Monday, February 13, 2012

Windows Project: Elisabeth Meyer: Black Night/White Night
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Window Project features an installation by Elisabeth Meyer consisting of organic forms embroidered onto an organza fabric. The overall patterning evokes an association with ocean waves and a net. The transparent quality of the organza background allows the viewer to see through the piece that is hanging from the ceiling covering the entire window front. The work addresses the issue of displacement through traveling. Meyer, who is based in Ithaca, developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in Iceland, traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery, and created the work on site in Syracuse.

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

Gallery Exhibit: Abisay Puentes, Imposibilitatos
Onondaga Community College

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

Artist Statement:

In the imagination of all artists lay all transcendent questions that humankind have formulated in their heart and mind. In my artwork there are only a few questions as the center. Why do humans hurt each other? What is the reason for man's evil? Why do men have bad nature?

The only answer I have found is: Because mankind is "IMPOSIBILITATO" (unable, helpless, without means, impossibility in man).

This is a spiritual and physical stage that makes possible an unhappy humanity. This impossibility became the product of man losing the purpose of existence. With this loss we have found pain, agony and disorientation.

In my paintings I try to capture the diverse stages of impossibility. This is why this series has the same theme, feeling and internal message. Between the expressionism and the neo-romanticism I establish a pictorial-sonorous piece of work with its own time and space, making a greater connection with the viewer.

Contain/Constrain: Works by Sam Horowitz
Point of Contact Gallery

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

In today's virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities, and continually discard the "old" in search for "upgrades", one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, re-purposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands, and the collective loss of craft, localized-innovation and repair. "The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work."

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed, and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. "I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity," states Horowitz. "Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live, and act in this moment."

Salon: Strictly Local
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

The exhibit will feature works by over 50 local artists.

The Power and The Piety: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This exhibit, curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings.

FOR_PLAY
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring James and Hayes Slade

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

An exhibition of projects by Slade Architecture of New York City designed for or including an element of play.

Westcott Community Gallery Group Show
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Works by Molly Susman, Steve Susman, and Jessica Breedlove.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

The Photographer as Child: Memories of Guatemala
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Born in Guatemala, award-winning photographer Efren Lopez is a student in the Military Photojournalism Program at Syracuse University. He is also an aerial photographer for the U.S. Air Force and the first reservist to be selected to attend Newhouse's Military Photojournalism Program. He now lives in Arizona.

The exhibit features images Lopez captured on a return trip to Guatemala in 2009. "My life began in a bamboo hut at the side of a road in a tiny town named Petaca, Guatemala, in 1966," Lopez writes. "It's a town so small that it is next to impossible to find on most maps of Guatemala, much less Central America."

Lopez has documented real-world situations and the military around the globe and has captured stunning images in Arizona and Guatemala. His work has been featured in various publications, including the book Arizona 24/7, and has been awarded many distinctions, including first place in the Professional Photography category at the 2008 Arizona State Fair, an honorable mention in the pictorial category in the 2009 Military Photographer of the Year competition, and first place in the 2011 Multimedia Team 19th Annual Department of Defense Worldwide Military Photography Workshop.

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

5th Annual Gospel Fest
Onondaga Community College

Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

A showcase of local talented Gospel groups in celebration of Black History Month.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Windows Project: Elisabeth Meyer: Black Night/White Night
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Window Project features an installation by Elisabeth Meyer consisting of organic forms embroidered onto an organza fabric. The overall patterning evokes an association with ocean waves and a net. The transparent quality of the organza background allows the viewer to see through the piece that is hanging from the ceiling covering the entire window front. The work addresses the issue of displacement through traveling. Meyer, who is based in Ithaca, developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in Iceland, traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery, and created the work on site in Syracuse.

Gallery Exhibit: Abisay Puentes, Imposibilitatos
Onondaga Community College

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

Artist Statement:

In the imagination of all artists lay all transcendent questions that humankind have formulated in their heart and mind. In my artwork there are only a few questions as the center. Why do humans hurt each other? What is the reason for man's evil? Why do men have bad nature?

The only answer I have found is: Because mankind is "IMPOSIBILITATO" (unable, helpless, without means, impossibility in man).

This is a spiritual and physical stage that makes possible an unhappy humanity. This impossibility became the product of man losing the purpose of existence. With this loss we have found pain, agony and disorientation.

In my paintings I try to capture the diverse stages of impossibility. This is why this series has the same theme, feeling and internal message. Between the expressionism and the neo-romanticism I establish a pictorial-sonorous piece of work with its own time and space, making a greater connection with the viewer.

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

Salon: Strictly Local
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

The exhibit will feature works by over 50 local artists.

The Power and The Piety: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This exhibit, curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings.

FOR_PLAY
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring James and Hayes Slade

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

An exhibition of projects by Slade Architecture of New York City designed for or including an element of play.

Westcott Community Gallery Group Show
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Works by Molly Susman, Steve Susman, and Jessica Breedlove.

CNY Visions
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Unique views of the Central New York area through the lenses of Herm Card, Richard Emory, Larry Hoyt, and Bill Sullivan. Also showcasing the artglass of Phil Austin and jewelry of Esperanza Tielbaard.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

Emilio Sanchez: No Way Home--Images of the Caribbean and New York City
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"No Way Home" features a selection of 24 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints drawn from the recently acquired collection of work by Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999). Best known for his brightly colored, strongly shadowed images of Caribbean and New York City architecture, this exhibition reveals the artist's ongoing interest in repetitive patterns. The show highlights a recent gift to the University Art Collection from the Emilio Sanchez Foundation of over 250 paintings, drawings and prints.

Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions" chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by one of the most renowned American printmaking workshops. The exhibition of 60 works illustrates the impact that artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler and Kiki Smith have had on contemporary art, evident through the work of artists Jason Middelbrook, Amy Cutler and Jane Hammond. The show also illustrates how emerging artists recently selected to work with ULAE has influenced the current trend, in both process and concept.

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 are not available, the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel
Everson Museum of Art

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

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of "Deluge and Anima" on the Everson's north façade, a series of Knecht's animations, called "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel," will be on view inside the museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist's brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds.

From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, $30 family pack (2 adults, 4 children))
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland" is the first exhibition to examine the American artist's work focused on the Irish landscape and people, particularly children, created between the time of his first trip to Ireland in 1913 and his last trip there in 1928. Long celebrated as an iconic American artist due to his important early work as a teacher and as the leader of The Eight, Henri's paintings have received less attention on their own. Most projects explored his career as it related to his role as a member of The Eight or in a broadly retrospective manner. Few projects focused on his landscapes, drawings, or foreign portraits.

Henri's Irish portraits constitute his largest focused body of work, and often depict the same sitters year after year. These paintings offer a unique and fascinating window onto the genre about which Henri felt most strongly--portraiture--and also chart his experiments with paint handling and color theories over time. He wrote that the time spent in Ireland was extremely valuable to him (it was the only other place besides New York where he purchased a residence), for only there was he able to focus on his painting without the distractions of life in New York. It is not surprising, then, that the periods Henri spent in Ireland were among his most prolific, and the paintings produced there among his most accomplished. Just before his death, Henri composed a list of his most important paintings; many of the works on this list were his Irish subjects. Forty-one paintings of Irish people and landscapes will be on view in the upcoming exhibition.

The Photographer as Child: Memories of Guatemala
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Born in Guatemala, award-winning photographer Efren Lopez is a student in the Military Photojournalism Program at Syracuse University. He is also an aerial photographer for the U.S. Air Force and the first reservist to be selected to attend Newhouse's Military Photojournalism Program. He now lives in Arizona.

The exhibit features images Lopez captured on a return trip to Guatemala in 2009. "My life began in a bamboo hut at the side of a road in a tiny town named Petaca, Guatemala, in 1966," Lopez writes. "It's a town so small that it is next to impossible to find on most maps of Guatemala, much less Central America."

Lopez has documented real-world situations and the military around the globe and has captured stunning images in Arizona and Guatemala. His work has been featured in various publications, including the book Arizona 24/7, and has been awarded many distinctions, including first place in the Professional Photography category at the 2008 Arizona State Fair, an honorable mention in the pictorial category in the 2009 Military Photographer of the Year competition, and first place in the 2011 Multimedia Team 19th Annual Department of Defense Worldwide Military Photography Workshop.

Contain/Constrain: Works by Sam Horowitz
Point of Contact Gallery

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

In today's virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities, and continually discard the "old" in search for "upgrades", one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, re-purposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands, and the collective loss of craft, localized-innovation and repair. "The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work."

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed, and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. "I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity," states Horowitz. "Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live, and act in this moment."

Deng Guo Yuan
The Warehouse Gallery

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

This exhibit will highlight ink brush paintings by Tianjin-based Chinese artist Deng Guo Yuan. His work reveals the tradition of Chinese landscape painting and a profound knowledge of modern and international contemporary aesthetics. The film "Deng Guo Yuan" (2010) by French filmmaker Pierre Creton, presented in the Gallery's vault, meticulously documents the creation of one of Deng Guo Yuan's ink paintings in his Tianjin studio. Widely exhibited in China and Europe, this will be the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. The show originated at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum (Tianjin, China), and then traveled in modified form to the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), to the Provenance Center (New London, CT), and to its last venue, the Warehouse Gallery, for which Deng Guo Yuan will create additional site-specific works.

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

Suzanne Tick
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Auditorium
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Suzanne Tick is principal of Suzanne Tick Inc., which specializes in material development for commercial and residential interiors.

Tick's clients include KnollTextiles, with whom she has worked since 1995 and where she is currently responsible for a majority of the vertical fabrics produced each year. In 2000, Tick invented a new breed of hard surfacing for KnollTextiles called Imago. It was the first time that fabric had been embedded in a high-performance resin, effectively extending the range of textiles into the building materials market and launching an entirely new material product category.

Tick and her work/life partner, Terry Mowers, formed Tuva Looms Inc. in 1996. This award-winning company specializes in a sophisticated collection of woven carpet for the architecture and design community. In 2005, Tick and Mowers were hired in the commercial furnishing industry to oversee the design management, product design and creative direction for Tandus Flooring, a carpet company representing tile, Powerbond and woven products.

