Sunday, November 15, 2009

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

Art Show and Sale
St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center

Wellington House
7262 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville

Featuring original paintings by local artists Fred Fisher and Wendy Harris, and select works by other fine artists. Light hors d'oeuvres will be served.

A percentage of all proceeds will benefit St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center Foundation.

Films: Impressionism in Art & Music and The Impressionist Surface: Perceptions in Paint
Everson Museum of Art

Price: Free with same-day exhibition admission
Hosmer Auditorium, Everson Museum
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Impressionism in Art & Music
Moving away from the rigidity of the neoclassical period, European art entered a new era that embraced freedom and spontaneity. This program provides a detailed look at Impressionist developments in painting and music during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Taking into account the advent of photography and the influence of Asian pictorial conventions, the film acquaints viewers with major Impressionist goals: capturing a specific moment, de-emphasizing composition, and employing light and color to their fullest effects. Timbre, fragmentation, and intricate arpeggios are among the musical concepts studied. Works by Monet, Degas, Pissaro, and Post-Impressionist artists are compared with the accomplishments of Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Respighi, and others. (36 minutes)

The Impressionist Surface: Perceptions in Paint
When painting began to concern itself more with the perception of reality than verisimilitude, Impressionism was born. This program focuses on some of the innovative techniques—such as flatness, color patches, and simultaneous contrast—that Impressionist painters used to create their dramatic, often psychological effects. These methods are highlighted in Monet's Bathing at La Grenouillere, Pissaro's Festival at l'Hermitage and The Avenue in Sydenham, and Cezanne's The Grounds of the Chateau Noir. Produced by the Open University. (25 minutes)

Sunday Musicale: John Rohde Jazz Trio
Fayetteville Free Library

Price: Free
Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Fall Concert
Onondaga Civic Symphony Orchestra
Erik Kibelsbeck, conductor
Featuring Ken Grant, basset clarinet; Lindsey Burdick, soprano

Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Schubert (arr. Mallia) Shepherd on the Rock
Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Beethoven Symphony No. 4

Martin Jean, organ
Malmgren Concert Series

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Organist Martin Jean will perform works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Julius Reubke, Maurice Duruflé and William Bolcom. Jean is Professor of Organ at the Yale School of Music and Director of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. In 1986, he won first prize in the international Grand Prix Chatres and in 1992 he won first prize at the American Guild of Organists National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance. He has performed throughout the United States and Europe. In 2001, he presented a cycle of the complete organ works of Bach at Yale, and his compact discs of The Seven Last Words of Christ by Charles Tournemire and the complete six symphonies of Louis Vierne have been released by Loft Recordings.

Inaugural Organ Recital Concert
Featuring Glenn Armstrong, Stephen Block, and William Hanley

Price: Freewill offering
Assumption Church
812 N. Salina St., Syracuse

Works by Cesar Frank, Gigout, Couperin, Dan Miller, Bach and others.

The Bald Soprano and The Chairs
Syracuse University Drama Department
Rodney Hudson, director

Price: $18 regular, $16 students/seniors
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

These master works from theatre of absurd soar to heights of the ridiculous with word-twisting, innovative comedy. Eugene Ionesco is a giant of 20th century playwriting who took all the conventions of the stage and turned them upside down to offer stunning perspectives on theatre and the world it reflects. With a strong sense of the outrageous, Ionesco reminds us that, "The human drama is as absurd as it is painful."

Both The Bald Soprano and The Chairs are considered standards in what has been coined as Theatre of the Absurd. First popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Absurdism reflects a philosophy presented by Albert Camus—that the human condition is basically meaningless, and that explaining the world in a logical manner is not possible. In absurdist plays, there is a comical take on serious topics—death, alienation, and evil—in an effort to understand them better.

The Bald Soprano portrays an evening visit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Martin. With the Smiths' maid Mary and her lover, the fire chief, the night of nonsensical stories and poems carries the characters right back to the beginning.

The Bald Soprano was Eugene Ionesco's first play, performed in 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. At the time, Ionesco had been learning to speak English by copying sentences from an English primer. As he copied the simple phrases over and over again, the absurdity of language struck him. He translated this experience into The Bald Soprano, which satirizes the deadliness and idiocy of the daily life of a bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities. The Bald Soprano had a 1987 production in New York City, a production with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2007, and an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2009 with the One Year Lease theatre ensemble.

In The Chairs, the Old Man and Old Woman are setting up chairs in anticipation of the arrival of a series of guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery of the meaning of life. Once the couple has convinced themselves that a crowd is assembled (when in fact there are only empty chairs) the evening progresses to a frantic, menacing climax. The Chairs was first produced in 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry. After receiving a 1997 London production, The Chairs returned to Broadway in 1998 and garnered five Tony nominations.

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White Christmas
The Talent Company
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $30 regular, $25 seniors/students, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

The tale of a couple of song-and-dance men who meet up with a sister act to make sparks fly is based on the beloved 1954 movie musical that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The Broadway hit is full of dancing, romance, laughter, and some of the greatest songs ever written, including Happy Holiday, Sisters, I Love a Piano, Blue Skies, How Deep is the Ocean, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep), and the unforgettable title song, White Christmas.

White Christmas stars Bob Brown as Bob Wallace and Gary Troy as Phil Davis, the song-and-dance men, and Brandi Ozark Weston as Judy Haynes and Colleen Wager as Betty Haynes, the "sister act." The show also features Bill Coughlin as General Henry Waverly and Christine Lightcap as Martha Watson, with Julia Goodman as Susan Waverly, Lou Leonardo as Ralph Sheldrake and Gennaro Parlato as Ezekiel Foster. Rounding out the cast are Jim Baxter, Molly Brown, Camille Chace, Zachary Chase, Cruz Gonzalez, Kimberly Grader, Bobby Hall, Kaleigh Pfohl, Eddie Powers, Korrie Strodel, Josh Taylor, and Rashad Williams.

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Monday, November 16, 2009

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

Destry Rides Again (1939)
Syracuse Cinephile Society

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

Top-shelf Western-comedy with James Stewart as a new sheriff who is determined to tame a rowdy town without using violence. The excellent cast in this beloved classic also includes Marlene Dietrich, Brian Donlevy, Charles Winninger, Una Merkel, Mischa Auer. Directed by George Marshall.

