderful spring evening with Paul Roberts!

University Singers
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

Parking is available in the Irving Garage.

The Pearl Fishers
Syracuse Opera

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

Passion and relationships are tested in this opera by Bizet. The friendship of Zurga, leader of the pearl fishers, and Nadir is unintentionally torn asunder by a virgin priestess, Leila. She also shares a past with both men. Set in Ceylon in ancient times. Sung in French with projected English translation. A Syracuse premiere.

A Celebration of the Cazenovia Women's Writer's Center
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

An evening of words and wisdom commemorating the Women Writers Center, established in the late 1970s in Cazenovia. Please join writers Mary Demetrick, Rachel Guido de Vries, Teresa Gilman, Susie Kossack, Jackie Warren Moore, Mary Slechta, and Deborah Sorrentino reading from their original work as well as from the esteemed faculty of feminist writers affiliated with the center. Rachel Guido de Vries, former director of the Women Writers Center will give a brief history of this iconoclastic school. A question and answer session will follow the reading.

The Last Five Years
Encore Presentations

Price: $37.25 dinner theater (includes tax and tip); $20 show only
Glen Loch Restaurant
4626 North St., Jamesville

Dinner at 1:00 pm; show follows at 2:00 pm.

The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, starring Molly Brown and Robert G. Searle

For tickets, phone 315-469-6969.

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The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living." In her own words, Helen Keller captures the inspirational heart of William Gibson's classic American play. Between the emptiness and the rapture, though, came a fierce struggle of wills, with Helen, in her darkness and stillness, on one side, and the determined Annie Sullivan on the other, a young woman who had endured a lifetime of pain in just 20 years. Gibson's text is unsparing and unflinching in its depiction of their confrontation and mutual triumph. The hearts that will be leaping will be ours.

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Curse of the Starving Class
Syracuse University Drama Department
Gerardine Clark, director

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

Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard's 1978, excoriating comedy has never seemed timelier. "The whole thing is geared to invisible money," laments Weston, the chronically soused patriarch of a family in serious financial and psychological disarray. The refrigerator's empty, the house is crumbling, the creditors are baying, and that much longed-for American idyll is unattainable. Shepard's savage fantasy on America's voraciousness only gets better with age.

Premiering at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1978, Curse won the Obie Award for Best New American Play. Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis (cousin of presidential candidate Michael Dukakis) played the matriarch Ella in the premiere. In the 1994 film version, another Academy Award winner, Kathy Bates, took on the role. Shepard, who won a Pulitzer Prize for drama for his subsequent play Buried Child, is also an Academy Award nominated actor for his supporting role in The Right Stuff (1983).

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Monday, April 11, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Davidovich in Situ: A Video Art Project
Point of Contact Gallery

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

Argentine video artist Jaime Davidovich returns to Syracuse University after an amazing year of grand-scale museum exhibitions worldwide, to work on site at The Point of Contact Gallery. Davidovich will present a series of his classic videos along with collage, photography, and a new series of paintings that he will produce on site.

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

"My paintings are hybrids combining the tactile sensation of painting with the electronic pulse of video. The works are small in scale and intimate in nature. I want to do an art that speaks on a one-to-one basis with the viewer, no actors or story line, just a scale for human dialogue. In a time of video as spectacle, my work is indeed conflictive. I am interested in establishing a link (no pun intended) between Morandi and the Internet; the personal gesture and digital reproduction. These are the opposites that attract me. I use video because it is intimate, personal. I use the brush because is my gestural DNA."

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

Read a review!

Shall We Dance (1937)
Syracuse Cinephile Society

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

Director: Mark Sandrich. Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Jerome Cowan, Eric Blore, Harriet Hoctor. Fred and Ginger are back as two single dancers who must pretend they're married as part of a publicity stunt. Delightful George and Ira Gershwin score includes "They All Laughed," "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off," "They Can't Take That Away From Me," and others.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

History of Temple Concord & the Jewish Experience
Temple Society of Concord
Featuring Dr. Sam Gruber

Price: Free (donations welcome)
Temple Society of Concord
910 Madison St., Syracuse

Dr. Gruber is an architectural historian, archaeologist and historic preservationist. He is the author of "Synagogues" (Metrobooks, 1999) and "American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and the Jewish Community" (Rizzoli, 2003) and teaches courses on architecture and Jewish visual culture in the Judaic Studies department of Syracuse University. Gruber is president of the not-for-profit International Survey of Jewish Monuments and the managing director of Gruber Heritage Global, a private cultural heritage consulting company.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

Read a review!