In 2008, Tick introduced her first glass collection for Skyline Design. The following year, Tick debuted the project Refuse DC, an exploration of woven structures made out of dry cleaning refuse.

Tick has received numerous awards and participated in several museum exhibitions with her work, including those at the Museum of Modern Art and the Denver Art Museum. Her woven fiber optic lamps were featured alongside Tuva Looms and KnollTextiles products in "Design Life Now," the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s National Design Triennial. For three years Tandus has won Best of NeoCon Gold awards for its contribution to the Tandus Collection. Suzanne Tick Inc. has also claimed Gold Awards for the past four years for KnollTextiles.

The Ellis Island Experience
Temple Society of Concord
Featuring Dennis Heaphy

Temple Society of Concord
910 Madison St., Syracuse

Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million hopeful immigrants entered the United States through the doors of Ellis Island. Ellis Island is located in the New York harbor, just north of the Statue of Liberty, which greeted these future Americans as they passed through the narrows. A large portion of present-day Americans can trace their family history through Ellis Island. Along with being deeply involved with ongoing restoration of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Dennis Heaphy has produced a myriad of interactive historical reenactment programs at the two monuments.

The Gender Defenders: Valentine's Day Comedy Show

Price: $25 in advance, $35 day of show
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Enjoy some huge laughs with your sweetheart this Valentine's Day with The Gender Defenders. This hilarious show features four headlining comedians (as seen on Comedy Central and NBC's Last Comic Standing). Two are male and two are female, each one discussing their unique views on relationships, love and life. This is truly a date night show both of you will enjoy, so why would you do anything else?

For more information, visit www.valentinescomedy.com. Tickets available at the Oncenter box office, ticketmaster.com, and by calling 315-435-2121.

Big Gigantic, with Adventure Club
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Windows Project: Elisabeth Meyer: Black Night/White Night
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Window Project features an installation by Elisabeth Meyer consisting of organic forms embroidered onto an organza fabric. The overall patterning evokes an association with ocean waves and a net. The transparent quality of the organza background allows the viewer to see through the piece that is hanging from the ceiling covering the entire window front. The work addresses the issue of displacement through traveling. Meyer, who is based in Ithaca, developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in Iceland, traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery, and created the work on site in Syracuse.

Price Check
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A research-based curatorial examination by Roslyn Esperon and Courtney Rile, featuring the art of Michael Barletta, Caol Flaitz, Carla Goldberg, Novado Cappuccilli, Jason Varone, Fred Wellner, Laura Wellner, and Leah Wolff

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

Gallery Exhibit: Abisay Puentes, Imposibilitatos
Onondaga Community College

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

Artist Statement:

In the imagination of all artists lay all transcendent questions that humankind have formulated in their heart and mind. In my artwork there are only a few questions as the center. Why do humans hurt each other? What is the reason for man's evil? Why do men have bad nature?

The only answer I have found is: Because mankind is "IMPOSIBILITATO" (unable, helpless, without means, impossibility in man).

This is a spiritual and physical stage that makes possible an unhappy humanity. This impossibility became the product of man losing the purpose of existence. With this loss we have found pain, agony and disorientation.

In my paintings I try to capture the diverse stages of impossibility. This is why this series has the same theme, feeling and internal message. Between the expressionism and the neo-romanticism I establish a pictorial-sonorous piece of work with its own time and space, making a greater connection with the viewer.

Contain/Constrain: Works by Sam Horowitz
Point of Contact Gallery

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

In today's virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities, and continually discard the "old" in search for "upgrades", one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, re-purposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands, and the collective loss of craft, localized-innovation and repair. "The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work."

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed, and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. "I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity," states Horowitz. "Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live, and act in this moment."

Salon: Strictly Local
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

The exhibit will feature works by over 50 local artists.

The Power and The Piety: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This exhibit, curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings.

FOR_PLAY
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring James and Hayes Slade

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

An exhibition of projects by Slade Architecture of New York City designed for or including an element of play.

Westcott Community Gallery Group Show
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Works by Molly Susman, Steve Susman, and Jessica Breedlove.

CNY Visions
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Unique views of the Central New York area through the lenses of Herm Card, Richard Emory, Larry Hoyt, and Bill Sullivan. Also showcasing the artglass of Phil Austin and jewelry of Esperanza Tielbaard.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

Envisionary
Szozda Gallery

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

Well established artist Phil Parsons and relatively new talent Emily Elizabeth display their painterly visions of atmospheric and landscape horizons surrounding Central New York. "Envisionary," the show's title, was coined perhaps to sharpen the concept of changing environs, elements commonplace every day that some artists foresee in greater depths than what most people perceive. In Elizabeth's case, it's her fascination with the universe that compels her to paint beyond shape and form to focus on color and atmosphere, while Parsons chooses to capture memorable landscapes that he himself alters with color and invented skies, reflecting his own feelings.

Read a review!

Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions" chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by one of the most renowned American printmaking workshops. The exhibition of 60 works illustrates the impact that artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler and Kiki Smith have had on contemporary art, evident through the work of artists Jason Middelbrook, Amy Cutler and Jane Hammond. The show also illustrates how emerging artists recently selected to work with ULAE has influenced the current trend, in both process and concept.

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 are not available, the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Emilio Sanchez: No Way Home--Images of the Caribbean and New York City
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"No Way Home" features a selection of 24 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints drawn from the recently acquired collection of work by Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999). Best known for his brightly colored, strongly shadowed images of Caribbean and New York City architecture, this exhibition reveals the artist's ongoing interest in repetitive patterns. The show highlights a recent gift to the University Art Collection from the Emilio Sanchez Foundation of over 250 paintings, drawings and prints.

From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, $30 family pack (2 adults, 4 children))
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland" is the first exhibition to examine the American artist's work focused on the Irish landscape and people, particularly children, created between the time of his first trip to Ireland in 1913 and his last trip there in 1928. Long celebrated as an iconic American artist due to his important early work as a teacher and as the leader of The Eight, Henri's paintings have received less attention on their own. Most projects explored his career as it related to his role as a member of The Eight or in a broadly retrospective manner. Few projects focused on his landscapes, drawings, or foreign portraits.

Henri's Irish portraits constitute his largest focused body of work, and often depict the same sitters year after year. These paintings offer a unique and fascinating window onto the genre about which Henri felt most strongly--portraiture--and also chart his experiments with paint handling and color theories over time. He wrote that the time spent in Ireland was extremely valuable to him (it was the only other place besides New York where he purchased a residence), for only there was he able to focus on his painting without the distractions of life in New York. It is not surprising, then, that the periods Henri spent in Ireland were among his most prolific, and the paintings produced there among his most accomplished. Just before his death, Henri composed a list of his most important paintings; many of the works on this list were his Irish subjects. Forty-one paintings of Irish people and landscapes will be on view in the upcoming exhibition.

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel
Everson Museum of Art

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

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of "Deluge and Anima" on the Everson's north façade, a series of Knecht's animations, called "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel," will be on view inside the museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist's brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds.

The Photographer as Child: Memories of Guatemala
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Born in Guatemala, award-winning photographer Efren Lopez is a student in the Military Photojournalism Program at Syracuse University. He is also an aerial photographer for the U.S. Air Force and the first reservist to be selected to attend Newhouse's Military Photojournalism Program. He now lives in Arizona.

The exhibit features images Lopez captured on a return trip to Guatemala in 2009. "My life began in a bamboo hut at the side of a road in a tiny town named Petaca, Guatemala, in 1966," Lopez writes. "It's a town so small that it is next to impossible to find on most maps of Guatemala, much less Central America."

Lopez has documented real-world situations and the military around the globe and has captured stunning images in Arizona and Guatemala. His work has been featured in various publications, including the book Arizona 24/7, and has been awarded many distinctions, including first place in the Professional Photography category at the 2008 Arizona State Fair, an honorable mention in the pictorial category in the 2009 Military Photographer of the Year competition, and first place in the 2011 Multimedia Team 19th Annual Department of Defense Worldwide Military Photography Workshop.

Deng Guo Yuan
The Warehouse Gallery

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

This exhibit will highlight ink brush paintings by Tianjin-based Chinese artist Deng Guo Yuan. His work reveals the tradition of Chinese landscape painting and a profound knowledge of modern and international contemporary aesthetics. The film "Deng Guo Yuan" (2010) by French filmmaker Pierre Creton, presented in the Gallery's vault, meticulously documents the creation of one of Deng Guo Yuan's ink paintings in his Tianjin studio. Widely exhibited in China and Europe, this will be the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. The show originated at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum (Tianjin, China), and then traveled in modified form to the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), to the Provenance Center (New London, CT), and to its last venue, the Warehouse Gallery, for which Deng Guo Yuan will create additional site-specific works.

VPA Faculty Show Part I
XL Projects

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

Part one of an exhibition of work by faculty in S.U.'s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours or e-mail Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Men Only: Vernacular Photographs of Male Affection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit of works from the collection of William Knodel looks at masculinity, gender and sexuality in our society. William Knodel was a college student in the 1970s in New York City when he purchased his first second-hand snapshot, a group of young men in assorted swimming attire whose style dated them back to the turn of the century, posing before a camp tent marked with a sign, "Men Only." Since then, he's collected vernacular images of male affection -- tintypes, daguerreotypes and photos -- during his travels to the West Coast, Canada, and Europe, scouring second-hand shops, old photo sales and used book stores. His collection now runs into the hundreds, dating from the mid-19th century and featuring couples and socializing groups from every race and social class. "Men Only" is a gift that incarnates the "gay spirit" that his good friend Harry Hay warned us must be kept alive and a history too often dismissed.

Read a review!

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

Wednesday Film Series: Play Time
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Auditorium
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Jacques Tati, 1967, 123 minutes

A Night with Beverly Jenkins
Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences

Maxwell Auditorium
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Beverly Jenkins is the nation's premiere writer of African-American historical romance fiction.

For more information, please contact Cedric Bolton in the Office of Multicultural Affairs at 315-443-9676.

Stephen Pikarsky, piano
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Stephen Pikarsky, winner of the CMM-SSO Youth Concerto Competition at age 11, won a second time before his high school graduation. He appears for the first time since the 2008-2009 season playing works by Chopin, Brahms, and Beethoven.