Fall Concert
Onondaga Civic Symphony Orchestra
Erik Kibelsbeck, conductor
Featuring Nina Elhassan, clarinet; Lindsey Burdick, soprano

Tully Junior-Senior High School
Elm St., Tully

Schubert (arr. Mallia) Shepherd on the Rock
Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Beethoven Symphony No. 4

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

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Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

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

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Robin Williams

Price: $89.50, $79.50, $59.50
Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

This American Life
University Lectures
Featuring Ira Glass

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Ira Glass's This American Life premiered on Chicago's public radio station WBEZ in late 1995 and is now heard on more than 500 public radio stations each week by more than 1.7 million listeners. Glass began his career as an intern at National Public Radio's network headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1978, at age 19. Over the years, he worked on nearly every NPR network news program and held virtually every production job. Under Glass's editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including the Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards, as well as the Edward R. Murrow and the Overseas Press Club awards. In 2001, Time magazine named Glass "Best Radio Host in America." The show has inspired a comic book, three greatest-hits compilations, a paint-by-numbers set, a "radio decoder" toy, and a DVD, which was created with cartoonist Chris Ware. In March 2007, the television adaptation of This American Life premiered on Showtime to great critical acclaim and in 2008 won two Emmy awards.

Reduced-rate parking for the event is available in the Irving Avenue parking garage.

A Living Legend: Harry Belafonte
Syracuse University Black Communications Society

Price: $4
Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Harry Belafonte, television's first black producer, will address issues on the lack of accurate representation of diverse people in the media. He will include in his speech the methods he used from the fame garnered from his music and theater success to help propel his role as an activist and humanitarian. Belafonte is best known for singing "The Banana Boat Song" and his signature lyric "Day-O." His career took off after his role in the film Carmen Jones. Belafonte has won a Tony, Emmy, and Grammys. He has donned many caps in and outside the entertainment industry, but he is also prominent for his dedication to the ongoing struggle to improve the lives of people of African descent throughout the world.

It was his fame that allowed Belafonte to create projects that focused on breaking racial barriers and creating new opportunities for African Americans in the entertainment industry. Belafonte, who also marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., was appointed the first cultural advisor to the Peace Corps by late President John F. Kennedy. Furthermore, he was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador on March 4, 1987. The Harlem-born social activist was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994, one of the highest honors given by the President Clinton for his years of contributions to the arts. In 2000, Belafonte used his honorarium to launch the Harry and Julie Belafonte Fund for HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, which is administered by the US Fund for UNICEF.

Tickets are available at the Schine Box Office.

Piano at the Panasci: Boccaccio Trio
LeMoyne College

Panasci Family Chapel
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Violinist Jeremy Mastrangelo and cellist David LeDoux join pianist Fred Karpoff for Beethoven's "Archduke" and the Andante from Schubert's E-flat Trio, heard in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 masterpiece Barry Lyndon.

Haydn Trio Eisenstadt
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, one of Europe's foremost chamber ensembles, is marking the bicentennial of Haydn's death with a special appearance at Syracuse University. The commemorative concert, part of "Haydn Year 2009," consists of two Haydn piano trios: Nos. 27 and 29 in C and E-flat major, respectively; Schubert's Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 100; and Bongani Ndodana-Breen's Two Nguni Dances, a South African piece dedicated to the memory of Haydn.

For more information, phone 315-443-5823.

SU Clarinet Choir
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

For more information, phone 315-443-2191.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

Read a review!

Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

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

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Hard Hats Required
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An interactive installation show by eight VPA graduate students in fibers, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, and transmedia. For more information, contact ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Don't Feed the Actors
Don't Feed the Actors

Price: $15 adults, $13 students/seniors; $12 in advance
Palace Theater
2384 James St., Syracuse

Audience-interactive improv comedy with some of Syracuse's finest comedic actors.

Julianna Sabol, soprano; Kevin Moore, piano
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Sabol and Moore will present a program exploring musical connections, featuring the works of American composers Charles T. Griffes and Edward MacDowell and French composers Albert Roussel and Claude Debussy.

Sabol is associate professor of voice and co-chair of the voice department in the Setnor School. She has concertized in Canada, the United States and Poland; as soloist with orchestras; and as a recitalist and on the opera stage. She has also won prestigious competitions, including of the National Opera Association, the Jerome Hill Memorial Award in the Metropolitan Opera auditions and the National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Auditions, and was vocal winner in the Mu Phi Epsilon International Competition.

Moore is an adjunct faculty member in the music industry program and is also on the piano faculty at Onondaga Community College. He has had performances at Carnegie Hall and many world premieres for the Syracuse Society for New Music.

SU Brass Choir
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

For more information, phone 315-443-2191.

Dana Spiotta, fiction
Raymond Carver Reading Series

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

Spiotta is author of Eat the Document (Scribner, 2006), which was a National Book Award finalist, winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Foundation Award, and a New York Times Notable Book, and Lightning Field (Scribner, 2001), named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West. Eat the Document also earned book-of-the-year awards from Artforum, salon.com, The Oregonian and Time Out New York. The recipient of multiple fellowships, including a Guggenheim, Spiotta serves on SU's creative writing faculty.

The reading will be preceded by a question and answer session from 3:45-4:30.

The Bald Soprano and The Chairs
Syracuse University Drama Department
Rodney Hudson, director

Price: $18 regular, $16 students/seniors
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

These master works from theatre of absurd soar to heights of the ridiculous with word-twisting, innovative comedy. Eugene Ionesco is a giant of 20th century playwriting who took all the conventions of the stage and turned them upside down to offer stunning perspectives on theatre and the world it reflects. With a strong sense of the outrageous, Ionesco reminds us that, "The human drama is as absurd as it is painful."

Both The Bald Soprano and The Chairs are considered standards in what has been coined as Theatre of the Absurd. First popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Absurdism reflects a philosophy presented by Albert Camus—that the human condition is basically meaningless, and that explaining the world in a logical manner is not possible. In absurdist plays, there is a comical take on serious topics—death, alienation, and evil—in an effort to understand them better.

The Bald Soprano portrays an evening visit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Martin. With the Smiths' maid Mary and her lover, the fire chief, the night of nonsensical stories and poems carries the characters right back to the beginning.

The Bald Soprano was Eugene Ionesco's first play, performed in 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. At the time, Ionesco had been learning to speak English by copying sentences from an English primer. As he copied the simple phrases over and over again, the absurdity of language struck him. He translated this experience into The Bald Soprano, which satirizes the deadliness and idiocy of the daily life of a bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities. The Bald Soprano had a 1987 production in New York City, a production with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2007, and an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2009 with the One Year Lease theatre ensemble.

In The Chairs, the Old Man and Old Woman are setting up chairs in anticipation of the arrival of a series of guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery of the meaning of life. Once the couple has convinced themselves that a crowd is assembled (when in fact there are only empty chairs) the evening progresses to a frantic, menacing climax. The Chairs was first produced in 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry. After receiving a 1997 London production, The Chairs returned to Broadway in 1998 and garnered five Tony nominations.

Read a review!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Opening: The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

An opening reception will be held 5:00-8:00 pm.