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening 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.

Read a review!

Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

Read a review!

Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

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

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

Read a review!

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

Read a review!

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Women in Photography NYC lecture
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Amy Elkins and Cara Philips, founders of Women in Photography NYC (WIP), will talk about their Internet-based exhibition space for emerging and established artists. While WIP features the work of female photographers, the website is essential reading to anyone interested in contemporary photography. Since its founding, WIP has become one of the premiere sites for up-and-coming photographers to exhibit their work, as well as for more established photographers to reach a wide audience. Several photographers associated with Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program and the Department of Transmedia's Colloquium lecture series, including Alessandra Sanguinetti, Kelli Connell, Talia Chetrit and Elinor Carucci, have been featured on the site. In the past year, WIP, in association with the Humble Arts Foundation, Lightside Photographics and Kodak, has established a $1,000 grant to emerging women photographers.

This event has been coordinated by Doug DuBois, associate professor of art photography in the Department of Transmedia. It is co-sponsored by Light Work, Syracuse University's Division of Student Affairs Co-Curricular Funding, and the Department of Transmedia and Matrilineage, a student-run organization committed to promoting women in the arts.

Parking is available in SU pay lots.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Stephen Talasnik
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Stephen Talasnik, the inaugural Sandra Kahn Alpert Visiting Artist, is spending the semester working with the Graduate Seminar in the Department of Art, which consists of master of fine arts candidates in ceramics, fiber arts/material studies, illustration, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, printmaking and sculpture.

Born in Philadelphia, Talasnik developed an early interest in engineering and architecture, particularly in visionary and "fantastic" design. He studied art and design at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Tyler School of Art and taught drawing and design at Temple University’s Japan campus before moving to New York City.

After exclusively pursuing the art of drawing, Talasnik started making sculpture in 2000. His work is in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Albertina (Vienna), the British Museum (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), State Museum of Berlin (Germany) and the National Gallery of Art. His recent solo and site-specific exhibitions include those at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, N.Y.; Battat Contemporary in Montreal; and Marlborough Chelsea in New York City. Learn more at http://www.stephentalasnik.com.

Parking is available for $4 in Booth Garage. Patrons should mention that they are attending the lecture to receive this rate. For more information about the lecture, contact Stephen Zaima, professor of painting, at 315-443-9400 or szaima@syr.edu.

Alice Hoffman
Friends of the Central Library Author Series

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

Alice Hoffman has been called "America's literary heir to the Brothers Grimm." Her everyday fables are a favorite of her readers. Hoffman can make the ordinary extraordinary as she writes about life's common struggles including relationships, intimacy, family, identity, love, and basic survival. Some of Hoffman's titles include Here on Earth, Practical Magic, Blackbird House, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, The Ice Queen, and Skylight Confessions. She is also the author of several children's books and young adult titles. Her novels have been recognized by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People magazine. Her books are well loved among book groups across the nation.

Spring Concert
Spirit of Syracuse Chorus
Nancy Field, conductor

Price: Free
St. Matthew's School
214 Kinne St., East Syracuse

Chorus and quartets perform as they get ready for the 2011 Region 16 Contest at the end of the month. Concert features Blue Skies, Maybe, Skylark, and our new yet-to-be-named quartets, as well as the fabulous Spirit of Syracuse Chorus.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

There will be an opening reception this evening 5:30-7:30 pm.

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

There will be an exhibit reception this morning 11:00 am - 12:00 pm.

Davidovich in Situ: A Video Art Project
Point of Contact Gallery

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

Argentine video artist Jaime Davidovich returns to Syracuse University after an amazing year of grand-scale museum exhibitions worldwide, to work on site at The Point of Contact Gallery. Davidovich will present a series of his classic videos along with collage, photography, and a new series of paintings that he will produce on site.