Parking available in the OnCenter Garage: maximum $2.50 with CMM stamped ticket.

Papadosio
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Santee Frazier
Raymond Carver Reading Series

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

Santee Frazier, an award-winning poet and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, published his first book of poems, Dark Thirty, in 2009.

The reading will be preceded by a question and answer session from 3:45-4:30 p.m. Parking is available in Syracuse University's paid lots. For more information, phone 315-443-2174.

Caroline, or Change
Syracuse Stage
Marcela Lorca, director

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

The acclaimed musical event blending blues, gospel and traditional Jewish melodies, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek: The Musical).

An eight-year-old boy named Noah Gellman struggles with the loss of his mother and the arrival of a new stepmother. One constant in his life are the small daily rituals he shares with Caroline, the family's African-American maid. The year is 1963—civil rights and Kennedy—and in the Gellman household in Lake Charles, Louisiana, change is coming for everyone, in big ways and small. Two powerhouses of the American theatre, playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori, join forces on a musical of startling creativity and refreshing originality (don't be surprised when the washing machine starts to sing). Acclaimed on Broadway and winner of London's prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical, with a score ranging from blues to gospel to traditional Jewish melodies, Caroline, or Change proves playwright Kushner's point that "music is a blessing that enters the soul through the ear."

Read a Review!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Windows Project: Elisabeth Meyer: Black Night/White Night
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Window Project features an installation by Elisabeth Meyer consisting of organic forms embroidered onto an organza fabric. The overall patterning evokes an association with ocean waves and a net. The transparent quality of the organza background allows the viewer to see through the piece that is hanging from the ceiling covering the entire window front. The work addresses the issue of displacement through traveling. Meyer, who is based in Ithaca, developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in Iceland, traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery, and created the work on site in Syracuse.

Price Check
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Co-curator Courtney Rile and several of the artists will be in attendance this evening 5:00-8:00 as part of Th3, the Third Thursday citywide art open.

A research-based curatorial examination by Roslyn Esperon and Courtney Rile, featuring the art of Michael Barletta, Caol Flaitz, Carla Goldberg, Novado Cappuccilli, Jason Varone, Fred Wellner, Laura Wellner, and Leah Wolff

Gallery Exhibit: Abisay Puentes, Imposibilitatos
Onondaga Community College

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

Artist Statement:

In the imagination of all artists lay all transcendent questions that humankind have formulated in their heart and mind. In my artwork there are only a few questions as the center. Why do humans hurt each other? What is the reason for man's evil? Why do men have bad nature?

The only answer I have found is: Because mankind is "IMPOSIBILITATO" (unable, helpless, without means, impossibility in man).

This is a spiritual and physical stage that makes possible an unhappy humanity. This impossibility became the product of man losing the purpose of existence. With this loss we have found pain, agony and disorientation.

In my paintings I try to capture the diverse stages of impossibility. This is why this series has the same theme, feeling and internal message. Between the expressionism and the neo-romanticism I establish a pictorial-sonorous piece of work with its own time and space, making a greater connection with the viewer.

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

"Images of Upstate New York" and "Juxtaposed Through Wonderland"
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

"Images of Upstate New York" features work by Morgan Goodwin and Kate Walseman
"Juxtaposed Through Wonderland" features recent work by KayCie Danniel

Salon: Strictly Local
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

The exhibit will feature works by over 50 local artists.

The Power and The Piety: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This exhibit, curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings.

FOR_PLAY
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring James and Hayes Slade

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

An exhibition of projects by Slade Architecture of New York City designed for or including an element of play.

Westcott Community Gallery Group Show
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Works by Molly Susman, Steve Susman, and Jessica Breedlove.

CNY Visions
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Unique views of the Central New York area through the lenses of Herm Card, Richard Emory, Larry Hoyt, and Bill Sullivan. Also showcasing the artglass of Phil Austin and jewelry of Esperanza Tielbaard.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

Envisionary
Szozda Gallery

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

Well established artist Phil Parsons and relatively new talent Emily Elizabeth display their painterly visions of atmospheric and landscape horizons surrounding Central New York. "Envisionary," the show's title, was coined perhaps to sharpen the concept of changing environs, elements commonplace every day that some artists foresee in greater depths than what most people perceive. In Elizabeth's case, it's her fascination with the universe that compels her to paint beyond shape and form to focus on color and atmosphere, while Parsons chooses to capture memorable landscapes that he himself alters with color and invented skies, reflecting his own feelings.

Read a review!

Emilio Sanchez: No Way Home--Images of the Caribbean and New York City
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"No Way Home" features a selection of 24 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints drawn from the recently acquired collection of work by Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999). Best known for his brightly colored, strongly shadowed images of Caribbean and New York City architecture, this exhibition reveals the artist's ongoing interest in repetitive patterns. The show highlights a recent gift to the University Art Collection from the Emilio Sanchez Foundation of over 250 paintings, drawings and prints.

Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions" chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by one of the most renowned American printmaking workshops. The exhibition of 60 works illustrates the impact that artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler and Kiki Smith have had on contemporary art, evident through the work of artists Jason Middelbrook, Amy Cutler and Jane Hammond. The show also illustrates how emerging artists recently selected to work with ULAE has influenced the current trend, in both process and concept.

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 are not available, the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel
Everson Museum of Art

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

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of "Deluge and Anima" on the Everson's north façade, a series of Knecht's animations, called "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel," will be on view inside the museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist's brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds.

From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, $30 family pack (2 adults, 4 children))
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland" is the first exhibition to examine the American artist's work focused on the Irish landscape and people, particularly children, created between the time of his first trip to Ireland in 1913 and his last trip there in 1928. Long celebrated as an iconic American artist due to his important early work as a teacher and as the leader of The Eight, Henri's paintings have received less attention on their own. Most projects explored his career as it related to his role as a member of The Eight or in a broadly retrospective manner. Few projects focused on his landscapes, drawings, or foreign portraits.

Henri's Irish portraits constitute his largest focused body of work, and often depict the same sitters year after year. These paintings offer a unique and fascinating window onto the genre about which Henri felt most strongly--portraiture--and also chart his experiments with paint handling and color theories over time. He wrote that the time spent in Ireland was extremely valuable to him (it was the only other place besides New York where he purchased a residence), for only there was he able to focus on his painting without the distractions of life in New York. It is not surprising, then, that the periods Henri spent in Ireland were among his most prolific, and the paintings produced there among his most accomplished. Just before his death, Henri composed a list of his most important paintings; many of the works on this list were his Irish subjects. Forty-one paintings of Irish people and landscapes will be on view in the upcoming exhibition.

The Photographer as Child: Memories of Guatemala
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Born in Guatemala, award-winning photographer Efren Lopez is a student in the Military Photojournalism Program at Syracuse University. He is also an aerial photographer for the U.S. Air Force and the first reservist to be selected to attend Newhouse's Military Photojournalism Program. He now lives in Arizona.

The exhibit features images Lopez captured on a return trip to Guatemala in 2009. "My life began in a bamboo hut at the side of a road in a tiny town named Petaca, Guatemala, in 1966," Lopez writes. "It's a town so small that it is next to impossible to find on most maps of Guatemala, much less Central America."

Lopez has documented real-world situations and the military around the globe and has captured stunning images in Arizona and Guatemala. His work has been featured in various publications, including the book Arizona 24/7, and has been awarded many distinctions, including first place in the Professional Photography category at the 2008 Arizona State Fair, an honorable mention in the pictorial category in the 2009 Military Photographer of the Year competition, and first place in the 2011 Multimedia Team 19th Annual Department of Defense Worldwide Military Photography Workshop.

Contain/Constrain: Works by Sam Horowitz
Point of Contact Gallery

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

In today's virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities, and continually discard the "old" in search for "upgrades", one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, re-purposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands, and the collective loss of craft, localized-innovation and repair. "The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work."

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed, and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. "I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity," states Horowitz. "Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live, and act in this moment."

Deng Guo Yuan
The Warehouse Gallery

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

This exhibit will highlight ink brush paintings by Tianjin-based Chinese artist Deng Guo Yuan. His work reveals the tradition of Chinese landscape painting and a profound knowledge of modern and international contemporary aesthetics. The film "Deng Guo Yuan" (2010) by French filmmaker Pierre Creton, presented in the Gallery's vault, meticulously documents the creation of one of Deng Guo Yuan's ink paintings in his Tianjin studio. Widely exhibited in China and Europe, this will be the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. The show originated at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum (Tianjin, China), and then traveled in modified form to the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), to the Provenance Center (New London, CT), and to its last venue, the Warehouse Gallery, for which Deng Guo Yuan will create additional site-specific works.

VPA Faculty Show Part I
XL Projects

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

There will be a reception this evening 6:00-8:00 in conjunction with Th3, the Third Thursday citywide art open.

Part one of an exhibition of work by faculty in S.U.'s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours or e-mail Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Men Only: Vernacular Photographs of Male Affection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit of works from the collection of William Knodel looks at masculinity, gender and sexuality in our society. William Knodel was a college student in the 1970s in New York City when he purchased his first second-hand snapshot, a group of young men in assorted swimming attire whose style dated them back to the turn of the century, posing before a camp tent marked with a sign, "Men Only." Since then, he's collected vernacular images of male affection -- tintypes, daguerreotypes and photos -- during his travels to the West Coast, Canada, and Europe, scouring second-hand shops, old photo sales and used book stores. His collection now runs into the hundreds, dating from the mid-19th century and featuring couples and socializing groups from every race and social class. "Men Only" is a gift that incarnates the "gay spirit" that his good friend Harry Hay warned us must be kept alive and a history too often dismissed.

Read a review!

Syracuse Ceramic Guild Open House

Price: Free
Delavan Studios
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Syracuse Ceramic Guild (SCG) will celebrate the opening of its new flagship location in space #119 of the Delavan Center. Patrons should use the SCG's entrance on the Wyoming St. side of the building.

During the open house, the SCG will present a group exhibition, with artwork available for a modest donation, as well as wheel-throwing demonstrations and the opportunity to meet the SCG's 2012 board members. Light refreshments will be served.