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Viewpoints II 16" x 20": 2nd Collaborative Collection of the Syracuse Photographers Association
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

Artists in attendance 5:00-8:00 for Th3.

The Syracuse Photography Association proudly presents a collection of photographic images at their 2nd Annual collaborative gallery exhibit.

Creatively capturing images from the commonplace to the unexpected, photographers catch the light and special moments in time. This collection of images, all 16" x 20", will serve to captivate your eye and draw you in closer to view a new world in each color or black and white photo.

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

Read a review!

Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

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

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Wild Card Exhibition: Drawing in Air
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

An installation by Andy Schuster. Central to his work, Schuster says, is drawing. "I draw on paper, on ceramic surfaces using fire and glaze or in space with steel." The exhibit at the Delavan will consist of drawings and planning models for the concurrent installation at Lipe Art Park, along with recent ceramic works. Schuster says, "The drawings, visualizations of the stick sculptures at Lipe, are executed on white ground suggesting snow-covered landscapes, and indicating how the finished installation evolves with seasonal environmental changes throughout the year." Of his ceramic pieces, Schuster says, "The ceramic work is drawn on clay using glaze and controlled flame patterns produced by a high temperature wood fired kiln, producing loose geometric interventions on the clay's surface."

Elements
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paintings by Lynette Blake, ceramics by Amy Haven, and paintings by James Van Hoven

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Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Hard Hats Required
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An interactive installation show by eight VPA graduate students in fibers, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, and transmedia. For more information, contact ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

Opening: Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Opening reception will be held from 5:00-8:00 as part of Th3.
At 6:00 pm, Douglas Kinney Frost (music director, Syracuse Opera) and Zach Martin (singer, Syracuse Opera) will perform selections by J.S. Bach: Mein gläubiges Herze, frohlocke, BWV 68 and Bist du bei mir.

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

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The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Works of Fred Fisher
Brian's Art Gallery

Brian's Art Gallery
201 Wolf St. (former Keybank building), Syracuse

Exhibit of oil paintings by the late Fred Fisher who studied the old world masters and reinterpreted their techniques and style.

Sanarás mañana: An exhibit of works by Aimee Lee
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artist Statement:

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and book arts media, interested in personal storytelling. My work has covered topics of human intimacy, internal defenses, and the isolating properties of language. Because my work thrives in moments of vulnerability, its manifestations occur subtly and often go unnoticed: a survival kit buried in the ground, a sound recording of whistles tied to a football goalpost, a book whose prints darken and fade to mimic the life cycle of a bruise. I relate to what falls between the cracks, and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the outside world and how humans participate in it.

Erie Canal Exhibits
Erie Canal Museum

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

A treasure of artifacts, maps, images, interpretive and interactive displays, and the Frank B. Thomson Line Boat, a full size replica canal boat with crew quarters, cargo and passenger areas you can explore.

Special Event
Eureka Crafts

Eureka Crafts
210 Walton St., Syracuse

Eureka is unveiling a tree of Handmade Holiday Ornaments by Eureka Staff. A percentage of sales storewide will be donated to the Interreligious Food Consortium of Syracuse. Refreshments.

Opening: Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Young Artist Exhibit
Museum of Young Art

Museum of Young Art
110 W. Fayette St., One Lincoln Center, Syracuse

An exhibit of the birds of CNY as seen by Wetzel Road elementary school 4th, 5th, and 6th graders.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Works by Marianne Smith Dalton
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Artist talk at 7:00 PM

Through a combination of techniques utilizing traditional oil, acrylic, spray paint and marker, stories unfold from deep within my own consciousness, each relating to a memory, image or event that haunts and intrigues me. - Marianne Smith Dalton

God, the Universe and Everything Else
Spark Contemporary Art Space

Spark Contemporary Art Space
1005 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

Video installation by Katie Micak. Micak, from Toronto, shows her latest video installations in a three-room show dealing with a the body's relationship to technology, and the transcendental power of Television and the Internet.

Dramaturgical Display
Syracuse Stage

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

A dramaturgical display about Louisa Mae Alcott's uncle, Samuel May, who was a local preacher
and abolitionist. Includes artifacts and documents of the period, in collaboration with Onondaga Historical Association. Display presented in conjunction with Little Women, which runs Nov. 24 - Dec. 27.

Onondaga Lake exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

An exhibition featuring over two dozen images drawn primarily from the Onondaga Historical Association collection exploring the evolution of Onondaga Lake over the last 500 years.

Opening: Storytelling: An Experiment In Visual Narrative -- Works by Pedro Roth
Point of Contact Gallery

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

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, following two superbly triumphant solo exhibitions at the Sivori Museum and at the prestigious Recoleta Center this year, Pedro Roth comes to The Point of Contact Gallery to present "Storytelling...an experiment in visual narrative.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he presented in Argentina, "Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets, and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again..." writes the show's curator, Pedro Cuperman.

Improv Battle Royale
Satan's Lemonade, The Renegades, and The Saltine Warriors

Price: $8
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Three improv troupes face off -- Satan's Lemonade, The Renegades, and The Saltine Warriors will each perform for a half hour and the audience will choose the victor at the end. If time permits, there will be an improv jam at the end where all three troupes are on stage at the same time making scenes. For reservations or more information, phone 315-380-7430.

A Conversation: Posing Beauty
Light Work Gallery
Featuring Deborah Willis and Carrie Mae Weems

Watson Theater, Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave. (Syracuse University), Syracuse

Deborah Willis is a fine-arts photographer, leading historian of African-American photography, and curator of African-American culture. Carrie Mae Wems is an internationally-renowned photographer, folklorist, and storyteller.

South China
Spark Contemporary Art Space

Price: $8
Second Story Books and Cafe
550 Westcott Street, 2nd floor, Syracuse

Jim and Jerusha, the lovely couple that form South China, will be performing along with Brown Bird, a full 5-piece ensemble with a new record, Devil Dancing. Instruments include violin, cello, accordion, and banjo.

Poetry Reading
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

In anticipation of ArtRage Gallery's "The Picture Man: The Photographs of Milton Rogovin," teachers from area schools incorporated the photography of Rogovin into their classrooms. Through the use of poetry, students express the humility, sorrow and dignity found in Rogovin's portrait photography. Poems by students from Nottingham High School in Syracuse and Dillon Middle School in Phoenix are now on exhibit and will be read by the authors.

Bad Kitty: A Holiday Whodunnit
Acme Mystery Company

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

Everyone who is anyone in the high-stakes, competitive world of professional cat showing is here tonight for the annual Catalina Cat Club holiday dinner and awards banquet. This once tiny event has grown from a friendly competition into an international frenzy of flying fur and flashing claws: and that's just the owners (especially Marielle Ann DeVozz). Founder and host, Cy Ameze, invites you to come and raise a glass to this year's winner of the prestigious, jewel-encrusted Kitty Cup. That is, if you're still alive by the end of the evening.