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

"My paintings are hybrids combining the tactile sensation of painting with the electronic pulse of video. The works are small in scale and intimate in nature. I want to do an art that speaks on a one-to-one basis with the viewer, no actors or story line, just a scale for human dialogue. In a time of video as spectacle, my work is indeed conflictive. I am interested in establishing a link (no pun intended) between Morandi and the Internet; the personal gesture and digital reproduction. These are the opposites that attract me. I use video because it is intimate, personal. I use the brush because is my gestural DNA."

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

Read a review!

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening 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.

Read a review!

Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

Read a review!

Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

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

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

Read a review!

Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

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100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibition features the art of 35 women artists -- nine local to Syracuse, and the rest from communities across the country. These women, in keeping with the mission of ArtRage, are also activists and their work expresses a whole range of issues important to both women and the community of concerned people worldwide: self-image, hunger, collective action, war, children, the status of women, immigration, environmental crisis, alternative lifestyles and self-discovery.

Participating artists include Arlene Abend, Amy Bartell, Ellen Blalock, Marlena Buczek, Elizabeth Carter, Jen Cartwright, the Chicago Women's Graphic Collective, Sue Coe, Erin Currier, Jane Evershed, Raina Gentry, Susan Grabel, Sharon Lee Hart, Robin Hewlett, Gail Hoffman, Nancy Hom, Katherine Hughes, Lahib Jaddo, Mollie Kellogg, Kate Luscher, Dierdre Luzwick, Sofia Perez, Ruth Putter, Favianna Rodriguez, Gazelle Samizay, Nicole Schulman, Sarah Walroth, Anita Welych and Oceans Unraveled project with artists: Aviva Alter, Mary Buczek, Mary Ellen Croteau.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

Read a review!

"What If...?" Film Series: Tocar y Luchar
Gifford Foundation

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

Tocar y Luchar (To Play and to Fight) presents the captivating story of the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System, a network of hundreds of orchestras formed within most of Venezuela's towns and villages. Once a modest program designed to expose rural children to the wonders of music, "el sistema" has become one of the most important and beautiful social phenomena in modern history. Tocar y Luchar is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Reviewers have called the film "a transcendent journey that showcases the power of music and its ability to promote positive social change" (AFIFEST) and "a visually, aurally and emotionally rewarding film" (Vancouver International Film Festival).

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Julie McKinstry, soprano; Phil Eisenman, baritone; Tom McKay, clarinet; Sabine Krantz, piano
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Works for voice, clarinet, and piano by Rossini, Vaughan Williams, and Argento.

The Jazzuits
Temple Society of Concord

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

LeMoyne College's vocal jazz ensemble. For more information, phone 315-475-9952.

EOTO, with special guests Paradise Beats
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Ages 16+ admitted.

Michael Burkard, poetry
Raymond Carver Reading Series

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

Reading is preceded by a question and answer session from 3:45-4:30.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

Read a review!

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Masters of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions beginning at 6:00 p.m.

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening 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.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

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

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

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100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibition features the art of 35 women artists -- nine local to Syracuse, and the rest from communities across the country. These women, in keeping with the mission of ArtRage, are also activists and their work expresses a whole range of issues important to both women and the community of concerned people worldwide: self-image, hunger, collective action, war, children, the status of women, immigration, environmental crisis, alternative lifestyles and self-discovery.

Participating artists include Arlene Abend, Amy Bartell, Ellen Blalock, Marlena Buczek, Elizabeth Carter, Jen Cartwright, the Chicago Women's Graphic Collective, Sue Coe, Erin Currier, Jane Evershed, Raina Gentry, Susan Grabel, Sharon Lee Hart, Robin Hewlett, Gail Hoffman, Nancy Hom, Katherine Hughes, Lahib Jaddo, Mollie Kellogg, Kate Luscher, Dierdre Luzwick, Sofia Perez, Ruth Putter, Favianna Rodriguez, Gazelle Samizay, Nicole Schulman, Sarah Walroth, Anita Welych and Oceans Unraveled project with artists: Aviva Alter, Mary Buczek, Mary Ellen Croteau.

Video Now
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

The Everson's annual screening of fresh, innovative and experimental short videos by students in Syracuse University's Transmedia Department. Light refreshments will be served during an intermission reception where the public can meet the artists.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created a site-specific installation that streams across the façade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms" and "Survival" that challenge viewers' assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Jenny Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her Truisms, and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection, and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed "Truisms" on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her "Survival" series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

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Film Premiere: 300 Miles to Freedom

Price: $10 regular, $5 student
Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A new film tells the story of John W. Jones, a fugitive slave who escaped bondage in Leesburg, VA, in 1844 and traveled the Underground Railroad to Elmira, NY. He arrived there as a 27-year-old illiterate with $1.46 in his pocket. By his death in 1900, he was a wealthy, literate, respected member of the community.

