Friday, May 13, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Architecture & Interior Design Student Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Exhibition of student work from the Architecture & Interior Design Department. It is an annual exhibit that showcases some of the best work produced by our students in the preceding academic year.

Your Words Today /Tus palabras de hoy
Point of Contact Gallery

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

The Point of Contact Gallery presents the first exhibition by El Punto, a new contemporary arts program for young artists, created by Point of Contact and facilitated to local youths in collaboration with the Spanish Action League (La Liga) and La Casita Cultural Center.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opening: Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-8:00 pm.

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Women of CNY Student Art Show
Redhouse

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

Our year-long celebration of local women in art comes to a close as we offer this student show featuring the works of Henninger High School students.

Senior Interior Design Student Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Senior interior design students in the Department of Design at Syracuse University will present an exhibition of thesis work, a culmination of year-long research and design projects by 29 graduating seniors. The show will include both two- and three-dimensional works. Faculty advisors for the show are interior design faculty members Zeke Leonard and Jen Hamilton.

For more information about the exhibition, contact at mleona02@syr.edu.

Faces & Figures
Szozda Gallery

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

A group show focusing solely on portraiture and figures. The six participating artists are Robert Glisson, Harry Freeman-Jones, Robert Niedzwiecki, Phil Parsons, Dona Flaherty, and Stephen Perrone.

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BFA Candidates' Exhibit
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

An exhibition of work by Syracuse University bachelor of fine arts degree candidates. For more information, contact XL Projects during gallery hours at 315-442-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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

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

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

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John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Over There: Comedy is His Best Weapon
Redhouse
Featuring PJ Walsh

Price: $16.50 adults, $12.50 students
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Prolific comedian and actor PJ Walsh brings his one-man show Syracuse. "Over There: Comedy is his Best Weapon" illustrates the hardship and hilarity of PJ Walsh's journey -- from a screw-up kid convinced there's no chance of war who enlists in 1990, ships out to the Persian Gulf, and ends up working in the White House. It's his career in stand-up comedy, though, that leads him to face his mortality in the belly of a C-130 plane flying over Afghanistan. The show is punctuated by PJ's insightful humor about life as a civilian and a serviceman. PJ unfolds scene after scene in a theatrical experience that oscillates between moments of heartbreak, honesty and hilarity.

PJ Walsh is a U.S. Navy Veteran, the former primary dental care technician for the White House, and a prominent touring, professional comedian. He has opened for Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy on both his "Tour of America" and "The Right to Bare Arms" tours.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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The Fence (La Barda)
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

In October 2006, the U.S. government decided to build a 700-mile fence along its troubled 2000-mile-plus border with Mexico. Three years, 19 construction companies, 350 engineers, thousands of construction workers, tens of thousands of tons of metal and $3 billion later, was it all worth it? Rory Kennedy (of HBO's Emmy-winning "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib") follows her subjects through private ranches, protected wilderness, bustling border towns, and scrub deserts for a revealing, often surprising look at the controversial southern U.S. border barrier. As many as 500,000 undocumented immigrants are estimated to cross into the U.S. every year. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration responded to the enormous political pressure to close what was seen as a dangerous open door with a seemingly simple, some say simplistic, solution: a fence dividing the United States from its neighbor to the south.

Sully Erna

Price: $29.50-$64.50
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Founder and lead vocalist of Godsmack.

Seussical the Musical

Price: $12
Roxboro Road Middle School
Bernard St., Mattydale

Bright Young Thing: An Evening of Jazz, Swing and Cabaret
Featuring Erika Clement

Price: $12
Twist Ultra Lounge
252 W. Genesee St., Syracuse

Sensational singer Erika Clement will be singing an eclectic mix of Jazz, Swing and Broadway standards from the golden age (1930s-1960s). She will be joined by award-winning musical director and pianist Josh Smith along with a jazz combo band. Enjoy these classic sounds as you are transported back into a "Cotton Club" type setting. Cabaret-style seating and cash bar.

*CANCELLED* Pops Series: Charlie Chaplin at the Symphony
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Grant Cooper, conductor
Featuring Dan Kamin, artist

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

Former SSO Resident Conductor Grant Cooper returns with popular guest artist Dan Kamin to present Charlie Chaplin at the Symphony, a concert that combines classic comedy and classical music. Featuring two fully restored Chaplin films with scores by Grant Cooper.