The Bald Soprano and The Chairs
Syracuse University Drama Department
Rodney Hudson, director

Price: $18 regular, $16 students/seniors
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

These master works from theatre of absurd soar to heights of the ridiculous with word-twisting, innovative comedy. Eugene Ionesco is a giant of 20th century playwriting who took all the conventions of the stage and turned them upside down to offer stunning perspectives on theatre and the world it reflects. With a strong sense of the outrageous, Ionesco reminds us that, "The human drama is as absurd as it is painful."

Both The Bald Soprano and The Chairs are considered standards in what has been coined as Theatre of the Absurd. First popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Absurdism reflects a philosophy presented by Albert Camus—that the human condition is basically meaningless, and that explaining the world in a logical manner is not possible. In absurdist plays, there is a comical take on serious topics—death, alienation, and evil—in an effort to understand them better.

The Bald Soprano portrays an evening visit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Martin. With the Smiths' maid Mary and her lover, the fire chief, the night of nonsensical stories and poems carries the characters right back to the beginning.

The Bald Soprano was Eugene Ionesco's first play, performed in 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. At the time, Ionesco had been learning to speak English by copying sentences from an English primer. As he copied the simple phrases over and over again, the absurdity of language struck him. He translated this experience into The Bald Soprano, which satirizes the deadliness and idiocy of the daily life of a bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities. The Bald Soprano had a 1987 production in New York City, a production with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2007, and an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2009 with the One Year Lease theatre ensemble.

In The Chairs, the Old Man and Old Woman are setting up chairs in anticipation of the arrival of a series of guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery of the meaning of life. Once the couple has convinced themselves that a crowd is assembled (when in fact there are only empty chairs) the evening progresses to a frantic, menacing climax. The Chairs was first produced in 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry. After receiving a 1997 London production, The Chairs returned to Broadway in 1998 and garnered five Tony nominations.

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Friday, November 20, 2009

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Sanarás mañana: An exhibit of works by Aimee Lee
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artist Statement:

I am an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, and book arts media, interested in personal storytelling. My work has covered topics of human intimacy, internal defenses, and the isolating properties of language. Because my work thrives in moments of vulnerability, its manifestations occur subtly and often go unnoticed: a survival kit buried in the ground, a sound recording of whistles tied to a football goalpost, a book whose prints darken and fade to mimic the life cycle of a bruise. I relate to what falls between the cracks, and seek quiet sanctuaries to process the outside world and how humans participate in it.

Storytelling: An Experiment In Visual Narrative -- Works by Pedro Roth
Point of Contact Gallery

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

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, following two superbly triumphant solo exhibitions at the Sivori Museum and at the prestigious Recoleta Center this year, Pedro Roth comes to The Point of Contact Gallery to present "Storytelling...an experiment in visual narrative.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he presented in Argentina, "Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets, and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again..." writes the show's curator, Pedro Cuperman.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Works by Marianne Smith Dalton
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Through a combination of techniques utilizing traditional oil, acrylic, spray paint and marker, stories unfold from deep within my own consciousness, each relating to a memory, image or event that haunts and intrigues me. - Marianne Smith Dalton

The Power of Four
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

The Power of Four features recent work by Judith Benedict, Lindsey Guile, Mary Pierce, and Carla Senecal. From abstract to representational, conceptual to narrative, traditional to emerging, this group of artist produces something for everyone.

Howard Bond Retrospective
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Twenty-two pieces of Bond's work was donated to the SU's Bird Library by alumnus Carl Armani. The exhibition, which includes these works, is a retrospective of 30 years of Bond's creative work highlighting the photographer's mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture, and landscape.

Presented in conjunction with the 2009 Syracuse Symposium, "Light".

Viewpoints II 16" x 20": 2nd Collaborative Collection of the Syracuse Photographers Association
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

There will be an opening reception 6:008:00 PM.

The Syracuse Photography Association proudly presents a collection of photographic images at their 2nd Annual collaborative gallery exhibit.

Creatively capturing images from the commonplace to the unexpected, photographers catch the light and special moments in time. This collection of images, all 16" x 20", will serve to captivate your eye and draw you in closer to view a new world in each color or black and white photo.

Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

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Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

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

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

Elements
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paintings by Lynette Blake, ceramics by Amy Haven, and paintings by James Van Hoven

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Wild Card Exhibition: Drawing in Air
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

An installation by Andy Schuster. Central to his work, Schuster says, is drawing. "I draw on paper, on ceramic surfaces using fire and glaze or in space with steel." The exhibit at the Delavan will consist of drawings and planning models for the concurrent installation at Lipe Art Park, along with recent ceramic works. Schuster says, "The drawings, visualizations of the stick sculptures at Lipe, are executed on white ground suggesting snow-covered landscapes, and indicating how the finished installation evolves with seasonal environmental changes throughout the year." Of his ceramic pieces, Schuster says, "The ceramic work is drawn on clay using glaze and controlled flame patterns produced by a high temperature wood fired kiln, producing loose geometric interventions on the clay's surface."

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Hard Hats Required
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An interactive installation show by eight VPA graduate students in fibers, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, and transmedia. For more information, contact ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

Read a review!

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

The Renegades Improv
Redhouse

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

The Renegades are a comedy troupe based out of Syracuse, NY. The troupe incorporates sketches, digital shorts, and improv games into the performance to produce a show that's equal parts Saturday Night Live, Whose Line is it Anyways?, and Monty Python.

Performing will be Deidre Dyer, Brandon Dyer, Tim Hogarth, Jeff White, Aaron Geiskopf, and Ron Sweet.

Crises
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring Peter Eisenman

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Auditorium
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Peter Eisenman is an internationally recognized architect and educator. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University, a Master of Science in architecture from Columbia University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University (U.K). He was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Syracuse University in 2006.

Everson Uncorked!
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring John Stetch, jazz piano

Price: Free (does not include admission to the "Turner to Cezanne" exhibit)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

We're pleased to announce a hip new venue—our very own Everson Museum! "Everson Uncorked" will follow the trend set this summer with our Jazz & Wine Fest. Great wines and great jazz go together, so to check out this new scene.

Interstellar Funkateers
ArtRage Gallery

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

It's funk...it's bee bop...it's jazz...but mostly it's just great music and fun! If you missed the last gig, you really missed a great time. These kids are super charged musicians who will have you rockin' in no time! Come experience the Funkateers @ ArtRage.