Filmmakers are Richard Breyer, professor and co-director of the Documentary Film and History Program in the Newhouse School, and Anand Kamalakar, Newhouse School alumnus and founder of Trilok Fusion Media in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The filmmakers take Jones' route from Leesburg to Elmira, and tell his story through the voices of those they meet along the way -- historians, ferry boat captains, ministers, farmers, restaurant and gas station owners. And they tell the Elmira chapters of the film in the same way -- weaving the voices and images of the past with those of the present.

Proceeds from the event will benefit Syracuse's Southside Community Coalition.

Wine, Women and Film: The Graduate
Redhouse

Price: $8
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A screening of The Graduate, followed by a discussion with Owen Shapiro, professor of film at SU, co-founder and artistic director of the Syracuse International Film Festival.

Part of a year-long film series celebrating the role of women in filmmaking.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Heartland Passage: The Oral History of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum

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

"Heartland Passage" is a set of nine high-definition videos -- six of them newly produced and three drawn from the New York State Museum -- that each profile a person who grew up along or worked on the Erie Canal. (24 minutes total)

Dr. Daniel Ward, Erie Canal Museum curator, will introduce the nine videos and provide some history about the project.

Sam Emanuel, piano
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

Music of Beethoven, Berg and Schumann.

Performance held in conjunction with SU Art Gallery's MFA 2011 exhibit.

The Brew with The Brethren, Moldy Miles
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Cruel April 2011
Point of Contact Gallery
Featuring María Negroni, Michelle Gil-Montero, Colleen Kattau

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

Point of Contact celebrates National Poetry Month with weekly poetry gatherings and a new poetry collection: Corresponding Voices, Vol. 4. The gallery will host multilingual poetry readings every Thursday in April. Each reading will feature poems from the new collection presented by the newly published authors and special guests. A reception will follow each reading.

María Negroni has published the following works: Poetry: De tanto desolar (1985); La jaula bajo el trapo (1991); El viaje de la noche (1994); Diario Extranjero (2000), La ineptitud (2002), Arte y Fuga (2004), Andanza (2009), and La Boca del Infierno (2010). Novels: El sueño de Ursula (1998), La Anunciación (2007) and a book in collaboration with Argentine artist Jorge Macchi, Buenos Aires Tour (2004). She received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry (1994), Rockefeller Foundation (1998); Fundación Octavio Paz (2001); New York Foundation for the Arts (2005), and Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2007). Her book Islandia received the PEN Award for best book of poetry in translation, New York 2001. She has just been awarded the Premio Internacional de Ensayo de Siglo XXI (México) for her book Galería Fantástica. She currently teaches Latin American Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

Michelle Gil-Montero's poems and translations of Latin American poetry have appeared in Jacket Magazine, Colorado Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Conjunctions, and Zoland, among others, and in the anthology 500 Years of Latin American Poetry. She teaches Creative Writing and lives in Pittsburgh.

Colleen Kattau is an Associate Professor of Spanish at SUNY Cortland where she teaches Latin American culture and literature and women's studies. She received her PhD from Syracuse University where her doctoral thesis was on the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos. Colleen has published articles on the nueva canción movement. Her most recent publications include "The Power of Song for Nonviolent Transformative Action," in Positive Peace: Reflections on Peace, Education, Nonviolence and Social Change (2010), and "Thought and Action Across Borders: The Small Farmer's Movement of Cajibío and the Central New York Sister-City Partnership," in Democracy Works: Joining Theory and Action to Foster Global Change (2008). She is also a bilingual singer-songwriter and social change musician. Her music has been featured on Amy Goodman's TV/Radio news program, Democracy Now.

A Wee Bit O' Murder
Acme Mystery Company

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

Holy St. Patrick on a stick! Someone has stolen the pot of gold and now you and all the other leprechauns of Clover Union Local Number 7 have your little tails in a spin. The president of your local, Jimmy Jack Daniels O'Toole is demanding that you get your wee bottoms over to the pub as fast as your little feet can go. If the International Fellowship of Little Knickers finds out about this, you'll all be turned into garden gnomes!