A Year With Frog and Toad
Appleseed Productions
Colin Keating, director

Price: $20 regular; $17 students/seniors
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A Year With Frog And Toad remains true to the spirit of the original stories as it follows two great friends, the cheerful and popular Frog and the rather grumpy Toad through four fun-filled seasons. Waking from hibernation in the spring, they proceed to plant gardens, swim, rake leaves and go sledding, learning life lessons along the way, including a most important one about friendship and rejoicing in the attributes that make each of us different and special. Book and lyrics by Willie Reale, music by Robert Reale, based on the books by Arnold Lobel.

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Into the Woods
CNY Playhouse
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $25 regular, $20 student/senior, $10 children under 10
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, the Wolf, Jack, a Beanstalk, and Reality.
An ambivalent Cinderella? A blood-thirsty Little Red Ridinghood? A Prince Charming with a roving eye? A Witch...who raps? They're all among the cockeyed characters in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's fractured fairy tale. When a Baker and his Wife learn they've been cursed with childlessness by the Witch next door, they embark on a quest for the special objects required to break the spell, swindling, lying to and stealing from Cinderella, Little Red, Rapunzel, and Jack (the one who climbed the beanstalk). Everyone's wish is granted at the end of Act One, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later, with disastrous results. What begins a lively irreverent fantasy in the style of "The Princess Bride" becomes a moving lesson about community responsibility and the stories we tell our children. The Syracuse New Times is producing this musical in collaboration with Not Another Theater Company. Music Direction by Dan Williams, choreography by Meghan Pearson.

Starring Patrica Elise Catchouny, Alex Cupelo, Kathy Egloff, Gina Ferrelli, Liam Fitzpatrick, Lanny Freshman, Kimberly Grader, Lucas Greer, Rebecca Hall, Greg J. Hipius,Kyle Johnson, Harlow Kisselstein, Meghan Pearson, Baily Pfohl, Marissa Pizzuto, Kasey Richards, Crystal Roupas, Heather J. Roach, Michael Spinoso, Danan Tsan, Wendy Viggiano, Carmen Vivano-Crafts, and Ceara Windhausen.

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The Graduate
Covey Theatre Company
Garrett Heater, director

BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Mrs. Robinson will seduce the coming-of-age Benjamin in this stage adaptation of the classic 1967 Mike Nichols film. Please be advised -- this show contains nudity.

Starring Moe Harrington and Rob Fonda.

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

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A New Brain
Syracuse University Drama Department
Wendy Knox, director

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

A talented young composer named Gordon Schwinn struggles with a creative block. For a brief diversion, he meets a friend for lunch and promptly passes out in his pasta. Rushed to the emergency room, he discovers he has a brain condition requiring surgery. Face-to-face with mortality, he worries he'll die before having the chance to write his best songs. And so—from his hospital bed, from his wheelchair, from the depths of an MRI, and even while comatose—Gordon writes them. They flow out of his imagination and his subconscious as snatches of reality magically intrude. Tony Award-winning writer/composer William Finn (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) draws on his personal experience to create a beautiful musical celebrating life, love, and the healing power of art.

A New Brain, Finn's autobiographical musical, opened off-Broadway at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre in 1998. It starred Malcolm Gets as Gordon and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth as his nurse, Nancy. The musical reunites Finn and James Lapine (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George); together, they make up the Tony Award-winning writing team of Falsettos (1992).

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Saturday, May 14, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Architecture & Interior Design Student Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Exhibition of student work from the Architecture & Interior Design Department. It is an annual exhibit that showcases some of the best work produced by our students in the preceding academic year.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

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

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

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

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

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

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Senior Interior Design Student Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Senior interior design students in the Department of Design at Syracuse University will present an exhibition of thesis work, a culmination of year-long research and design projects by 29 graduating seniors. The show will include both two- and three-dimensional works. Faculty advisors for the show are interior design faculty members Zeke Leonard and Jen Hamilton.

For more information about the exhibition, contact at mleona02@syr.edu.