Brooks Williams
Folkus Project

Price: $12
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Brooks Williams is a blues-singing, fingerpicking, bottleneck slide-playing guitarist who rocks like the blues and swings like jazz. Stylistically rich, harmonically sophisticated and breathtakingly beautiful, Williams' music defies categorization. With influences as diverse as John Fahey, Pat Metheny, Michael Bloomfield and Joseph Spence, it is pleasantly difficult to pin him down. His musical vision spans continents and genres, where funky chords, walking bass lines, and fiery riffs abound. His concerts are legendary: a constantly evolving mix of blues, originals, ballads and instrumentals, presented in a fresh and personable way. Williams regularly brings audiences to their feet with his high-energy sound of rootsy originals, bluesy classics, and fiery fingerpicking.

Classics Series: Impressionist Masters
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Syracuse University Oratorio Society
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Lianne Coble, soprano; Tim LeFebvre, baritone

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

Faure Requiem
Debussy Nocturnes
Ravel Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2

Presented in Partnership with the Everson Museum of Art

Opus New Music Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

For more information, phone 315-443-2191.

Barbara Crooker and Margaret Lloyd, poets
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Barbara Crooker is the author of 10 chapbooks and two full-length books of poems: Radiance, winner of the 2005 Word Press First Book competition, and Line Dance (Word Press, 2008). Her many awards include three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, and a prize from the NEA.

Margaret Lloyd was born in England of Welsh parents and grew up in Central New York. Alice James Books published her first book of poems, This Particular Earthly Scene. Her many awards include a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her most recent collection of poetry is A Moment in the Field: Voices from Arthurian Legend (Plinth Books).

Heroes & Villains
David Hajdu, author; Karen Oberlin, jazz vocals

Price: Free
Barnes & Noble
3454 Erie Blvd. E., Dewitt

David Hajdu will read from his new book Heroes & Villains, and his wife, Syracuse native and jazz artist Karen Oberlin, will sing songs that reflect the subjects in the book, with Hajdu providing guitar accompaniment.

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research and General of Hot Desire
Black Box Players

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

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research is based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks' best-selling collection of case histories about the neurologically impaired. The play looks inside a series of doctor/patient fables including autism, Tourette's, and the very famous visual agnosis case, where a man pulled on his wife's head thinking it was his hat. The Man Who explores the unknown world of the brain and tries to understand its complicated workings. The play is a journey in which each new discovery is both fascinating and deeply moving. By Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, directed by Lindsey Van Horn.

General of Hot Desire, by John Guare, is a one-act play inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 153 and 154. Nine young people take on the task of interpreting the sonnet and making a play from it. Each character has a different point of view of what the right answer is. But their goals do not end at solving the sonnets but finding the deeper meaning of love and God. Enjoy a play that travels through stories from the Bible, Torah, Qur'an, and modern times where everyone is going in different directions but searching inherently for the same thing. Directed by Kristin Kelly.

The Bald Soprano and The Chairs
Syracuse University Drama Department
Rodney Hudson, director

Price: $18 regular, $16 students/seniors
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

These master works from theatre of absurd soar to heights of the ridiculous with word-twisting, innovative comedy. Eugene Ionesco is a giant of 20th century playwriting who took all the conventions of the stage and turned them upside down to offer stunning perspectives on theatre and the world it reflects. With a strong sense of the outrageous, Ionesco reminds us that, "The human drama is as absurd as it is painful."

Both The Bald Soprano and The Chairs are considered standards in what has been coined as Theatre of the Absurd. First popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Absurdism reflects a philosophy presented by Albert Camus—that the human condition is basically meaningless, and that explaining the world in a logical manner is not possible. In absurdist plays, there is a comical take on serious topics—death, alienation, and evil—in an effort to understand them better.

The Bald Soprano portrays an evening visit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Martin. With the Smiths' maid Mary and her lover, the fire chief, the night of nonsensical stories and poems carries the characters right back to the beginning.

The Bald Soprano was Eugene Ionesco's first play, performed in 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. At the time, Ionesco had been learning to speak English by copying sentences from an English primer. As he copied the simple phrases over and over again, the absurdity of language struck him. He translated this experience into The Bald Soprano, which satirizes the deadliness and idiocy of the daily life of a bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities. The Bald Soprano had a 1987 production in New York City, a production with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2007, and an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2009 with the One Year Lease theatre ensemble.

In The Chairs, the Old Man and Old Woman are setting up chairs in anticipation of the arrival of a series of guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery of the meaning of life. Once the couple has convinced themselves that a crowd is assembled (when in fact there are only empty chairs) the evening progresses to a frantic, menacing climax. The Chairs was first produced in 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry. After receiving a 1997 London production, The Chairs returned to Broadway in 1998 and garnered five Tony nominations.

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White Christmas
The Talent Company
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $30 regular, $25 seniors/students, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

The tale of a couple of song-and-dance men who meet up with a sister act to make sparks fly is based on the beloved 1954 movie musical that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The Broadway hit is full of dancing, romance, laughter, and some of the greatest songs ever written, including Happy Holiday, Sisters, I Love a Piano, Blue Skies, How Deep is the Ocean, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep), and the unforgettable title song, White Christmas.

White Christmas stars Bob Brown as Bob Wallace and Gary Troy as Phil Davis, the song-and-dance men, and Brandi Ozark Weston as Judy Haynes and Colleen Wager as Betty Haynes, the "sister act." The show also features Bill Coughlin as General Henry Waverly and Christine Lightcap as Martha Watson, with Julia Goodman as Susan Waverly, Lou Leonardo as Ralph Sheldrake and Gennaro Parlato as Ezekiel Foster. Rounding out the cast are Jim Baxter, Molly Brown, Camille Chace, Zachary Chase, Cruz Gonzalez, Kimberly Grader, Bobby Hall, Kaleigh Pfohl, Eddie Powers, Korrie Strodel, Josh Taylor, and Rashad Williams.

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Improv Comedy Night
Saltine Warrior

Price: $13 regular, $10 students/seniors
CFAC Black Box Theater
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Saltine Warrior is an improv comedy troupe. A Saltine Warrior show is a hilarious blend of short-form games (think the best parts of the hit TV show, "Who's Line Is It, Anyway?"), with the long-form scene styles in the tradition of Second City and Upright Citizen's Brigade.

This is truly interactive, improv comedy at its best! The entire performance is totally unscripted and unrehearsed...with scenes and games based on audience suggestions and participation.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Works of Peter Michel
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Peter Michel's work celebrates self, relationship, and community, using symbols to explore the ways in which we are related, connected, and the same, as well as the ways in which we are special and unique. It explores the richness of the mind and the ongoing conversations that shape our responses and our being.