For reservations, phone 315-475-1807, or email syracuse@meatballs.com.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
First Year Players

Price: $7 regular, $4 with SU ID
Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Friday, April 15, 2011

Window Project: Stephanie Rozene--The Politics of Porcelain
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This spring, both the main gallery and Window Projects feature emerging female artists and celebrate their artistic achievements at a time that coincides with International Women's Day (March 2011). Stephanie Rozene draws upon the fine line between design and the visual arts. Her work is the result of extensive research and gifted craftsmanship. Through the medium of ceramics (and with special attention to specific patterns, ornaments, and forms) she explores the politics of European ceramics and traces international developments in this medium back to the reigns of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. This is her first solo museum show.

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Feats of Clay spotlights the varied and creative ceramics art education programs in our high schools throughout Onondaga County and Central New York. The continued success of Feats of Clay rests with the talented and dedicated high school art teachers and art students.

Student Art and Photography Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Whitney Applied Technology Center
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Davidovich in Situ: A Video Art Project
Point of Contact Gallery

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

Argentine video artist Jaime Davidovich returns to Syracuse University after an amazing year of grand-scale museum exhibitions worldwide, to work on site at The Point of Contact Gallery. Davidovich will present a series of his classic videos along with collage, photography, and a new series of paintings that he will produce on site.

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

"My paintings are hybrids combining the tactile sensation of painting with the electronic pulse of video. The works are small in scale and intimate in nature. I want to do an art that speaks on a one-to-one basis with the viewer, no actors or story line, just a scale for human dialogue. In a time of video as spectacle, my work is indeed conflictive. I am interested in establishing a link (no pun intended) between Morandi and the Internet; the personal gesture and digital reproduction. These are the opposites that attract me. I use video because it is intimate, personal. I use the brush because is my gestural DNA."

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Artists include Fred Zimmerman, David Yaman, Kathy Williams, Carl Steckler, Laurie Seamans, Meg Richardson, Lyla Phillips, Allen Phillips, Joan Niswender, Richard Mitchell, Amy Hnatko, Emily Gibbons, Serry Dans, Kathie Beale, and David Beale.

Orange Pulp: The Pulp Magazine & Contemporary Culture
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

On display will be pulp magazines, notably titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories; the typescript of Isaac Asimov's "Strange Playfellow," which introduced readers to one of science fiction's best known characters, Robbie the Robot; and correspondence with figures like Ray Bradbury.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Human Nature Series: Works of Maria Janina Rizzo
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Emerging artist Maria Rizzo exhibits 15 paintings that depict the human nature in an explosive combination of color and symbolism.

Maria Janina Rizzo was born and raised in Italy where she lived until 2007. She received a diploma from the High School for the Arts, and was mentored by the eclectic painter Roberto Giussani, an essential figure for the growth of her artistic development. She then continued on with her studies of painting at Syracuse University. In 2010 she opened "ART IT: Modern & Unique Art with a touch of Italian class" with the desire to offer original paintings and customized artwork. Her paintings were recently featured at the Emerging Women Artists of CNY show at the Red House Gallery, and at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

High schools within a 30 mile radius of Syracuse are invited to display seniors’ artwork and have them juried by the CNY Art Guild.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

"You Are Here" explores various intersections of citizenship and art practice. The show grew out of a year-long graduate seminar titled Art and Civic Dialogue, led by Carrie Mae Weems, an artist of international renown, and David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Art, and currently the chairman of the MFA in art practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The exhibition represents a roster of dynamic artists working in Syracuse and beyond whose works are concerned with varying notions of social engagement. In that spirit, the words citizenship and art are both carefully reconsidered through a diverse group of works, each bringing a sense of urgency to the complex task of defining the role of art in civic dialogue.

The exhibit includes photographic installations, performance, sculpture, web-based projects, video and a study center that anchors the ideas across disciplines.

A study center, designed by COLAB Director Chris McCray, Weems, Lauren Boldon and Jennifer Hsu, includes books, videos, a bibliography and a timeline highlighting seminal moments and artists in the history of art and social practice.