Faces & Figures
Szozda Gallery

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

Dona Flaherty, ceramist, will be in attendance this afternoon 1:00-3:00 pm.

A group show focusing solely on portraiture and figures. The six participating artists are Robert Glisson, Harry Freeman-Jones, Robert Niedzwiecki, Phil Parsons, Dona Flaherty, and Stephen Perrone.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

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BFA Candidates' Exhibit
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

An exhibition of work by Syracuse University bachelor of fine arts degree candidates. For more information, contact XL Projects during gallery hours at 315-442-2542.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Stephanie Miller's Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour

Price: $25-$75
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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Cabaret
ArtRage Gallery

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

The unforgettable classic 1972 musical featuring Liza Minelli and Joel Gray, directed by Bob Fosse.
An American singer in a bawdy Berlin club pursues a bisexual writer -- while the Nazis rise to power around them. (10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actor, Director)

*CANCELLED* Family Series: The Classical Clown
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Grant Cooper, conductor
Featuring Dan Kamin, buffoon soloist

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

Watch the sparks fly as Classical Clown Dan Kamin battles conductor Grant Cooper for control of the orchestra. By the time it’s over, the clown conducts and the conductor turns into a clown! Meanwhile, families will discover great musical classics by Beethoven, Stravinsky, Strauss and more.

John Cadley and Cathy Wenthen

Price: Free
Eve Galleria
6456 Collamer Rd., East Syracuse

Acoustic and bluegrass favorites.

Seussical the Musical

Price: $12
Roxboro Road Middle School
Bernard St., Mattydale

Voice Recital
Central New York Association of Music Teachers

Hosmer Auditorium, Everson Museum
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Recital by high school student winners of the annual vocal competition, including Alida Cooke, Katrina Sheats, Jacob Clay, Samantha Sheats, Adina Martin, and Stephanie Andrew.

Scholastic Vocal Jazz Jam
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring Nancy Kelly

Price: $6 adults, $3 students
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Professional jazz vocalist Nancy Kellywill be on hand to work with vocalists in a friendly, supportive master-class environment with piano accompaniment by Rick Montalbano, associate music director of the CNY Jazz Orchestra.

Participants are coached on all elements of song delivery, such as posture, tone, key placement, deportment, and interaction with the audience. School-age participants usually are recommended by their choral director, but the event is open to anyone, including college-age and older adults.

Vocalists are encouraged to prepare songs from the "Great American Songbook." For students, the New York State School Music Association (nyssma.org) has a recommended list of songs, and this event complements the annual NYSSMA solo competition as a benefit to students.

Community Choir Vaudeville and Dinner Show
Syracuse Community Choir
Karen Mihalyi, conductor

Price: $15-$40
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Cocktail hour (non alcoholic): 5:30pm
Dinner: 6:00pm
Performances: 7:00pm - 8:30pm

Lively acts featuring Mardea and the Cluck-Cluck Gals, Colleen Kattau and Some Guys, The Hens and Chicks Ukelele Society, Marcia Hagen, and many more, with Fabulous emcees Paco Valle and Forrest Antrum, to benefit the choir.

Seating is limited. Reservations strongly encouraged. Call or email Stephanie at 315-430-0372 mscross@windstream.net.

Seussical the Musical

Price: $12
Roxboro Road Middle School
Bernard St., Mattydale

Bright Young Thing: An Evening of Jazz, Swing and Cabaret
Featuring Erika Clement

Price: $12
Twist Ultra Lounge
252 W. Genesee St., Syracuse

Sensational singer Erika Clement will be singing an eclectic mix of Jazz, Swing and Broadway standards from the golden age (1930s-1960s). She will be joined by award-winning musical director and pianist Josh Smith along with a jazz combo band. Enjoy these classic sounds as you are transported back into a "Cotton Club" type setting. Cabaret-style seating and cash bar.

Don Meixner in Concert

Price: Non-perishable food items
Hillview Community Baptist Church
7382 O'Brien Rd., Baldwinsville

Singer of old songs, teller of tales performs to benefit the Baldwinsville Food Pantry. For more information, phone 315-635-6952 or 315-638-0357.

Tug Hill Players

Price: $12
Robinson Memorial Church
126 Terry Rd. (corner of Granger), Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-468-2509.