Wild Card Exhibition: Drawing in Air
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

An installation by Andy Schuster. Central to his work, Schuster says, is drawing. "I draw on paper, on ceramic surfaces using fire and glaze or in space with steel." The exhibit at the Delavan will consist of drawings and planning models for the concurrent installation at Lipe Art Park, along with recent ceramic works. Schuster says, "The drawings, visualizations of the stick sculptures at Lipe, are executed on white ground suggesting snow-covered landscapes, and indicating how the finished installation evolves with seasonal environmental changes throughout the year." Of his ceramic pieces, Schuster says, "The ceramic work is drawn on clay using glaze and controlled flame patterns produced by a high temperature wood fired kiln, producing loose geometric interventions on the clay's surface."

Elements
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paintings by Lynette Blake, ceramics by Amy Haven, and paintings by James Van Hoven

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Celebrating 20 Years
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

A diverse show of 56 creative artists who have previously exhibited at Edgewood Gallery.

Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

Works by Patricia Tucker, Sharon Terry, and David Lisi
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

A new exhibit featuring artists Patricia Tucker, painting; Sharon Terry, jewelry; and David Lisi, pottery.

Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Power and Pride: An Elizabeth Catlett Retrospective" features 50 years of prints, drawings, collages and sculptures by Catlett, who is an icon of American art. The exhibition was organized with the assistance of Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Born in Washington, DC, Elizabeth Catlett graduated from Howard University with a degree in painting and was the first student to receive an M.F.A. degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940. She later studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lithography at the Art Students League in New York. In 1943, she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine in New York. Catlett was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946, under which she travelled to Mexico to study sculpture, mural painting and printmaking. In Mexico, she worked at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura and at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop), a group of artists who created art that expressed desire for social change. In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1962. A lifelong artist, activist and educator, Catlett is known for her depiction of social and political issues, in particular those relating to African American and women's themes.

Elizabeth Catlett has taught at Dillard University, Hampton University, the George Washington Carver School, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she became the first female professor and first female department chair at the School of Fine Arts.

She retired in 1976 and makes her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she continues to work in her studio. Her work is featured in many public and private collections around the world, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Catlett has been the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees.

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Opening: Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

There will be an opening reception from 6:00-8:00 pm tonight.

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Syracuse During the Time of Impressionism
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A complementary exhibit to the Everson Museum of Art's "From Turner To Cezanne", OHA's exhibit will look at what was happening in Syracuse at the time of the European Impressionist painters, 1880-1916. The exhibit will feature artwork, clothing, products, archival material, and other items that will interpret the Syracuse scene during this time impressionist painters were viewed by their contemporaries as "outrageously modern."

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition highlights the work of mixed media photography pioneer John Wood. Over 100 works that chronicle the artist's work from the 1960s to the present will be on display in his first major retrospective exhibition.

Well known as a photographer who routinely broke the barriers of "pure photography," Wood's work is credited as being the foundation for the mixed media and digital imagery processes of the last two decades. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing, he has a unique ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease.

Wood's early influences as a photographer stem from his time served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 pilot, as seen in his multiple frame landscapes and time-lapse collages. After the war, Wood trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY. Like the work of Jasper Johns, John Wood is relentless in pushing the boundaries of traditional media. His work has laid the groundwork for the multi process, cross disciplinary artwork being created for years.

Paid parking is available for weekday visitors in any SU pay lot. Free parking for weekend and evening visitors is available in the Q4 lot, located on College Place. Patrons should notify the attendant that they are visiting the SUArt Galleries. Evening and weekend parking is on a space-available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome.

The Picture Man: Photographs of Milton Rogovin
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Milton Rogovin is a social documentary photographer, with a focus of photographing the poor and working class for 50 years. His choice of subject was summed up in his words, "The rich have their own photographers. I have chosen to photograph the poor." Rogovin has photographed miners in 10 nations, collaborated with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, photographed a six-square block neighborhood in Buffalo for 30 years, and so much more. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to "name names" he was blacklisted and his optometry practice in Buffalo suffered. "My voice was essentially silenced, so I decided to speak out through photography." In 1969, the Library of Congress accepted Rogovin's entire body of work.

Annual Group Show
Open Figure Drawing

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

More than a dozen members of the weekly drawing group exhibit diverse interpretations of the human figure in a variety of media: pen, pencil, pastel, charcoal, scratch board, oil, acrylic, and watercolor. For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or call Iver Johnson, 315-475-3400.

Hard Hats Required
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An interactive installation show by eight VPA graduate students in fibers, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, and transmedia. For more information, contact ahavenhand@yahoo.com.

Windows Project: Confederacy of Dunces
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Hamilton-based Lynette K. Stephenson created an installation about New Orleans consisting of 60 hand-felted wool dunce caps. This exhibition is inspired by John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) set in New Orleans, where Stephenson's family home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and based on her previous body of paintings, The Red Cross Series, which led to the idea for this site-specific project. In this work Stephenson engages in a dialogue about present-day social issues referring to New Orleans, the tragedy of the Hurricane and the universal symbol of the Red Cross.

Alyson Shotz: Drawing Through Space
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

With the assistance of Syracuse University students, Brooklyn-based Shotz created her works on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery into a form of laboratory. Shotz is one of today's ground-breaking artists transforming contemporary art through a fusion of technology and handcrafted steel wire and yarn artworks. Her use of this material is a means of combining sculpture with drawing to address issues of light, space, time and motion. Strikingly beautiful, her wire sculpture in the vault and three wall drawings project optical experiences where questions of perception and misperception lead to further examination of the impact of 21st-century technology on the arts.

Read a review!

SaturdaySCREENINGS: Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (2003)
ArtRage Gallery

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

One of the first documentaries on the South African struggle against apartheid. Interviews, archival footage, and mesmerizing performances highlight the unsung role of music in the battle for rights. Directed by Lee Hirsch.

Sundance: Audience & Freedom of Expression Award, Grand Jury Prize, Three Emmys for outstanding individual, cultural and artistic achievements, Best Documentary: St. Louis, San Diego, Sydney film Festivals, San Diego Film Festival: Festival Prize, Telluride Mountain Festival: Best of Fest

CMM Statewide Vocal Competition
Civic Morning Musicals

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Scholastic Jazz Jam
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation

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

In Scholastic Jazz Jam events, local High School and College students are invited to perform in a supportive environment backed by a professional rhythm section from the CNY Jazz Orchestra. Aspiring jazz instrumentalists "learn the ropes" of public performance, backed by the area's finest jazz professionals. Play tunes of your choice in a supportive atmosphere. All experience levels welcome.

Classics Series: Impressionist Masters
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Syracuse University Oratorio Society
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Lianne Coble, soprano; Tim LeFebvre, baritone

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

Faure Requiem
Debussy Nocturnes
Ravel Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2

Presented in Partnership with the Everson Museum of Art

The Little Mermaid
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interaction adaptation of this children's favorite. The audience helps the Mermaid foil the Seawitch and get her voice back.