Participating in the show are Weems, Anneka Herre, Hsu, Boldon, Nathaniel Sullivan, Jay Muhlin, Adrienne Buccella, Rose Marie Cromwell, James Wang, Susannah Sayler, Ed Morris, Marion Wilson, McCray, Siebern Versteeg, Joanna Spitzner, Duke & Battersby, Young_Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Sze Lin Pang, Paula Johnson, Doug DuBois and Hank Willis Thomas.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

The images in Canaries, an exhibition of photographs by Thilde Jensen, are a personal account of the life Jensen has lived with multiple chemical sensitivity, and the people she has met who suffer from the same condition. People with this sensitivity have been dubbed "human canaries," and they are the casualties of what Jensen calls a "ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture."

Jensen became so sensitive to chemicals in the air that she could not sit in traffic, read a book or sit next to someone wearing perfume. She was forced to wear a gas mask when entering banks, supermarkets and doctor's offices. She left her life in New York City, her husband and her career, and moved to the country, where she lived in a tent away from the regular chemicals such as laundry detergents, pesticides and exhaust fumes.

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

That Year of Living features stunning black-and-white photographs by Jeffrey Henson Scales. Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Scales was forced to, in his words, weigh the possibilities of his own demise, and whether he had achieved what he felt he was put here to do. It was this diagnosis and contemplation, along with the urging of his wife, Meg Henson Scales, which led him to return to making photographs on a daily basis.

The images in That Year of Living were made in the year following his cancer diagnosis and surgery. Scales photographed mainly in and around Times Square, depicting the part of New York City that he visited every day going to and from work at The New York Times. The images capture the certain hardness mixed with joy, sadness, determination and bewilderment that is found in the faces of young and old alike in New York City. Created in the months following his own experience with mortality, the photographs explore the journey of life and death found in the faces on the streets of New York.

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

Note: Limestone Art is now in its new location next to Pascale's at 105 Brooklea Dr. in Fayetteville.

Scott Bennett's new series of vivid landscape paintings have found their inspiration close to home, or rather at his new home and studio in Jamesville, NY.  While continuing his characteristic impasto painting technique, Bennett shares his inspiration with us: "Our property has wonderful woods and views in all directions, and most of these paintings are inspired by the beauty I see everyday when I look out any window or walk out the door." His work has been exhibited in over 40 national exhibitions, and is included in numerous corporate and private collections. This is Bennett's second exhibition at Limestone.
 
Michael Matthews' landscapes are developed from sketchbook watercolors created on site during his travels, at times during below freezing temperatures as ice forms while he paints.  Back in the studio, Matthews creates large paintings from a singe sketch or an amalgamation of his watercolors. Michael Matthews lives in Syracuse, NY and in Harrogate, British Columbia.  His work is found in over 60 corporate art collections.

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design"
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The Design Gallery at The Warehouse will host two concurrent exhibitions of student work: "Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" and "Creativity through Exhibition Design."

"Handwoven: Transforming the Familiar" features the work of students enrolled in weaving classes taught by faculty member Sarah Saulson and explores the creative potential of weaving with repurposed materials, both recycled and new. The students were inspired by and found meaning in sources as diverse and commonplace as newspaper, bottle caps, paper bags, zippers, candy wrappers, wire, pantyhose and feathers. The project provides a rich arena for the artists to comment on their lives and the environment, as well as for fun and surprising color and texture exploration. The exhibition includes a loom, and visitors to the gallery are encouraged to sit down and experience weaving.

Presented by museum studies graduate students who are completing their first year of gallery experience in the Practicum course, "Creativity through Exhibition Design" features computer-aided drawings and three-dimensional models of the Design Gallery. Students employed universal design concepts including color selection, spatial arrangement and lighting techniques to put their individual creativity into a theoretical exhibition based on a collection of Tibetan works of art.

For more information about the "Handwoven" show, contact Saulson at sfsaulso@syr.edu. For more information about the "Creativity through Exhibition Design" show, contact Bradley Hudson at bjhudson@syr.edu.

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

The April show, Hands On!, features paintings and vessels by two noted Central New York artists produced by applying hands and fingertips.

Artist Karen Thomas-Lillie paints atmospheric landscapes and says that all her inspiration comes from the shores of the east side of Cayuga Lake, primarily from Cayuga to Long Point. Her way of capturing this lush environment is in the tools she uses -- oil bar and her hands to blur edges between land, water and sky.