Off the Wall
Steeple Coffeehouse

Price: $10 suggested donation
United Church of Fayetteville
310 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville

Country roots music from Larry Fox, John Burton, Dave Rybinski, and Charlie Ingersoll.

Mark Zane, Donna Colton, and Sam Patterelli
Kellish Hill Farm

Price: $10
Kellish Hill Farm
3192 Pompey Center Rd., Pompey

Acoustic, blues, folk, and rock.

Mark Doyle and the Maniacs
Redhouse

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

A Redhouse favorite, Mark Doyle and the Maniacs return with their fusion of rock and blues that never disappoints. Be sure to get your tickets fast, as the Maniacs have sold out every show they've ever had at Redhouse and show no signs of stopping.

*CANCELLED* Pops Series: Charlie Chaplin at the Symphony
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Grant Cooper, conductor
Featuring Dan Kamin, artist

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

Former SSO Resident Conductor Grant Cooper returns with popular guest artist Dan Kamin to present Charlie Chaplin at the Symphony, a concert that combines classic comedy and classical music. Featuring two fully restored Chaplin films with scores by Grant Cooper.

Shannon Wurst, with Connor Garvey
Westcott Community Center

Price: $10; $8 for WCC members
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Shannon Wurst's music has a truly timeless sound. While staying true to Southern musical traditions, she is a modern day pioneer, creating her own path and sound. The traditions evident in her music come from a place not only of inspiration, but also firsthand experience. Growing up in a musical family in Arkansas, she's no stranger to picking parties and house concerts. It's no wonder that Wurst's music makes you feel as if you are in her living room, and she is singing only to you. She is a true artist: an entertainer, a storyteller, and a songstress, with a down-home presence that will make you sit up and listen.

Opening will be Connor Garvey, an up-and-coming singer/songwriter from New England. His songs personalize life's issues with humorous portrayals that spark deeper reflection. The messages of hope, growth, and love are underscored with honesty and grace through a universal message of optimism.

Jatoba CD Release Party, with Free Grass Union, Boots and Shorts
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Snow White
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive retelling of the classic children's story.

A New Brain
Syracuse University Drama Department
Wendy Knox, director

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

A talented young composer named Gordon Schwinn struggles with a creative block. For a brief diversion, he meets a friend for lunch and promptly passes out in his pasta. Rushed to the emergency room, he discovers he has a brain condition requiring surgery. Face-to-face with mortality, he worries he'll die before having the chance to write his best songs. And so—from his hospital bed, from his wheelchair, from the depths of an MRI, and even while comatose—Gordon writes them. They flow out of his imagination and his subconscious as snatches of reality magically intrude. Tony Award-winning writer/composer William Finn (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) draws on his personal experience to create a beautiful musical celebrating life, love, and the healing power of art.

A New Brain, Finn's autobiographical musical, opened off-Broadway at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre in 1998. It starred Malcolm Gets as Gordon and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth as his nurse, Nancy. The musical reunites Finn and James Lapine (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George); together, they make up the Tony Award-winning writing team of Falsettos (1992).

Read a Review!

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

A Year With Frog and Toad
Appleseed Productions
Colin Keating, director

Price: $20 regular; $17 students/seniors
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

A Year With Frog And Toad remains true to the spirit of the original stories as it follows two great friends, the cheerful and popular Frog and the rather grumpy Toad through four fun-filled seasons. Waking from hibernation in the spring, they proceed to plant gardens, swim, rake leaves and go sledding, learning life lessons along the way, including a most important one about friendship and rejoicing in the attributes that make each of us different and special. Book and lyrics by Willie Reale, music by Robert Reale, based on the books by Arnold Lobel.

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Into the Woods
CNY Playhouse
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $25 regular, $20 student/senior, $10 children under 10
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, the Wolf, Jack, a Beanstalk, and Reality.
An ambivalent Cinderella? A blood-thirsty Little Red Ridinghood? A Prince Charming with a roving eye? A Witch...who raps? They're all among the cockeyed characters in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's fractured fairy tale. When a Baker and his Wife learn they've been cursed with childlessness by the Witch next door, they embark on a quest for the special objects required to break the spell, swindling, lying to and stealing from Cinderella, Little Red, Rapunzel, and Jack (the one who climbed the beanstalk). Everyone's wish is granted at the end of Act One, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later, with disastrous results. What begins a lively irreverent fantasy in the style of "The Princess Bride" becomes a moving lesson about community responsibility and the stories we tell our children. The Syracuse New Times is producing this musical in collaboration with Not Another Theater Company. Music Direction by Dan Williams, choreography by Meghan Pearson.