The Bald Soprano and The Chairs
Syracuse University Drama Department
Rodney Hudson, director

Price: $18 regular, $16 students/seniors
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

These master works from theatre of absurd soar to heights of the ridiculous with word-twisting, innovative comedy. Eugene Ionesco is a giant of 20th century playwriting who took all the conventions of the stage and turned them upside down to offer stunning perspectives on theatre and the world it reflects. With a strong sense of the outrageous, Ionesco reminds us that, "The human drama is as absurd as it is painful."

Both The Bald Soprano and The Chairs are considered standards in what has been coined as Theatre of the Absurd. First popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Absurdism reflects a philosophy presented by Albert Camus—that the human condition is basically meaningless, and that explaining the world in a logical manner is not possible. In absurdist plays, there is a comical take on serious topics—death, alienation, and evil—in an effort to understand them better.

The Bald Soprano portrays an evening visit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Martin. With the Smiths' maid Mary and her lover, the fire chief, the night of nonsensical stories and poems carries the characters right back to the beginning.

The Bald Soprano was Eugene Ionesco's first play, performed in 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. At the time, Ionesco had been learning to speak English by copying sentences from an English primer. As he copied the simple phrases over and over again, the absurdity of language struck him. He translated this experience into The Bald Soprano, which satirizes the deadliness and idiocy of the daily life of a bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities. The Bald Soprano had a 1987 production in New York City, a production with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2007, and an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2009 with the One Year Lease theatre ensemble.

In The Chairs, the Old Man and Old Woman are setting up chairs in anticipation of the arrival of a series of guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery of the meaning of life. Once the couple has convinced themselves that a crowd is assembled (when in fact there are only empty chairs) the evening progresses to a frantic, menacing climax. The Chairs was first produced in 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry. After receiving a 1997 London production, The Chairs returned to Broadway in 1998 and garnered five Tony nominations.

Read a review!

Death by Disco
Without a Cue Productions

Price: $39.50, includes dinner and show
Glen Loch Restaurant
4626 North St., Jamesville

Welcome to the Land of Oz Discoteria and the "3rd Annual World Championship of Disco Championship." Contestants are ready to show their moves, but they don't know that tonight some competition will definitely be stiff. Join us for "Death by Disco." a murderous evening of theater, dancing, and great food!

Shakin' with Shakespeare
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park

Price: $25 in advance, $35 at the door
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

You'll be treated to the smooth, swaying sounds of "Side by Side" with Bob Reid on keyboards, Lou Adams on bass, and Martha Herrick delivering the vocal licks. Anne Dougherty will read your Shakespearean Tarot cards to give you a glimpse into your future. Actors dressed as characters from famous Shakespearean plays will play along with you as you enjoy the festivities. At trivia stations around the room, youll have a chance to test your knowledge of The Bard and his canon. Finally, when you are spent from all the fun, we'll pick you up with delicious coffee and scrumptious desserts.

To reserve tickets, phone 315-476-1835 or visit syracuseshakespearefestival.org.

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research and General of Hot Desire
Black Box Players

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

The Man Who: A Theatrical Research is based on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks' best-selling collection of case histories about the neurologically impaired. The play looks inside a series of doctor/patient fables including autism, Tourette's, and the very famous visual agnosis case, where a man pulled on his wife's head thinking it was his hat. The Man Who explores the unknown world of the brain and tries to understand its complicated workings. The play is a journey in which each new discovery is both fascinating and deeply moving. By Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, directed by Lindsey Van Horn.

General of Hot Desire, by John Guare, is a one-act play inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 153 and 154. Nine young people take on the task of interpreting the sonnet and making a play from it. Each character has a different point of view of what the right answer is. But their goals do not end at solving the sonnets but finding the deeper meaning of love and God. Enjoy a play that travels through stories from the Bible, Torah, Qur'an, and modern times where everyone is going in different directions but searching inherently for the same thing. Directed by Kristin Kelly.

Well-Aged Words: Storytelling for Adults
Open Hand Theater
Featuring Sunny Dooley

Price: $18 in advance; $20 at the door; artist reception $5
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

The traditional stories that Sunny Dooley recounts are the same stories that have been handed down from one generation to the next in her family, stories that have been told from her matrilineal clan of the Saltwater People. The Dine' stories create the worldview of its people and their relationship to their surroundings. Why are people, places and things the way they are? The wisdom and understanding of the past and present links us to the future.

The Bald Soprano and The Chairs
Syracuse University Drama Department
Rodney Hudson, director

Price: $18 regular, $16 students/seniors
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

These master works from theatre of absurd soar to heights of the ridiculous with word-twisting, innovative comedy. Eugene Ionesco is a giant of 20th century playwriting who took all the conventions of the stage and turned them upside down to offer stunning perspectives on theatre and the world it reflects. With a strong sense of the outrageous, Ionesco reminds us that, "The human drama is as absurd as it is painful."

Both The Bald Soprano and The Chairs are considered standards in what has been coined as Theatre of the Absurd. First popular in the 1950s and 1960s, Absurdism reflects a philosophy presented by Albert Camus—that the human condition is basically meaningless, and that explaining the world in a logical manner is not possible. In absurdist plays, there is a comical take on serious topics—death, alienation, and evil—in an effort to understand them better.

The Bald Soprano portrays an evening visit between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Martin. With the Smiths' maid Mary and her lover, the fire chief, the night of nonsensical stories and poems carries the characters right back to the beginning.

The Bald Soprano was Eugene Ionesco's first play, performed in 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. At the time, Ionesco had been learning to speak English by copying sentences from an English primer. As he copied the simple phrases over and over again, the absurdity of language struck him. He translated this experience into The Bald Soprano, which satirizes the deadliness and idiocy of the daily life of a bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities. The Bald Soprano had a 1987 production in New York City, a production with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2007, and an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2009 with the One Year Lease theatre ensemble.

In The Chairs, the Old Man and Old Woman are setting up chairs in anticipation of the arrival of a series of guests who are coming to hear an orator reveal the old man's discovery of the meaning of life. Once the couple has convinced themselves that a crowd is assembled (when in fact there are only empty chairs) the evening progresses to a frantic, menacing climax. The Chairs was first produced in 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry. After receiving a 1997 London production, The Chairs returned to Broadway in 1998 and garnered five Tony nominations.