Similar to Thomas-Lillie, ceramicist Jeremy Randall is also motivated by forces of the environment; however, his hand formed vessels reference rural America, not in landscapes but in architecture and antique implements meant to evoke viewers' nostalgia of a by-gone era.

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

The April show features self portraits by gallery members in a variety of mediums.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Forrest Lesch-Middelton's pottery combines historic patterns with modern-day technology. The resulting work creates a subtle narrative that references the cross-cultural influences that impact every facet of daily life. Pottery is used as a metaphor to illustrate this phenomenon. To achieve the intricate patterns, Lesch-Middelton uses silkscreen and embossment transfer techniques. He says of his artwork, "By blending form, pattern, and surface, my goal is to create an object that simultaneously elicits a visceral and intellectual response, followed by a contemplation of my work as a whole."

Lesch-Middelton received his MFA in Ceramics from Utah State University in 2006 and a BFA in Ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1998. He is currently the Ceramics Program Coordinator at the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma, California and teaches at Santa Rosa Jr. College and Solano College in the San Francisco Bay area. His artwork has been shown in many venues nationally, including the Baltimore Clayworks (MD), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), and Santa Fe Clay Center (NM). He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern California.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

MFA 2011 presents the work of 17 visual artists and 20 musicians and composers concluding their graduate careers at Syracuse University. On view will be a wide range of traditional and contemporary media, including painting, drawing, photography, interactive and experimental sculpture and conceptual installations. Master's of Music candidates will perform thesis compositions every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. beginning April 14, for the run of the exhibition.

Manipulation of scale and environment is a clear, consistent thread in this year's exhibition. Painters engulf the viewer in their work, through an expansive 17-foot drawing and by the perspective of a 14-foot canvas projecting from the top of a gallery wall. Photographer Shimpei Shirafuji carries a narrative around the perimeter of a room, a contemporary twist on 19th century cycloramas. An installation of half-toned screen-prints by Eric Johanni initially engages the viewer from across the room, and then again once you are directly in front of the work. Other artists utilize the subtlety of scale to create an intimacy that immerses the viewer into the artwork, such as miniature architectural models and unassuming artist performances. Site-specific installations transform galleries into absorbing new environments that influence all of the viewer's senses, creating ephemeral experiences through sound, performance and media. Documentary films that deal with issues of identity and family will also be on view in the media theater.

Weekend and evening 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.

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Orange Pulp: Works by Norman Saunders
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

A profile of pulp artist Norman Saunders (1907-1989), including 10 lush and dramatic Saunders paintings from the university collection.

Named for the cheap and abundant wood pulp that publishers after 1850 began using to print reading materials for a mass audience, pulp magazines sported eye-catching covers and included detective, adventure, western, horror, romance, and science fiction stories. According to co-curator Sean Quimby, director of SCRC, "This was literature tailored to specific tastes, intended to entertain in predictable ways." He notes that "even while the form of the pulp magazine died by 1960, the concept of pulp lives on in glossy photo-dense magazines, paperback novels, comic books, and film." Quimby maintains that pulp magazines, with their intensely involved readership, "helped make possible contemporary interactive media culture."

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

In 2008, Ah Leon envisioned a monumental ceramic installation showcasing dozens of stoneware desks and chairs in neat rows like the classrooms of our youth. It began with a small grouping called Memories of Elementary School first exhibited in August 2008 at The Taipei Gallery Exposition and in 2009 at the Phoenix Art Museum in conjunction with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference. Ah Leon continued to make more desks which were exhibited at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2010. Another year has passed and Ah Leon has completed the 20 sets of desks and chairs which will be showcased in this exhibition.

His original idea was to create a classroom environment that would “lead audiences to remember their childhood stories.” Ah Leon studied elementary school desks, determined that his creations would be authentic, revealing memories through carved initials, scratches and drawings on their worn surfaces. His classroom would preserve the stories of our childhood as if they were “frozen in the museum space.”

The first two rows of tables and chairs appear new. They become progressively more dilapidated--some broken, some leaning--until the last rows where the furniture is falling over and ultimately only chips and severed parts remain on the floor. In one area the desks are arranged as if a teacher reads to a group of children. The impact of the scene is immediate: viewers are taken back to their own childhood classroom and long forgotten memories drift to the surface.