The open house is being held in conjunction with Syracuse's Th3 (The Third Thursday). Parking is available in the Delavan Center's main lot as well as on the Wyoming St. side of the building.

For more information about the open house, contact Shawn Rommevaux, SCG president, at 315-751-2529 or smrommev@syr.edu.

John Knecht: Deluge and Anima
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Deluge (2010) hand-drawn looping animation
Anima (2011) hand-drawn looping animation

Artist Statement:
Things have been falling in my videos for decades. It was at first formal. Falling things filled the frame and made a complicated cinematic space. The things falling -- wishbones, test tubes, martini glasses, plastic strawberries that looked like a human heart, cement blocks and infected molars -- increasingly became an atmosphere, functioning both as a formal device and a metaphorical space.

There is a drawing in the collection of the Queen, hanging in Buckingham Palace, by Leonardo daVinci which depicts a deluge of raining everyday objects: rakes, funnels, lamps and general debris. The title of the drawing is "A Cloudburst of Material Things." It is graphite on paper and credited to daVinci. It is dated 1500. The drawing is torn in half so only a part of the drawing remains. I have struggled to find out more about the piece and there is virtually nothing written about it, but I am haunted by it. "Deluge" is directly informed by the overwhelmed totality of daVinci's image. What was he thinking?

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

Lucretia Mott and the Seneca Falls Convention
Institute for Retired People

Price: Free
First Baptist Church of Syracuse
5833 E. Seneca Turnpike , Jamesville

Carol Faulkner, associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, will discuss Lucretia Mott and the Seneca Falls Convention.

Mott, a Quaker minister who was dubbed by fellow suffragists as the "moving spirit" of the 1848 women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, may have been one of the most famous, yet little known, figures in the suffragist movement.

For more information, call 443-4846 or e-mail cmkarlho@syr.edu.

Art Lecture: Into the Garden: The Contemporary Ink Paintings of Deng Guo Yuan
The Warehouse Gallery
Featuring Jonathan Goodman

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

Professor Jonathan Goodman is an art critic and professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute, NY. His scholarly interests range broadly across the field of Asian art, with emphasis on social upheavals brought about in Mainland China by capitalism and contemporary artist's current responses to change. He has been published widely (Asian Art News, Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, and Yishu).

Artist Talk: John Knecht
Everson Museum of Art

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

Knecht's talk will present insight into his video-making production, which involves a complex process of frame-by-frame hand drawn images, first made with pencil on paper and then in Photoshop. The presentation of newly created work will provide a window into Knecht's super natural atmospheres that provide a modernist out-look at a postmodern apocalypse.

Gallery Talk with William Knodel & Nancy Keefe Rhodes
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

The collector and the curator will give a presentation surrounding their work on the exhibition "Men Only -- Vernacular Photographs of Male Affection" from the collection of Willam Knodel, curated by Nancy Keefe Rhodes.

William Knodel began collecting images of men, now close to 400 in number, in the 1970s. He calls this exhibition an expression of tikun olam, the Jewish ideal that each person in partnership with G-d has a charge to repair the world, leaving it better. He has lived in six countries and was married to a treasured Canadian fellow named Keith. William presently lives in Syracuse, where he returned after being widowed in 2006. He first exhibited a selection of these images in 2010 at the Nehirim ("Lights") Summer Camp Conference for Jewish LGBT, their partners and allies in Greenwich, NY. Later that year he also took them to the Radical Faeries East Coast Gathering at Blue Heron Farm in Dekalb, NY.

Nancy Keefe Rhodes is a writer, editor and curator whose work covers film, photo and visual arts. As recipient of a 2008 Light Work grant, she curated "A Tender Record: The Early Black-and-White Photographs of Marjory Wilkins," shown at Light Work Gallery, ArtRage, and elsewhere. She curated "Hand-in-Hand: Artist and Public in Depression-era America" for SUArts in 2010, and in 2013 she will curate an exhibition of Civil War-era photographer George N. Barnard from Onondaga Historical Association's collection. Nancy sits on Syracuse's Public Arts Commission, teaches film theory/criticism in Transmedia/VPA at Syracuse University and is founding editor of Stone Canoe Journal's Moving Images section.

A Journey through Music of the African Diaspora: Love Lounge
Community Folk Art Center

Price: $5 regular, $2 students
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The Journey through Music of the African Diaspora series continues in February with Love Lounge, an R&B performance by Jamel "Mr. R&B Singer" Lorick, a talented vocalist, songwriter, arranger and producer from Syracuse.

Bill Horrace Trio with jazz vocalists

Price: No cover charge
Sutton Pavillion, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Students from Syracuse University's Department of Drama join the Bill Horrace Trio (Bill Horrace, bass; Dave Solazzo, piano; Tom Bronzetti, guitar) in jazz standards

Bill Horrace Trio with jazz vocalists

Price: No cover charge
Phoebe's Garden Cafe
900 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Students from Syracuse University's Department of Drama join the Bill Horrace Trio (Bill Horrace, bass; Dave Solazzo, piano; Tom Bronzetti, guitar) in jazz standards

J. Devil aka Jonathan Davis of Korn
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Book Publication Celebration
La Casita Cultural Center

Price: Free
La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

The Gifford Street Community Press will celebrate the publication of its second book, I Witness: Perspectives on Policing in the Near Westside. In a series of sometimes poignant, yet ultimately hopeful, essays, I Witness brings together the voices of people who live in Syracuse's Near Westside, the police who patrol the neighborhood, and people working in organizations that serve the community. "This book grew out of tension, but arcs toward dialogue and understanding," writes Ben Kuebrich, editor. "The goal is to give witness to the many perspectives on policing in the neighborhood."

Word Thursday: Poetry of Stephen Kuusisto
601 Tully

Price: Free
601 Tully St.
Syracuse

An open mic poetry session with acclaimed writer, poet, and disability advocate Stephen Kuusisto.

Kuusisto is a University Professor at Syracuse University and director of the Renee Crown University Honors Program, and professor of disability studies in the School of Education. He is author of the critically acclaimed memoir "Planet of the Blind" (Delta, 1998), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year award winner. His collection of travel essays, "Eavesdropping" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), answers the question, "Why travel anywhere if you can't see?" A graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, Kuusisto's work unites literary writing with scholarship on the social construction of normalcy and the history of disabilities.

His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The New York Times, Harper's, Poetry, Narrative, Books From Finland, Disability Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability, "Staring Back: An Anthology of Disability Literature," and The Washington Post. At the Word Thursday event, he'll be reading from "Planet of the Blind" and his poetry collection, titled "Only Bread, Only Light" (Copper Canyon Press, 2000).

Participants are encouraged to come early and sign up for an open mic spot before the featured speaker takes the stage. Each participant should bring one to three short poems to share to ensure that all speakers have time to present.

For more information, visit 601tully.blogspot.com, or contact Poet & Literary Events Coordinator Robert Mengert at rsmenger@syr.edu.

Florence of Moravia
Acme Mystery Company

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

It's 1927 and local radio personality Nevelle Haspin invites you to the broadcast of a gala reception for silent film diva Lorraine Bowes who is making a film portraying notorious WWI spy Florence Goode a.k.a. Hata Mahma. Joining Lorraine will be her leading man, if he's sober, Roland DeHay and Lorraine's agent, Harold "Hawk" Toohey. Arriving without an invitation is nationally syndicated gossip columninst Helena Handbasquet. Be careful. These celebrities autograph with poisoned pens.

I Love You Because
CNY Playhouse
Meghan Pearson, director

Price: Dinner theater: $35 single; $65 couple. Show only: $25 (limited availability)
Fire and Ice Banquet Hall, The Locker Room
528 Hiawatha Blvd., Syracuse

Dinner at 6:45 pm, followed by show at 8:00 pm.

A modern day musical love story.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, NATC presents a modern twist on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, set in New York City. A young, uptight greeting card writer's life is changed when he meets a flighty photographer. Along with their eccentric friends and siblings, they learn to love each other not in spite of their faults, but because of them. This wonderful event will be great for Valentine's dates or as a night out for singles looking to laugh at love.

Music by Joshua Salzman, book and lyrics by Ryan Cunningham, orchestrations by Larry Hochman, music direction by Ceara Windhausen

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Caroline, or Change
Syracuse Stage
Marcela Lorca, director

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

The acclaimed musical event blending blues, gospel and traditional Jewish melodies, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek: The Musical).

An eight-year-old boy named Noah Gellman struggles with the loss of his mother and the arrival of a new stepmother. One constant in his life are the small daily rituals he shares with Caroline, the family's African-American maid. The year is 1963—civil rights and Kennedy—and in the Gellman household in Lake Charles, Louisiana, change is coming for everyone, in big ways and small. Two powerhouses of the American theatre, playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori, join forces on a musical of startling creativity and refreshing originality (don't be surprised when the washing machine starts to sing). Acclaimed on Broadway and winner of London's prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical, with a score ranging from blues to gospel to traditional Jewish melodies, Caroline, or Change proves playwright Kushner's point that "music is a blessing that enters the soul through the ear."

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The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Appleseed Productions

Price: $25
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

The story is set at the 1958 Springfield High School prom where we meet the Wonderettes — Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy, and Suzy, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts and voices to match! As we learn about their lives and loves, we are treated to the girls performing classic 50s and 60s songs. Written by Roger Bean.

This reprise of last season's smash hit is a joint fundraiser for Appleseed Productions and Rarely Done Productions.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Windows Project: Elisabeth Meyer: Black Night/White Night
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Window Project features an installation by Elisabeth Meyer consisting of organic forms embroidered onto an organza fabric. The overall patterning evokes an association with ocean waves and a net. The transparent quality of the organza background allows the viewer to see through the piece that is hanging from the ceiling covering the entire window front. The work addresses the issue of displacement through traveling. Meyer, who is based in Ithaca, developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in Iceland, traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery, and created the work on site in Syracuse.

Price Check
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A research-based curatorial examination by Roslyn Esperon and Courtney Rile, featuring the art of Michael Barletta, Caol Flaitz, Carla Goldberg, Novado Cappuccilli, Jason Varone, Fred Wellner, Laura Wellner, and Leah Wolff

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

Gallery Exhibit: Abisay Puentes, Imposibilitatos
Onondaga Community College

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

Artist Statement:

In the imagination of all artists lay all transcendent questions that humankind have formulated in their heart and mind. In my artwork there are only a few questions as the center. Why do humans hurt each other? What is the reason for man's evil? Why do men have bad nature?