Starring Patrica Elise Catchouny, Alex Cupelo, Kathy Egloff, Gina Ferrelli, Liam Fitzpatrick, Lanny Freshman, Kimberly Grader, Lucas Greer, Rebecca Hall, Greg J. Hipius,Kyle Johnson, Harlow Kisselstein, Meghan Pearson, Baily Pfohl, Marissa Pizzuto, Kasey Richards, Crystal Roupas, Heather J. Roach, Michael Spinoso, Danan Tsan, Wendy Viggiano, Carmen Vivano-Crafts, and Ceara Windhausen.

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The Graduate
Covey Theatre Company
Garrett Heater, director

BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Mrs. Robinson will seduce the coming-of-age Benjamin in this stage adaptation of the classic 1967 Mike Nichols film. Please be advised -- this show contains nudity.

Starring Moe Harrington and Rob Fonda.

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

A New Brain
Syracuse University Drama Department
Wendy Knox, director

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

A talented young composer named Gordon Schwinn struggles with a creative block. For a brief diversion, he meets a friend for lunch and promptly passes out in his pasta. Rushed to the emergency room, he discovers he has a brain condition requiring surgery. Face-to-face with mortality, he worries he'll die before having the chance to write his best songs. And so—from his hospital bed, from his wheelchair, from the depths of an MRI, and even while comatose—Gordon writes them. They flow out of his imagination and his subconscious as snatches of reality magically intrude. Tony Award-winning writer/composer William Finn (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) draws on his personal experience to create a beautiful musical celebrating life, love, and the healing power of art.

A New Brain, Finn's autobiographical musical, opened off-Broadway at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre in 1998. It starred Malcolm Gets as Gordon and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth as his nurse, Nancy. The musical reunites Finn and James Lapine (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George); together, they make up the Tony Award-winning writing team of Falsettos (1992).

Read a Review!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Senior Interior Design Student Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Senior interior design students in the Department of Design at Syracuse University will present an exhibition of thesis work, a culmination of year-long research and design projects by 29 graduating seniors. The show will include both two- and three-dimensional works. Faculty advisors for the show are interior design faculty members Zeke Leonard and Jen Hamilton.

For more information about the exhibition, contact at mleona02@syr.edu.

Faces & Figures
Szozda Gallery

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

A group show focusing solely on portraiture and figures. The six participating artists are Robert Glisson, Harry Freeman-Jones, Robert Niedzwiecki, Phil Parsons, Dona Flaherty, and Stephen Perrone.

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BFA Candidates' Exhibit
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

An exhibition of work by Syracuse University bachelor of fine arts degree candidates. For more information, contact XL Projects during gallery hours at 315-442-2542.

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Spring Concert
Onondaga Civic Symphony Orchestra
Erik Kibelsbeck, conductor
Featuring Brenna Gillette, violin; Edie Shillitoe, viola; Duane Small, horn

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Mozart Cosi fan tutte Overture
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat, K. 364 Allegro Maestoso
Mozart Horn Concerto No. 2, K. 417
Beethoven Symphony No. 8

Pops Goes the Choir
Arts at Assisi

Price: Free admission, donations accepted
St. Clare Auditorium
Lodi and Isabella Streets, Syracuse

A program of popular music and sing-alongs in the St. Clare Gardens Theater.

Junior Pro Art: An Evening of Music
Civic Morning Musicals

Price: Free
First Unitarian Universalist Society of Syracuse
109 Waring Rd. (at the corner of Nottingham Rd.), Dewitt

A 50-minute concert of classical, jazz, vocal and theatrical repertoire, performed by Central New York's finest young musicians and their mentors.

Proceeds benefit First Unitarian Universalist Society of Syracuse.