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Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds
Everson Museum of Art

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

The 2011 exhibition program will continue to highlight the talented artists of New York State through a series of focused exhibitions. The season opens with Reynolds Unwrapped: The Cartoon Art of Dan Reynolds, an exhibition featuring more than 100 original works of art that are seriously hilarious. The small-scale drawings depicting the comedic daily lives of humans and animals alike are all rendered by hand in a variety of media, an approach that is becoming increasing rare in a world of computer-generated images.

Dan Reynolds began drawing cartoons in 1989, when he was 30. As a youth center instructor, Reynolds was surrounded by youthful energy and creative minds. He was an avid follower of popular cartoons of the time, such as Gary Larson's Far Side and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. A native of Brewerton, NY, Reynolds was inspired by his Central New York surroundings, a place where snow is abundant and cows can be found just minutes from anywhere. From the beginning, Reynolds has used farm animals as messengers of humor, particularly cows, pigs and chickens, a series that was immediately accepted by Reader's Digest in 1989. A new cartoon has appeared in every issue since then. Reynolds' cartoons have also appeared in thematic Reynolds Unwrapped book compilations featuring everything from sports to holiday special editions. American Greetings and Recycled Greeting Cards also feature Reynolds cartoons on greeting cards for every occasion.

In 2008, Reynolds was diagnosed with testicular cancer and subsequently received months of chemotherapy. While he was in treatment, he began drawing cartoons about cancer and his personal experience which he found was shared by his fellow patients. He shared the cartoons with the staff and patients at the facility and discovered the power of art to bring humor to an otherwise humorless situation.

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Cannonball Press, the Brooklyn-based alternative pirate press co-founded by artists Martin Mazorra and Mike Houston, will present an exhibition, which includes new, large-scale graphic works, installations and sculpture. As Cannonball Press, Mazorra and Houston publish and sell limited-run editions of emerging artists' work and display it on their website, as well as at shows and festivals. The venture seeks to invite talented artists to explore the medium and make affordable, high-quality editions. Artists represented include Drew Iwaniw, Katy Seals, Joseph Velasquez, John Hitchcock, Derrick Riley, Meghan O'Connor, and Dusty Herbig, assistant professor of printmaking at VPA.

For more information, contact Dusty Herbig, 315-443-4519 or dtherbig@syr.edu, or XL Projects (during gallery hours), 315-443-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The young female Swiss designer duo, Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo, will install a hotel in the Warehouse Gallery. The main gallery will be transformed into small ephemeral rooms where the visitor is invited to take a break from reality and to take a mini-vacation complete with a number of very simple, inexpensive and joyful elements. When seated or lying down, the public's focus is drawn to the interior space and lighting. The idea for a temporary hotel goes back to Kueng's and Caputo's 72 Hours Hotel, which was initially developed in 2006 for the train station in Zurich, Switzerland. Both artists have been widely exhibited. This is their first museum solo show in the U.S.

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Opening: The Braid of Night and Day: Works by Cayetano Valenzuela
Echo

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

There will be an opening reception this evening 7:00-9:00 pm.

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibition features the art of 35 women artists -- nine local to Syracuse, and the rest from communities across the country. These women, in keeping with the mission of ArtRage, are also activists and their work expresses a whole range of issues important to both women and the community of concerned people worldwide: self-image, hunger, collective action, war, children, the status of women, immigration, environmental crisis, alternative lifestyles and self-discovery.

Participating artists include Arlene Abend, Amy Bartell, Ellen Blalock, Marlena Buczek, Elizabeth Carter, Jen Cartwright, the Chicago Women's Graphic Collective, Sue Coe, Erin Currier, Jane Evershed, Raina Gentry, Susan Grabel, Sharon Lee Hart, Robin Hewlett, Gail Hoffman, Nancy Hom, Katherine Hughes, Lahib Jaddo, Mollie Kellogg, Kate Luscher, Dierdre Luzwick, Sofia Perez, Ruth Putter, Favianna Rodriguez, Gazelle Samizay, Nicole Schulman, Sarah Walroth, Anita Welych and Oceans Unraveled project with artists: Aviva Alter, Mary Buczek, Mary Ellen Croteau.