The only answer I have found is: Because mankind is "IMPOSIBILITATO" (unable, helpless, without means, impossibility in man).

This is a spiritual and physical stage that makes possible an unhappy humanity. This impossibility became the product of man losing the purpose of existence. With this loss we have found pain, agony and disorientation.

In my paintings I try to capture the diverse stages of impossibility. This is why this series has the same theme, feeling and internal message. Between the expressionism and the neo-romanticism I establish a pictorial-sonorous piece of work with its own time and space, making a greater connection with the viewer.

Contain/Constrain: Works by Sam Horowitz
Point of Contact Gallery

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

In today's virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities, and continually discard the "old" in search for "upgrades", one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, re-purposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands, and the collective loss of craft, localized-innovation and repair. "The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work."

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed, and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. "I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity," states Horowitz. "Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live, and act in this moment."

"Images of Upstate New York" and "Juxtaposed Through Wonderland"
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

"Images of Upstate New York" features work by Morgan Goodwin and Kate Walseman
"Juxtaposed Through Wonderland" features recent work by KayCie Danniel

Salon: Strictly Local
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

The exhibit will feature works by over 50 local artists.

The Power and The Piety: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This exhibit, curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings.

FOR_PLAY
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring James and Hayes Slade

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

An exhibition of projects by Slade Architecture of New York City designed for or including an element of play.

Westcott Community Gallery Group Show
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Works by Molly Susman, Steve Susman, and Jessica Breedlove.

CNY Visions
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Unique views of the Central New York area through the lenses of Herm Card, Richard Emory, Larry Hoyt, and Bill Sullivan. Also showcasing the artglass of Phil Austin and jewelry of Esperanza Tielbaard.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

Envisionary
Szozda Gallery

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

Well established artist Phil Parsons and relatively new talent Emily Elizabeth display their painterly visions of atmospheric and landscape horizons surrounding Central New York. "Envisionary," the show's title, was coined perhaps to sharpen the concept of changing environs, elements commonplace every day that some artists foresee in greater depths than what most people perceive. In Elizabeth's case, it's her fascination with the universe that compels her to paint beyond shape and form to focus on color and atmosphere, while Parsons chooses to capture memorable landscapes that he himself alters with color and invented skies, reflecting his own feelings.

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Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions" chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by one of the most renowned American printmaking workshops. The exhibition of 60 works illustrates the impact that artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler and Kiki Smith have had on contemporary art, evident through the work of artists Jason Middelbrook, Amy Cutler and Jane Hammond. The show also illustrates how emerging artists recently selected to work with ULAE has influenced the current trend, in both process and concept.

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 are not available, the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Emilio Sanchez: No Way Home--Images of the Caribbean and New York City
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"No Way Home" features a selection of 24 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints drawn from the recently acquired collection of work by Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999). Best known for his brightly colored, strongly shadowed images of Caribbean and New York City architecture, this exhibition reveals the artist's ongoing interest in repetitive patterns. The show highlights a recent gift to the University Art Collection from the Emilio Sanchez Foundation of over 250 paintings, drawings and prints.

From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, $30 family pack (2 adults, 4 children))
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland" is the first exhibition to examine the American artist's work focused on the Irish landscape and people, particularly children, created between the time of his first trip to Ireland in 1913 and his last trip there in 1928. Long celebrated as an iconic American artist due to his important early work as a teacher and as the leader of The Eight, Henri's paintings have received less attention on their own. Most projects explored his career as it related to his role as a member of The Eight or in a broadly retrospective manner. Few projects focused on his landscapes, drawings, or foreign portraits.

Henri's Irish portraits constitute his largest focused body of work, and often depict the same sitters year after year. These paintings offer a unique and fascinating window onto the genre about which Henri felt most strongly--portraiture--and also chart his experiments with paint handling and color theories over time. He wrote that the time spent in Ireland was extremely valuable to him (it was the only other place besides New York where he purchased a residence), for only there was he able to focus on his painting without the distractions of life in New York. It is not surprising, then, that the periods Henri spent in Ireland were among his most prolific, and the paintings produced there among his most accomplished. Just before his death, Henri composed a list of his most important paintings; many of the works on this list were his Irish subjects. Forty-one paintings of Irish people and landscapes will be on view in the upcoming exhibition.

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel
Everson Museum of Art

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

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of "Deluge and Anima" on the Everson's north façade, a series of Knecht's animations, called "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel," will be on view inside the museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist's brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds.

The Photographer as Child: Memories of Guatemala
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Born in Guatemala, award-winning photographer Efren Lopez is a student in the Military Photojournalism Program at Syracuse University. He is also an aerial photographer for the U.S. Air Force and the first reservist to be selected to attend Newhouse's Military Photojournalism Program. He now lives in Arizona.

The exhibit features images Lopez captured on a return trip to Guatemala in 2009. "My life began in a bamboo hut at the side of a road in a tiny town named Petaca, Guatemala, in 1966," Lopez writes. "It's a town so small that it is next to impossible to find on most maps of Guatemala, much less Central America."

Lopez has documented real-world situations and the military around the globe and has captured stunning images in Arizona and Guatemala. His work has been featured in various publications, including the book Arizona 24/7, and has been awarded many distinctions, including first place in the Professional Photography category at the 2008 Arizona State Fair, an honorable mention in the pictorial category in the 2009 Military Photographer of the Year competition, and first place in the 2011 Multimedia Team 19th Annual Department of Defense Worldwide Military Photography Workshop.

Deng Guo Yuan
The Warehouse Gallery

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

This exhibit will highlight ink brush paintings by Tianjin-based Chinese artist Deng Guo Yuan. His work reveals the tradition of Chinese landscape painting and a profound knowledge of modern and international contemporary aesthetics. The film "Deng Guo Yuan" (2010) by French filmmaker Pierre Creton, presented in the Gallery's vault, meticulously documents the creation of one of Deng Guo Yuan's ink paintings in his Tianjin studio. Widely exhibited in China and Europe, this will be the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. The show originated at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum (Tianjin, China), and then traveled in modified form to the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), to the Provenance Center (New London, CT), and to its last venue, the Warehouse Gallery, for which Deng Guo Yuan will create additional site-specific works.

VPA Faculty Show Part I
XL Projects

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

Part one of an exhibition of work by faculty in S.U.'s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours or e-mail Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Men Only: Vernacular Photographs of Male Affection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit of works from the collection of William Knodel looks at masculinity, gender and sexuality in our society. William Knodel was a college student in the 1970s in New York City when he purchased his first second-hand snapshot, a group of young men in assorted swimming attire whose style dated them back to the turn of the century, posing before a camp tent marked with a sign, "Men Only." Since then, he's collected vernacular images of male affection -- tintypes, daguerreotypes and photos -- during his travels to the West Coast, Canada, and Europe, scouring second-hand shops, old photo sales and used book stores. His collection now runs into the hundreds, dating from the mid-19th century and featuring couples and socializing groups from every race and social class. "Men Only" is a gift that incarnates the "gay spirit" that his good friend Harry Hay warned us must be kept alive and a history too often dismissed.

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John Knecht: Deluge and Anima
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Deluge (2010) hand-drawn looping animation
Anima (2011) hand-drawn looping animation

Artist Statement:
Things have been falling in my videos for decades. It was at first formal. Falling things filled the frame and made a complicated cinematic space. The things falling -- wishbones, test tubes, martini glasses, plastic strawberries that looked like a human heart, cement blocks and infected molars -- increasingly became an atmosphere, functioning both as a formal device and a metaphorical space.

There is a drawing in the collection of the Queen, hanging in Buckingham Palace, by Leonardo daVinci which depicts a deluge of raining everyday objects: rakes, funnels, lamps and general debris. The title of the drawing is "A Cloudburst of Material Things." It is graphite on paper and credited to daVinci. It is dated 1500. The drawing is torn in half so only a part of the drawing remains. I have struggled to find out more about the piece and there is virtually nothing written about it, but I am haunted by it. "Deluge" is directly informed by the overwhelmed totality of daVinci's image. What was he thinking?

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

Opening: Sick at Home: Works of Tonja Torgerson
Echo

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

There will be an artist reception this evening 7:00-10:00 pm.

Artist Statement: Notions of privacy and disclosure are at the core of my work. My portraits and figures deal with the reality of illness while balancing a thin line between expression and discretion. They explore the internal and external factors that compose one’s identity. While these topics could be divisive, the use of color, humor, and childish aesthetic keeps my work welcoming. Vomit, blood and bile appear alongside pinks, paisley and sweet poses. I am interested in this collision of attraction and disgust, and how it creates a difficult beauty and a pleasant anxiety. My work presents a personal side of an ever-increasingly political issue through a girlish lens of soft aesthetics and sad whimsy.

Tonja is currently pursuing an MFA in printmaking at Syracuse University.

Unsung Heroes Film Series: Pucker Up
Redhouse

Price: $10 regular, $5 members
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Pucker Up, directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner is a delightful account of six whistling competitors as they head to the Annual Whistlers' Convention. Featuring performances of pitch-perfect Vivaldi and pulsing Texas swing among many others, the film reminds us how simple pleasures can take an audience to extraordinary new heights.

Mitch Hider, who is featured in the film, will perform live whistling with musical accompaniment. He will also lead a discussion with the audience about the history and magic of whistling.

Hider also acted as a consultant to the directors in the making of this documentary. His knowledge of the history and folklore of whistling is extensive. Mr. Hider is a member of The U.S. National Whistlers Hall of Fame as well as an International Grand Champion.

Legends Concert
Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences

Schine Underground, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For more information, please contact Cedric Bolton in the Office of Multicultural Affairs at 315-443-9676.

Jazz@Sitrus
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring Ronnie Leigh

Sitrus on the Hill
Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel, Syracuse

Lost Time
Folkus Project

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

With more than a decade of hot picking under its belt, Lost Time has become one of Central New York's most popular bluegrass bands. Featuring tight vocal harmonies and stellar instrumental work, the group's repertoire covers a wide range, including bluegrass standards, fiddle tunes, traditional country, and contemporary Americana.