Stars of Tomorrow Cabaret
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation

Price: $10 adults, $5 students
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Jazz Central will be transformed into the Stars of Tomorrow Cabaret, with each singer from Saturday's vocal jazz workshop invited to perform with the CNY Jazz Trio (Rick Montalbano on piano, Darryl Pugh on bass, and Larry Luttinger on drums). Refreshments and finger foods will be served in the lobby.

Loren Barrigar and Mark Mazengarb, with Carol Bryant and Dick Ward

Price: Freewill offering
Elbridge Community Church
109 E. Main St., Elbridge

Guillaume DuFay
Schola Cantorum of Syracuse
Barry Torres, conductor

Price: $15 regular, $10 students/seniors
Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church
5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

Diverse selections from the work of Guillaume DuFay, "the father of Renaissance Music," including May songs, and motets, as well as his Missa L'homme arme.

The viol consort will perform before the concert at 6:30.

Into the Woods
CNY Playhouse
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $25 regular, $20 student/senior, $10 children under 10
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, the Wolf, Jack, a Beanstalk, and Reality.
An ambivalent Cinderella? A blood-thirsty Little Red Ridinghood? A Prince Charming with a roving eye? A Witch...who raps? They're all among the cockeyed characters in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's fractured fairy tale. When a Baker and his Wife learn they've been cursed with childlessness by the Witch next door, they embark on a quest for the special objects required to break the spell, swindling, lying to and stealing from Cinderella, Little Red, Rapunzel, and Jack (the one who climbed the beanstalk). Everyone's wish is granted at the end of Act One, but the consequences of their actions return to haunt them later, with disastrous results. What begins a lively irreverent fantasy in the style of "The Princess Bride" becomes a moving lesson about community responsibility and the stories we tell our children. The Syracuse New Times is producing this musical in collaboration with Not Another Theater Company. Music Direction by Dan Williams, choreography by Meghan Pearson.

Starring Patrica Elise Catchouny, Alex Cupelo, Kathy Egloff, Gina Ferrelli, Liam Fitzpatrick, Lanny Freshman, Kimberly Grader, Lucas Greer, Rebecca Hall, Greg J. Hipius,Kyle Johnson, Harlow Kisselstein, Meghan Pearson, Baily Pfohl, Marissa Pizzuto, Kasey Richards, Crystal Roupas, Heather J. Roach, Michael Spinoso, Danan Tsan, Wendy Viggiano, Carmen Vivano-Crafts, and Ceara Windhausen.

Read a Review!

The Graduate
Covey Theatre Company
Garrett Heater, director

BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Mrs. Robinson will seduce the coming-of-age Benjamin in this stage adaptation of the classic 1967 Mike Nichols film. Please be advised -- this show contains nudity.

Starring Moe Harrington and Rob Fonda.

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Your Words Today /Tus palabras de hoy
Point of Contact Gallery

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

The Point of Contact Gallery presents the first exhibition by El Punto, a new contemporary arts program for young artists, created by Point of Contact and facilitated to local youths in collaboration with the Spanish Action League (La Liga) and La Casita Cultural Center.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Belle of the Nineties (1934)
Syracuse Cinephile Society

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

Director: Leo McCarey. Cast: Mae West, Roger Pryor, Johnny Mack Brown, John Miljan, Katherine DeMille, Warren Hymer, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. Set in the Gay 90s, Mae plays Ruby Carter, a singer who relocates to New Orleans and becomes involved with prizefighters, crooked saloon owners, jewel thieves, romantic admirers and other assorted characters. Mae wrote the lively script, and she also joins Ellington's orchestra for several great songs, including "My Old Flame," "St. Louis Woman" and "Memphis Blues."

Plus special added attraction: One of our popular "Community Sing" sing-a-long shorts. This one invites the audience (and that means YOU) to join in for familiar tunes of The Gay 90s.

Bob Dylan's 70th Birthday Bash

Price: $29
Palace Theater
2384 James St., Syracuse

Former Dylan bandleader Rob Stoner and his band, Professor Louie and the Crowmatix, George Rossi, Loren Barrigar, Mark Nanni, Donna Colton, Todd Hobin, Leo Crandall, Colin Aberdeen, Mark Hoffman, and poet Georgia Popoff. Gary Frenay and the FabCats is the house band.