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White Christmas
The Talent Company
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $30 regular, $25 seniors/students, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

The tale of a couple of song-and-dance men who meet up with a sister act to make sparks fly is based on the beloved 1954 movie musical that starred Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. The Broadway hit is full of dancing, romance, laughter, and some of the greatest songs ever written, including Happy Holiday, Sisters, I Love a Piano, Blue Skies, How Deep is the Ocean, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Falling Out Of Love Can Be Fun, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep), and the unforgettable title song, White Christmas.

White Christmas stars Bob Brown as Bob Wallace and Gary Troy as Phil Davis, the song-and-dance men, and Brandi Ozark Weston as Judy Haynes and Colleen Wager as Betty Haynes, the "sister act." The show also features Bill Coughlin as General Henry Waverly and Christine Lightcap as Martha Watson, with Julia Goodman as Susan Waverly, Lou Leonardo as Ralph Sheldrake and Gennaro Parlato as Ezekiel Foster. Rounding out the cast are Jim Baxter, Molly Brown, Camille Chace, Zachary Chase, Cruz Gonzalez, Kimberly Grader, Bobby Hall, Kaleigh Pfohl, Eddie Powers, Korrie Strodel, Josh Taylor, and Rashad Williams.

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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $15 non-members, $12 students/seniors, $10 Everson members, children 5 and under free, $50 family rate (maximum two adults and four dependent children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This collection is comprised of an extraordinary group of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings collected largely between 1908 and 1923 by sisters Margaret and Gwendoline Davies. By 1914, the Davies sisters had assembled one of the finest collections of European modern art in Britain, with works from artists such as Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Joseph M.W. Turner, among several others.

Turner to Cézanne speaks volumes about taste, patronage and philanthropy. The 53 original works by 29 artists included also a present survey of modern art, ranging from Turner's Romantic naturalism to Cézanne's modern aesthetic innovations. This exhibition serves as a reminder of the value of creativity, and of persistence, as many of the artists were, at first, either misunderstood or scorned.

Docent-led tours are available Tuesday-Thursday at 2:00 pm and Saturdays at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm. These tours are complimentary with exhibition admission, and no reservation is required. A complimentary cell phone audio tour is available to all visitors.

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Women of Rookwood: The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Rookwood Pottery, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1880, established itself as a commercial pottery that successfully elevated ordinary ceramic objects to a fine art status during the heyday of art pottery in America. Each unique piece was hand-painted and signed by the artist, many of whom were young women. This exhibition, which includes examples by several of these women including Sarah Sax, Fannie Auckland, Sadie Markland, Grace Young, and Rookwood founder Maria Longworth Nichols, was selected from The Joyce and Eliot Sterling Collection in conjunction with the "Women as Visionaries, Women as Participants" Symposium scheduled for October 17.

Arts & Crafts of New York State
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

The Arts & Crafts movement that blossomed in Europe in the late 19th century and rapidly spread to America not only has deep roots in New York State, but it is still very much alive in the upstate region today. Gustav Stickley and Adelaide Robineau, significant figures on the national Arts & Crafts scene at the turn of the century, were based in Syracuse. Elbert Hubbard established the Roycrofters in East Aurora in the 1880s and the Byrdcliffe Colony flourished in Woodstock, New York at the same time. This exhibition showcases paintings, furniture, ceramics, and metal work created by these masters of the Arts & Crafts movement from 1890 to 1920.

Corporeal: Works by Deana Lawson
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Deana Lawson's photographs examine how the body informs personal, political, and historical identities. Her psychological portraits seem to start out in one shape before morphing into something unexpected. Their apparent transparency at first glance dissolves into a complex set of questions about the people who are imaged and the nature of photographing, questions that will never have clear and finite answers, no matter how hard and long we look.

Lawson calls the people she photographs her family, whether they are in fact related or whether they met as friends in church, at the grocery store, or in a club. The ties that bind her images together are not in the blood but rather in the shared experience of representation.

If the personal is political, then the portrait may present the most intense form in which to control the message of the self. In viewing Lawson's portraits, as we come to terms with the body and the sometimes uncomfortable intimacy of a stranger's personal truth, we see flesh, beauty, pain, salvation, life, and death all performed within the context of the frame. As bare identities emerge from these photographs, we may reassess the often easily avoided questions of what we are willing to look at and why.

The rooms and faces in the photographs may change, but the gaze and gesture of Lawson's subjects consistently telegraph a unified refrain: The beauty of this moment in front of the lens belongs to them. The people in her photographs offer an unrelenting intention to be seen as they want to be seen. Just as important, they possess an unbridled courage to reveal that fleeting truth to others. Although Lawson is a collaborator and co-adventurer in the making of each picture, her subjects make the key contributions that give the photographs in Corporeal their power.

Artists at Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty
Light Work Gallery

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

For many years Light Work has enjoyed a close affiliation with the art photography department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The faculty and students of art photo interact with Light Work's roster of international artists through lectures, internships, and classroom visits. In addition, they utilize the Community Darkrooms facilities and take full advantage of the expertise of the Light Work staff. Together we share an energy, passion, and commitment to contemporary art and photography. The exhibition "Artists At Work: Transmedia Photo Faculty" highlights this relationship by featuring work by Doug Dubois, Laura Heyman, Yasser Aggour, John Wesley Mannion, Aaron Hraba, Jennifer Wilkey, Sara Zamecnik, Kelli Pennington, Jeffrey Einhorn, and Shimpei Shirafuji.

Holiday Show 09
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit.

The exhibition will feature photography, ceramics, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include: Jen Allen (Morgantown, WV), Ed Feldman (Cortland), Shanna Fliegel (Tarrytown, NY), Bob Gates (Jamesville), Shawn O'Connor (Syracuse), Davie Reneau (Glasgow, KY), Brenda Edwards (Oswego), Kathy Barry (Syracuse), Nancy Kramer (Skaneateles), Brooke Noble (Saranac Lake, NY), Erin Murphy (Syracuse), Lucy Mink (Syracuse), Jeremy Randall (Tully), Lucie Wellner (Pompey), Forrest Lesch-Middelton (Fairfax, CA), and Jen Gandee (Fabius).

Works by Jeremy Randall
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Ceramic artist Jeremy Randall was recognized by Ceramics Monthly as an Emerging Artist for 2009.

Randall, of Tully, is co-owner of the gallery. He also is a visiting professor of art and studio manager at Cazenovia College and an adjunct instructor of ceramics at Syracuse University.

Randall's work has been featured in some 40 exhibitions and is held in the collections of Southern Illinois University and the Myerhoff Collection in Baltimore. This year alone, he has shown at the Meredith Gallery in Baltimore, Baltimore Clayworks, Limestone Art Gallery in Fayetteville, the Art House Gallery in Atlanta, the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Cazenovia College Art Gallery.

35th Annual Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

Price: Free
City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Original crafts and fine arts by more than 50 artists and craftspeople from Central New York. For more information, phone 315-468-2616.