Lost Time came together on an impulse. In 2000, four old friends got together for a jam session. Everything seemed to click and after only a few songs they realized that this was a special musical combination. The name Lost Time was chosen to represent all the time they had known each other and not played together as a band. They played their first gig in February of 2001 and by October of that year had been nominated for a Syracuse Area Music Award (SAMMY). Their first CD, titled "It's About Time," was released in November of 2002 and was also nominated for a SAMMY.

The White Panda, with Pacman, Shamrock
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

I Love You Because
CNY Playhouse
Meghan Pearson, director

Price: Dinner theater: $35 single; $65 couple. Show only: $25 (limited availability)
Fire and Ice Banquet Hall, The Locker Room
528 Hiawatha Blvd., Syracuse

Dinner at 6:45 pm, followed by show at 8:00 pm.

A modern day musical love story.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, NATC presents a modern twist on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, set in New York City. A young, uptight greeting card writer's life is changed when he meets a flighty photographer. Along with their eccentric friends and siblings, they learn to love each other not in spite of their faults, but because of them. This wonderful event will be great for Valentine's dates or as a night out for singles looking to laugh at love.

Music by Joshua Salzman, book and lyrics by Ryan Cunningham, orchestrations by Larry Hochman, music direction by Ceara Windhausen

Read a Review!

Othello
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Dan Stevens, director

Price: $12 regular; $10 student/senior; $5 SU students, faculty, staff and alumni
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

This play is one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Othello focuses on the themes of love, jealousy and ambition. Set in modern times, the show will resonate with audience members who see our cultural mores in the 21st century played out in Shakespeare's beautiful language. Starring Tony Brown in the title role, SSF's 5th annual Shakespeare Under A Roof kickoff features the considerable acting talents of Rick Signorelli as Iago, Sara Caliva as Desdemona, and Nora O'Dea as Emilia. Don't miss this classic of The Bard.

Read a Review!

These Shining Lives
LeMoyne College

Price: $15 regular, $10 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

The 1920s: Catherine Donahue takes a job with other women newly admitted to the American workforce. They paint watch faces for the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois. There Catherine finds friends, independence and validation in her work. But over time the women suspect that something is wrong, lethally wrong. They begin a fight for their lives, their dignity and workplace safety for all who will follow. "These Shining Lives" uses a tragedy in history to illustrate the strong bonds of marriage and friendship. By Melanie Marnich.

Read a Review!

The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Appleseed Productions

Price: $25
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

The story is set at the 1958 Springfield High School prom where we meet the Wonderettes — Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy, and Suzy, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts and voices to match! As we learn about their lives and loves, we are treated to the girls performing classic 50s and 60s songs. Written by Roger Bean.

This reprise of last season's smash hit is a joint fundraiser for Appleseed Productions and Rarely Done Productions.

Caroline, or Change
Syracuse Stage
Marcela Lorca, director

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

The acclaimed musical event blending blues, gospel and traditional Jewish melodies, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek: The Musical).

An eight-year-old boy named Noah Gellman struggles with the loss of his mother and the arrival of a new stepmother. One constant in his life are the small daily rituals he shares with Caroline, the family's African-American maid. The year is 1963—civil rights and Kennedy—and in the Gellman household in Lake Charles, Louisiana, change is coming for everyone, in big ways and small. Two powerhouses of the American theatre, playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori, join forces on a musical of startling creativity and refreshing originality (don't be surprised when the washing machine starts to sing). Acclaimed on Broadway and winner of London's prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical, with a score ranging from blues to gospel to traditional Jewish melodies, Caroline, or Change proves playwright Kushner's point that "music is a blessing that enters the soul through the ear."

Read a Review!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Windows Project: Elisabeth Meyer: Black Night/White Night
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Window Project features an installation by Elisabeth Meyer consisting of organic forms embroidered onto an organza fabric. The overall patterning evokes an association with ocean waves and a net. The transparent quality of the organza background allows the viewer to see through the piece that is hanging from the ceiling covering the entire window front. The work addresses the issue of displacement through traveling. Meyer, who is based in Ithaca, developed the concept for this exhibition while at a residency in Iceland, traveled to India to oversee the production of the embroidery, and created the work on site in Syracuse.

Price Check
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A research-based curatorial examination by Roslyn Esperon and Courtney Rile, featuring the art of Michael Barletta, Caol Flaitz, Carla Goldberg, Novado Cappuccilli, Jason Varone, Fred Wellner, Laura Wellner, and Leah Wolff

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel
Everson Museum of Art

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

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of "Deluge and Anima" on the Everson's north façade, a series of Knecht's animations, called "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel," will be on view inside the museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist's brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds.

From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, $30 family pack (2 adults, 4 children))
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland" is the first exhibition to examine the American artist's work focused on the Irish landscape and people, particularly children, created between the time of his first trip to Ireland in 1913 and his last trip there in 1928. Long celebrated as an iconic American artist due to his important early work as a teacher and as the leader of The Eight, Henri's paintings have received less attention on their own. Most projects explored his career as it related to his role as a member of The Eight or in a broadly retrospective manner. Few projects focused on his landscapes, drawings, or foreign portraits.

Henri's Irish portraits constitute his largest focused body of work, and often depict the same sitters year after year. These paintings offer a unique and fascinating window onto the genre about which Henri felt most strongly--portraiture--and also chart his experiments with paint handling and color theories over time. He wrote that the time spent in Ireland was extremely valuable to him (it was the only other place besides New York where he purchased a residence), for only there was he able to focus on his painting without the distractions of life in New York. It is not surprising, then, that the periods Henri spent in Ireland were among his most prolific, and the paintings produced there among his most accomplished. Just before his death, Henri composed a list of his most important paintings; many of the works on this list were his Irish subjects. Forty-one paintings of Irish people and landscapes will be on view in the upcoming exhibition.

Envisionary
Szozda Gallery

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

Well established artist Phil Parsons and relatively new talent Emily Elizabeth display their painterly visions of atmospheric and landscape horizons surrounding Central New York. "Envisionary," the show's title, was coined perhaps to sharpen the concept of changing environs, elements commonplace every day that some artists foresee in greater depths than what most people perceive. In Elizabeth's case, it's her fascination with the universe that compels her to paint beyond shape and form to focus on color and atmosphere, while Parsons chooses to capture memorable landscapes that he himself alters with color and invented skies, reflecting his own feelings.

Read a review!

Sick at Home: Works of Tonja Torgerson
Echo

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

Artist Statement: Notions of privacy and disclosure are at the core of my work. My portraits and figures deal with the reality of illness while balancing a thin line between expression and discretion. They explore the internal and external factors that compose one’s identity. While these topics could be divisive, the use of color, humor, and childish aesthetic keeps my work welcoming. Vomit, blood and bile appear alongside pinks, paisley and sweet poses. I am interested in this collision of attraction and disgust, and how it creates a difficult beauty and a pleasant anxiety. My work presents a personal side of an ever-increasingly political issue through a girlish lens of soft aesthetics and sad whimsy.

Tonja is currently pursuing an MFA in printmaking at Syracuse University.

Emilio Sanchez: No Way Home--Images of the Caribbean and New York City
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"No Way Home" features a selection of 24 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints drawn from the recently acquired collection of work by Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999). Best known for his brightly colored, strongly shadowed images of Caribbean and New York City architecture, this exhibition reveals the artist's ongoing interest in repetitive patterns. The show highlights a recent gift to the University Art Collection from the Emilio Sanchez Foundation of over 250 paintings, drawings and prints.

Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions" chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by one of the most renowned American printmaking workshops. The exhibition of 60 works illustrates the impact that artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler and Kiki Smith have had on contemporary art, evident through the work of artists Jason Middelbrook, Amy Cutler and Jane Hammond. The show also illustrates how emerging artists recently selected to work with ULAE has influenced the current trend, in both process and concept.

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 are not available, the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Men Only: Vernacular Photographs of Male Affection
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit of works from the collection of William Knodel looks at masculinity, gender and sexuality in our society. William Knodel was a college student in the 1970s in New York City when he purchased his first second-hand snapshot, a group of young men in assorted swimming attire whose style dated them back to the turn of the century, posing before a camp tent marked with a sign, "Men Only." Since then, he's collected vernacular images of male affection -- tintypes, daguerreotypes and photos -- during his travels to the West Coast, Canada, and Europe, scouring second-hand shops, old photo sales and used book stores. His collection now runs into the hundreds, dating from the mid-19th century and featuring couples and socializing groups from every race and social class. "Men Only" is a gift that incarnates the "gay spirit" that his good friend Harry Hay warned us must be kept alive and a history too often dismissed.

Read a review!

Deng Guo Yuan
The Warehouse Gallery

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

This exhibit will highlight ink brush paintings by Tianjin-based Chinese artist Deng Guo Yuan. His work reveals the tradition of Chinese landscape painting and a profound knowledge of modern and international contemporary aesthetics. The film "Deng Guo Yuan" (2010) by French filmmaker Pierre Creton, presented in the Gallery's vault, meticulously documents the creation of one of Deng Guo Yuan's ink paintings in his Tianjin studio. Widely exhibited in China and Europe, this will be the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. The show originated at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum (Tianjin, China), and then traveled in modified form to the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA), to the Provenance Center (New London, CT), and to its last venue, the Warehouse Gallery, for which Deng Guo Yuan will create additional site-specific works.

VPA Faculty Show Part I
XL Projects

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

Part one of an exhibition of work by faculty in S.U.'s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours or e-mail Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

John Knecht: Deluge and Anima
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Deluge (2010) hand-drawn looping animation
Anima (2011) hand-drawn looping animation

Artist Statement:
Things have been falling in my videos for decades. It was at first formal. Falling things filled the frame and made a complicated cinematic space. The things falling -- wishbones, test tubes, martini glasses, plastic strawberries that looked like a human heart, cement blocks and infected molars -- increasingly became an atmosphere, functioning both as a formal device and a metaphorical space.