For tickets, visit www.brownpapertickets.com or phone 800-838-3006.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Seneca String Quartet
Temple Society of Concord

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

Perceptions
ArtsEmerging at Syracuse Stage

Price: Free
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

There works written and performed by students from Nottingham High School and Fowler High School were created as part of a year-long ArtsEmerging program called “Perceptions,” which culminated in the creation of works that represent urban school communities in relation to Stage’s fall 2010 production of No Child.

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Your Words Today /Tus palabras de hoy
Point of Contact Gallery

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

The Point of Contact Gallery presents the first exhibition by El Punto, a new contemporary arts program for young artists, created by Point of Contact and facilitated to local youths in collaboration with the Spanish Action League (La Liga) and La Casita Cultural Center.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Faces & Figures
Szozda Gallery

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

A group show focusing solely on portraiture and figures. The six participating artists are Robert Glisson, Harry Freeman-Jones, Robert Niedzwiecki, Phil Parsons, Dona Flaherty, and Stephen Perrone.

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

Read a review!

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Cindy Josbena, piano; Katarina Hege, violin; Kathleen Magee Querec, soprano
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Schubert Violin Sonatina in D, D. 384<\em>
Respighi Notturno for Piano
Handel Nine German Arias selections

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

The Clean House
Syracuse Stage
Michael Barakiva, director

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

Matilde (pronounced Ma-chil-gee) has a problem: she's a cleaning lady who doesn’t like to clean. She'd rather think up the perfect joke. Now that her parents (once the funniest people in Brazil) are dead—her mother died laughing—she is the funniest person in her family. Mathilde works for a doctor named Lane, who has a problem: Lane's husband Charles, a surgeon, has found his soul mate, and it's not Lane. It's Ana, a vibrant Argentinean woman, who is dying, and that is Charles's problem. Sarah Ruhl is an exceptional playwright and MacArthur Foundation Fellow whose work has garnered Pulitzer nominations and justified recognition from Broadway to theatres across the country. The Clean House is one of her best, a compassionate, theatrically bold, and emotionally rich comedy. The perfect joke is worth the wait.

The Clean House won the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to the best English-language play written by a woman, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. At the end of 2006, Entertainment Weekly magazine named the New York production one of the top ten theatrical attractions of the year.

Read a Review!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Faces & Figures
Szozda Gallery

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

A group show focusing solely on portraiture and figures. The six participating artists are Robert Glisson, Harry Freeman-Jones, Robert Niedzwiecki, Phil Parsons, Dona Flaherty, and Stephen Perrone.

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

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TONY: 2012 Kick-off Celebration
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Everson Museum of Art along with all The Other New York: 2012 partners invite the public to a celebration and kick-off event for a groundbreaking community-wide project. Enjoy live musical entertainment by Lee Whitted and light refreshments and cash bar by Phoebe's. 

The Other New York: 2012 is a community-wide, multi-venue biennial exhibition that is the result of a major collaboration among 12 art organizations in Syracuse. This ambitious project, which will open in the fall of 2012, aims to highlight the rich talent of artists across Upstate New York, with a special focus on Central New York and the surrounding counties. The project will offer diverse art venues and outdoor public spaces for contemporary creative expression on a scale not before seen in Syracuse. In addition, TONY: 2012 demonstrates the power of artistic partnerships to boost public awareness of the arts by presenting opportunities for the community to connect with exhibitions, programs, and events offered simultaneously throughout the city. Call for entries available May 1, 2011 at www.everson.org. 

TONY: 2012 is organized by Everson Museum of Art in collaboration with ArtRage-The Norton Putter Gallery, Community Folk Art Center, Erie Canal Museum, Light Work, Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact, Red House Arts Center, Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, SUArt Galleries, Urban Video Project, The Warehouse Gallery, and The City of Syracuse.

Your Words Today /Tus palabras de hoy
Point of Contact Gallery

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

The Point of Contact Gallery presents the first exhibition by El Punto, a new contemporary arts program for young artists, created by Point of Contact and facilitated to local youths in collaboration with the Spanish Action League (La Liga) and La Casita Cultural Center.