There is a drawing in the collection of the Queen, hanging in Buckingham Palace, by Leonardo daVinci which depicts a deluge of raining everyday objects: rakes, funnels, lamps and general debris. The title of the drawing is "A Cloudburst of Material Things." It is graphite on paper and credited to daVinci. It is dated 1500. The drawing is torn in half so only a part of the drawing remains. I have struggled to find out more about the piece and there is virtually nothing written about it, but I am haunted by it. "Deluge" is directly informed by the overwhelmed totality of daVinci's image. What was he thinking?

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

Ten Minutes to Anywhere
Arts Engage
Dance Exchange

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

Can you name the distance from one side of Syracuse to the other? What about the distance between you and your neighbor? Campus and community? Past and present? Syracuse University students and community members of various ages and backgrounds teamed up with Dance Exchange, a multi-generational dance company from Washington, DC, to create "Ten Minutes to Anywhere," a new performance piece exploring the daily distances we travel, and how we move between, under, and around physical, cultural, and historical landscapes. Through movement, text, music and video, these sometimes small, sometimes significant distances reveal the seen and unseen perspectives that intertwine and intersect to create "place." Audience members are invited to view the performance, share their stories of distance, and explore the gallery space, which will be lined with "Distance Maps" created by local students and community members.

Ten Minutes to Anywhere
Arts Engage
Dance Exchange

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

Can you name the distance from one side of Syracuse to the other? What about the distance between you and your neighbor? Campus and community? Past and present? Syracuse University students and community members of various ages and backgrounds teamed up with Dance Exchange, a multi-generational dance company from Washington, DC, to create "Ten Minutes to Anywhere," a new performance piece exploring the daily distances we travel, and how we move between, under, and around physical, cultural, and historical landscapes. Through movement, text, music and video, these sometimes small, sometimes significant distances reveal the seen and unseen perspectives that intertwine and intersect to create "place." Audience members are invited to view the performance, share their stories of distance, and explore the gallery space, which will be lined with "Distance Maps" created by local students and community members.

The Help

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

Film is based on a best-selling novel about a woman who co-authors a book based on the lives of African-American maids working in the South in the 1960s. Rated PG-13.

For more information, phone 315-435-1900 with any questions.

Whistling Performance and Workshop
Redhouse

Price: $5 per family
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Performance and workshop features International Grand Champion and U.S. National Whistler's Hall of Fame member "Whistling Mitch" Hider. (This is a one-hour kids' show, appropriate for pre-K through 4th grade.)

SU Symphony Band and Wind Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

The Symphony Band, with conductor Justin J. Mertz, will perform:
Brant Karrick Bayou Breakdown
Aaron Copland Scenes from Billy the Kid
Bruce Broughton Silverado

The Wind Ensemble, with Bradley P. Ethington, conductor; James O. Welsch, guest conductor; and Michael Bull, soloist, will perform:
John Zdechlik Celebrations
Chris Cresswell Nocturne No. 1
Claude Debussy Claire de Lune
Richard Rodgers Lover
Dmitri Shostakovich Folk Dances

Parking is available in SU pay lots.

Junior Trombone/Organ Recital
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Victoria Puco, trombone, and Alexander Meszler, organ

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

Puco, a junior music education major, will perform on trombone with Sabine Krantz, piano. Meszler, a junior performance major, will perform on organ. The program will include works by Telemann, Bernstein, Sulek, Franck, Walther, Dinda, and Eben.

Free parking is available in the Irving Garage; patrons should mention that they are attending the concert.

Richard Smith & Julie Adams, with special guest Loren Barrigar
Guitar League

Price: $18 regular, $15 Guitar League and Folkus members
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Guitar Great Richard Smith was born in Beckenham, Kent, England in 1971. One day, at the age of five, Richard was watching his father fingerpick "Down South Blues" (an Atkins-Travis recording) on his guitar. The boy begged his dad to show him how to play it, and finally he did. Despite the fact that Richard is left-handed and his dad's right-handed guitar was not designed for tiny hands, by the end of that day, Richard learned and played both the chords and the melody. Within no time, the toddler outstripped his dad's six-string prowess and it was clear to all who saw or heard him play that Richard was one of those rare phenomena--a child prodigy.

Concentrating initially on the music his father loved--the country picking of Chet Atkins and Merle Travis--young Richard digested everything he heard, learning even the most complicated of these tunes with ease, and confounded everyone with his dexterity.

Richard first met his hero, the "Godfather" of finger style guitar, Chet Atkins when he was only 11 and was invited by Chet to play with him on stage at Her Majesty's Theatre in London in front of an audience of about a thousand. He played Chet's arrangement of "Whispering," and Chet played along with him. Then the audience went mad and Chet asked him to play another one. Before Richard could decide what to play, someone shouted "Little Rock Getaway" and Richard played Chet's arrangement of it while Chet, not playing this time, watched him in amazement playing to a stunned and appreciative audience. By the time he reached his early 20s, both Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed began to refer to Richard Smith as their "Hero."

In 1999, Richard married the lovely and very accomplished American cellist Julie Adams and settled in the Nashville area. When they play together, it'll melt your heart--and blow your socks off!

A Cappella for the Fellas

Price: $15 advance, $20 at the door
Holy Cross Church
4112 E. Genesee St., Dewitt

Performing will be NoXcuse and Five to Life (Syracuse), Orange Appeal and The Mandarins (Syracuse University), and the Binghamton Crosbys (Binghamton).

Proceeds to benefit the Oxford Street Inn homeless shelter for men, operated by Catholic Charities.

For more information, phone 315-478-9710.

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, with The Prickers
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

The Little Mermaid
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive adaptation of the children's classic.

Read a review!

Caroline, or Change
Syracuse Stage
Marcela Lorca, director

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

The acclaimed musical event blending blues, gospel and traditional Jewish melodies, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek: The Musical).

An eight-year-old boy named Noah Gellman struggles with the loss of his mother and the arrival of a new stepmother. One constant in his life are the small daily rituals he shares with Caroline, the family's African-American maid. The year is 1963—civil rights and Kennedy—and in the Gellman household in Lake Charles, Louisiana, change is coming for everyone, in big ways and small. Two powerhouses of the American theatre, playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori, join forces on a musical of startling creativity and refreshing originality (don't be surprised when the washing machine starts to sing). Acclaimed on Broadway and winner of London's prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical, with a score ranging from blues to gospel to traditional Jewish melodies, Caroline, or Change proves playwright Kushner's point that "music is a blessing that enters the soul through the ear."

Read a Review!

Reaching for Marsby
Len Fonte, director

Price: $22 regular, $20 students/seniors
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Reaching for Marsby, the second staged comedy by former Post-Standard humor columnist Jeff Kramer, follows brash, bumbling American actor Gary Blenkinsopp, who travels to England in an attempt to save his career. Mayhem ensues in his theater world.

The cast features Mark Eischen, Moe Harrington, Kris Rusho, Michael O'Neill, Karis Wiggins, Brendon Cole and Peter Moller.

Tickets, with processing fees added, also be purchased by calling the box office at 315-435-2121 or by going to ticketmaster.com.

Read a Review!

Murder Mystery Dinner
Solvay High School Drama Department

Price: $25 includes buffet, beverages
Camillus Elks Club
6117 Newport Rd., Camillus

For more information, phone 315-468-5102.

I Love You Because
CNY Playhouse
Meghan Pearson, director

Price: Dinner theater: $35 single; $65 couple. Show only: $25 (limited availability)
Fire and Ice Banquet Hall, The Locker Room
528 Hiawatha Blvd., Syracuse

Dinner at 6:45 pm, followed by show at 8:00 pm.

A modern day musical love story.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, NATC presents a modern twist on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, set in New York City. A young, uptight greeting card writer's life is changed when he meets a flighty photographer. Along with their eccentric friends and siblings, they learn to love each other not in spite of their faults, but because of them. This wonderful event will be great for Valentine's dates or as a night out for singles looking to laugh at love.

Music by Joshua Salzman, book and lyrics by Ryan Cunningham, orchestrations by Larry Hochman, music direction by Ceara Windhausen

Read a Review!

Othello
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Dan Stevens, director

Price: $12 regular; $10 student/senior; $5 SU students, faculty, staff and alumni
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

This play is one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Othello focuses on the themes of love, jealousy and ambition. Set in modern times, the show will resonate with audience members who see our cultural mores in the 21st century played out in Shakespeare's beautiful language. Starring Tony Brown in the title role, SSF's 5th annual Shakespeare Under A Roof kickoff features the considerable acting talents of Rick Signorelli as Iago, Sara Caliva as Desdemona, and Nora O'Dea as Emilia. Don't miss this classic of The Bard.

Read a Review!

These Shining Lives
LeMoyne College

Price: $15 regular, $10 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

The 1920s: Catherine Donahue takes a job with other women newly admitted to the American workforce. They paint watch faces for the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois. There Catherine finds friends, independence and validation in her work. But over time the women suspect that something is wrong, lethally wrong. They begin a fight for their lives, their dignity and workplace safety for all who will follow. "These Shining Lives" uses a tragedy in history to illustrate the strong bonds of marriage and friendship. By Melanie Marnich.

Read a Review!

The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Appleseed Productions

Price: $25
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

The story is set at the 1958 Springfield High School prom where we meet the Wonderettes — Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy, and Suzy, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts and voices to match! As we learn about their lives and loves, we are treated to the girls performing classic 50s and 60s songs. Written by Roger Bean.

This reprise of last season's smash hit is a joint fundraiser for Appleseed Productions and Rarely Done Productions.

Caroline, or Change
Syracuse Stage
Marcela Lorca, director

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

The acclaimed musical event blending blues, gospel and traditional Jewish melodies, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek: The Musical).

An eight-year-old boy named Noah Gellman struggles with the loss of his mother and the arrival of a new stepmother. One constant in his life are the small daily rituals he shares with Caroline, the family's African-American maid. The year is 1963—civil rights and Kennedy—and in the Gellman household in Lake Charles, Louisiana, change is coming for everyone, in big ways and small. Two powerhouses of the American theatre, playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori, join forces on a musical of startling creativity and refreshing originality (don't be surprised when the washing machine starts to sing). Acclaimed on Broadway and winner of London's prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical, with a score ranging from blues to gospel to traditional Jewish melodies, Caroline, or Change proves playwright Kushner's point that "music is a blessing that enters the soul through the ear."

Read a Review!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

Envisionary
Szozda Gallery

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

Well established artist Phil Parsons and relatively new talent Emily Elizabeth display their painterly visions of atmospheric and landscape horizons surrounding Central New York. "Envisionary," the show's title, was coined perhaps to sharpen the concept of changing environs, elements commonplace every day that some artists foresee in greater depths than what most people perceive. In Elizabeth's case, it's her fascination with the universe that compels her to paint beyond shape and form to focus on color and atmosphere, while Parsons chooses to capture memorable landscapes that he himself alters with color and invented skies, reflecting his own feelings.

Read a review!

Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"Pressing Print: Contemporary Prints and Process from Universal Limited Art Editions" chronicles the recent decade of artwork published by one of the most renowned American printmaking workshops. The exhibition of 60 works illustrates the impact that artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler and Kiki Smith have had on contemporary art, evident through the work of artists Jason Middelbrook, Amy Cutler and Jane Hammond. The show also illustrates how emerging artists recently selected to work with ULAE has influenced the current trend, in both process and concept.

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 are not available, the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.

Emilio Sanchez: No Way Home--Images of the Caribbean and New York City
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

"No Way Home" features a selection of 24 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints drawn from the recently acquired collection of work by Cuban-American artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999). Best known for his brightly colored, strongly shadowed images of Caribbean and New York City architecture, this exhibition reveals the artist's ongoing interest in repetitive patterns. The show highlights a recent gift to the University Art Collection from the Emilio Sanchez Foundation of over 250 paintings, drawings and prints.

From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 adults, $8 students/seniors, $30 family pack (2 adults, 4 children))
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland" is the first exhibition to examine the American artist's work focused on the Irish landscape and people, particularly children, created between the time of his first trip to Ireland in 1913 and his last trip there in 1928. Long celebrated as an iconic American artist due to his important early work as a teacher and as the leader of The Eight, Henri's paintings have received less attention on their own. Most projects explored his career as it related to his role as a member of The Eight or in a broadly retrospective manner. Few projects focused on his landscapes, drawings, or foreign portraits.

Henri's Irish portraits constitute his largest focused body of work, and often depict the same sitters year after year. These paintings offer a unique and fascinating window onto the genre about which Henri felt most strongly--portraiture--and also chart his experiments with paint handling and color theories over time. He wrote that the time spent in Ireland was extremely valuable to him (it was the only other place besides New York where he purchased a residence), for only there was he able to focus on his painting without the distractions of life in New York. It is not surprising, then, that the periods Henri spent in Ireland were among his most prolific, and the paintings produced there among his most accomplished. Just before his death, Henri composed a list of his most important paintings; many of the works on this list were his Irish subjects. Forty-one paintings of Irish people and landscapes will be on view in the upcoming exhibition.

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel
Everson Museum of Art

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

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of "Deluge and Anima" on the Everson's north façade, a series of Knecht's animations, called "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel," will be on view inside the museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist's brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds.

VPA Faculty Show Part I
XL Projects

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

Part one of an exhibition of work by faculty in S.U.'s College of Visual and Performing Arts.

For more information, phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours or e-mail Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Price Check
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A research-based curatorial examination by Roslyn Esperon and Courtney Rile, featuring the art of Michael Barletta, Caol Flaitz, Carla Goldberg, Novado Cappuccilli, Jason Varone, Fred Wellner, Laura Wellner, and Leah Wolff

John Knecht: Deluge and Anima
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Deluge (2010) hand-drawn looping animation
Anima (2011) hand-drawn looping animation

Artist Statement:
Things have been falling in my videos for decades. It was at first formal. Falling things filled the frame and made a complicated cinematic space. The things falling -- wishbones, test tubes, martini glasses, plastic strawberries that looked like a human heart, cement blocks and infected molars -- increasingly became an atmosphere, functioning both as a formal device and a metaphorical space.

There is a drawing in the collection of the Queen, hanging in Buckingham Palace, by Leonardo daVinci which depicts a deluge of raining everyday objects: rakes, funnels, lamps and general debris. The title of the drawing is "A Cloudburst of Material Things." It is graphite on paper and credited to daVinci. It is dated 1500. The drawing is torn in half so only a part of the drawing remains. I have struggled to find out more about the piece and there is virtually nothing written about it, but I am haunted by it. "Deluge" is directly informed by the overwhelmed totality of daVinci's image. What was he thinking?

For Syracuse, 2010: Selections of Truisms and Survival
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Internationally renowned artist Jenny Holzer created "For Syracuse" as a site-specific installation that streams across the facade of Syracuse Stage on an LED curtain. The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series "Truisms, and Survival" that challenge viewer's 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 Time 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.

Some Like it Hot
Syracuse International Film Festival

Price: Free (donations accepted)
Al's Wine & Whiskey Lounge
321 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

Classic film starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Billy Wilder.

Annual Folk Music Series: The Youth Movement
Arts Alive in Liverpool
Featuring Boots N' Shorts

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

Boots N' Shorts -- a Syracuse-based trio featuring Mike Mawhinney, Kevin Morel, and Aaron Chamberlain -- carries on the old-time music tradition while making it relevant to modern audiences.

Amy Heyman and Ida Trebicka, pianos
Joyful Noise Concert Series

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

For more information, phone 315-457-5180.

Music for the Mission: Big Eyed Phish, with Aunt Martha, Just Joe, Steep
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

A portion of proceeds go to benefit the Rescue Mission.

New Play Reading
Armory Square Playwrights

Price: $7 regular, $5 students/seniors
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Script-in-hand readings of new plays, followed by a talkback session with the playwright.

Othello
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Dan Stevens, director

Price: $12 regular; $10 student/senior; $5 SU students, faculty, staff and alumni
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

This play is one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Othello focuses on the themes of love, jealousy and ambition. Set in modern times, the show will resonate with audience members who see our cultural mores in the 21st century played out in Shakespeare's beautiful language. Starring Tony Brown in the title role, SSF's 5th annual Shakespeare Under A Roof kickoff features the considerable acting talents of Rick Signorelli as Iago, Sara Caliva as Desdemona, and Nora O'Dea as Emilia. Don't miss this classic of The Bard.

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Caroline, or Change
Syracuse Stage
Marcela Lorca, director

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

The acclaimed musical event blending blues, gospel and traditional Jewish melodies, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek: The Musical).

An eight-year-old boy named Noah Gellman struggles with the loss of his mother and the arrival of a new stepmother. One constant in his life are the small daily rituals he shares with Caroline, the family's African-American maid. The year is 1963—civil rights and Kennedy—and in the Gellman household in Lake Charles, Louisiana, change is coming for everyone, in big ways and small. Two powerhouses of the American theatre, playwright Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori, join forces on a musical of startling creativity and refreshing originality (don't be surprised when the washing machine starts to sing). Acclaimed on Broadway and winner of London's prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical, with a score ranging from blues to gospel to traditional Jewish melodies, Caroline, or Change proves playwright Kushner's point that "music is a blessing that enters the soul through the ear."

Read a Review!

Monday, February 20, 2012

Gallery Exhibit: Abisay Puentes, Imposibilitatos
Onondaga Community College

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

Artist Statement:

In the imagination of all artists lay all transcendent questions that humankind have formulated in their heart and mind. In my artwork there are only a few questions as the center. Why do humans hurt each other? What is the reason for man's evil? Why do men have bad nature?

The only answer I have found is: Because mankind is "IMPOSIBILITATO" (unable, helpless, without means, impossibility in man).

This is a spiritual and physical stage that makes possible an unhappy humanity. This impossibility became the product of man losing the purpose of existence. With this loss we have found pain, agony and disorientation.

In my paintings I try to capture the diverse stages of impossibility. This is why this series has the same theme, feeling and internal message. Between the expressionism and the neo-romanticism I establish a pictorial-sonorous piece of work with its own time and space, making a greater connection with the viewer.

CNY Scholastic Art Awards Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

The Awards signify to parents, teachers, community, and colleges that a student is an accomplished artist or writer. 30,000 teen artists and writers will be recognized in their regions. 1,000 will win national awards. Each work is reviewed by a panel of arts professionals for the originality, technical skill, and emergence of personal vision or voice.

Contain/Constrain: Works by Sam Horowitz
Point of Contact Gallery

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

In today's virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities, and continually discard the "old" in search for "upgrades", one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, re-purposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands, and the collective loss of craft, localized-innovation and repair. "The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work."

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed, and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. "I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity," states Horowitz. "Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live, and act in this moment."

Salon: Strictly Local
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

The exhibit will feature works by over 50 local artists.

The Power and The Piety: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This exhibit, curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings.

FOR_PLAY
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring James and Hayes Slade

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

An exhibition of projects by Slade Architecture of New York City designed for or including an element of play.

Westcott Community Gallery Group Show
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Works by Molly Susman, Steve Susman, and Jessica Breedlove.

Looking & Looking: Photos by Amy Elkins and Jen Davis
Light Work Gallery

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

Jen Davis and Amy Elkins create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society -- men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful -- and the crafting of a self-image.

Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins' images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity -- the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

The Photographer as Child: Memories of Guatemala
La Casita Cultural Center

La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse

Born in Guatemala, award-winning photographer Efren Lopez is a student in the Military Photojournalism Program at Syracuse University. He is also an aerial photographer for the U.S. Air Force and the first reservist to be selected to attend Newhouse's Military Photojournalism Program. He now lives in Arizona.

The exhibit features images Lopez captured on a return trip to Guatemala in 2009. "My life began in a bamboo hut at the side of a road in a tiny town named Petaca, Guatemala, in 1966," Lopez writes. "It's a town so small that it is next to impossible to find on most maps of Guatemala, much less Central America."

Lopez has documented real-world situations and the military around the globe and has captured stunning images in Arizona and Guatemala. His work has been featured in various publications, including the book Arizona 24/7, and has been awarded many distinctions, including first place in the Professional Photography category at the 2008 Arizona State Fair, an honorable mention in the pictorial category in the 2009 Military Photographer of the Year competition, and first place in the 2011 Multimedia Team 19th Annual Department of Defense Worldwide Military Photography Workshop.