Wednesday, April 20, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

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

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

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

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

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

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

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

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

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

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

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

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

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

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

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

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

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

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

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

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

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

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

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

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

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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

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

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gretchen Hull, piano
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Poetic pianist in Beethoven Op. 109, Rachmaninoff Etudes-Tableaux, Chopin, Scarlatti, and Messiaen works from Vingt regards de l'Enfant-Jesus.

95X Party with Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime, with Scotty Don't, Subsoil, The Amish Mafia
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten Wizard
Syracuse Stage

Price: Free with museum admission ($7 adults, $6 children/seniors)
The MOST (Museum of Science & Technology)
500 S. Franklin St., Syracuse

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten portrays an imagined encounter between the legendary wizard Merlin and Tesla, the father of modern electricity, whose discovery of the alternating current is considered one of the 10 greatest inventions of all time. Roughly 45 minutes in length, the presentation will include a performance and brief Q&A.

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

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The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

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

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

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

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

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

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

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

There will be an artist reception this evening 5:00-7:00 pm.

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

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

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

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

Women of CNY Student Art Show
Redhouse

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

There will be an opening reception this evening 5:00-8:00 pm as part of Th3, with an Awards Presentation at 7:00 pm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

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

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

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

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

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

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

SPECIAL EVENT: 6:00 pm: Caroline Michel, soprano, and friends perform the music of Ravel, Sariaaho, and others, as a participant in the Setnor School of Music Graduate Musicians Performances for VPA MFA 2011.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

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

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

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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

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

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

Meet the Artist: Brenda O'Brien & Sue Moore-Bruns
Eureka Crafts

Eureka Crafts
210 Walton St., Syracuse

Meet the artist featuring Brenda O'Brien & Sue Moore-Bruns of "2X around," local "green" jewelry artists who use recycled materials in their work. Light refreshments.

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

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

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

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

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

Artist Open: 2nd Annual Open Figure Drawing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Enjoy an evening of figure drawing in the Everson's Sculpture Court. The public is invited to create drawings through the study of a nude model. Bring your own sketchbooks and pencils (no charcoal, pastels, paint permitted). Easels will be provided. Those not wishing to draw are invited to enjoy musical entertainment provided by Brett and Eve Arnold.

Presented in collaboration with the Westcott Community Center Open Figure Drawing group as part of Th3.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caroline Michel, soprano, and friends
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

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

Music of Ravel, Sariaaho, and others.

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

SU Jazz Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The ensemble will perform jazz compositions under the direction of Joseph Riposo. The concert will also feature the SU Super Sax Ensemble.

For more information, contact Joseph Riposo, 315-443-2191, jriposo@syr.edu.

Free parking is available in the Irving Garage.

Cruel April 2011
Point of Contact Gallery
Featuring Jules Gibbs, Sarah Coleman Harwell, Colleen Kattau

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

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

Jules Gibbs' poems currently appear or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Born Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Salt Hill Journal, The Antioch Review, Barrow Street, and the anthology, Best New Poets. She has been a fellow at the Ucross Foundation, and her first chapbook, The Bulk of the Mailable Universe, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press (Chicago). In 2009, her commissioned poem, "Everything Comes Broken" was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, in collaboration with photographer Kevin O'Connell. She lives in Syracuse and teaches in the Writing Program at Syracuse University while pursuing a graduate degree in English.

Sarah Coleman Harwell, associate director of the MFA in creative writing at Syracuse University, is one of the featured poets in a book titled Three New Poets, published by Sheep Meadow Press in 2006. She also teaches on-line undergraduate creative writing workshops. Her poems have appeared in Stone Canoe, among other journals and magazines.

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

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten Wizard
Syracuse Stage

Price: Free with museum admission ($7 adults, $6 children/seniors)
The MOST (Museum of Science & Technology)
500 S. Franklin St., Syracuse

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten portrays an imagined encounter between the legendary wizard Merlin and Tesla, the father of modern electricity, whose discovery of the alternating current is considered one of the 10 greatest inventions of all time. Roughly 45 minutes in length, the presentation will include a performance and brief Q&A.

A Wee Bit O' Murder
Acme Mystery Company

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

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

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

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

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Friday, April 22, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

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

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

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

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

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

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

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

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

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

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

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

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

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

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

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

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

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Closing: You Are Here
Community Folk Art Center

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

A closing reception will be held this evening from 6:00-9:00 pm, with a live performance by Anneka Herre at 7:30 pm.

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

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

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

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

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

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

Women of CNY Student Art Show
Redhouse

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

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

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

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

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

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

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

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

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

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

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

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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

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

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Annual Air Guitar Competition
Redhouse

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

Syracuse University's Department of Art and Music Histories is bringing in Björn Türöque (aka Boston-based musician and author Dan Crane) to host a screening of Air Guitar Nation at the Gifford Auditorium on Thursday, 4/21. But then the show comes to Redhouse for a real deal Air Guitar Competition.

Easy Star All-Stars, with John Brown's Body, House on a Spring
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Anne Coray, poet, and Steve Kahn, non-fiction author
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Anne Coray is the author of the poetry collections A Measure's Hush, Violet Transparent, and Bone Strings. Her work has appeared in many literary journals including the Southern Review, Poetry, and Columbia. She is also the coeditor of Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment and editor/publisher of NorthShore Press.

Steve Kahn is the author of The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt (University of Nebraska Press) and coauthor of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve (Alaska Geographic). His nonfiction is drawn from years of wilderness experience from the Wrangell Mountains to the Bering Sea.

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten Wizard
Syracuse Stage

Price: Free with museum admission ($7 adults, $6 children/seniors)
The MOST (Museum of Science & Technology)
500 S. Franklin St., Syracuse

Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten portrays an imagined encounter between the legendary wizard Merlin and Tesla, the father of modern electricity, whose discovery of the alternating current is considered one of the 10 greatest inventions of all time. Roughly 45 minutes in length, the presentation will include a performance and brief Q&A.

Colour Me Streisand
Dan Tursi, director
Featuring Jimmy Wachter

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

The award-winning cabaret, written by Josh Smith and Jimmy Wachter, that pays tribute to the one and only Barbra Streisand. Jimmy Wachter portrays Barbra Streisand as you have never seen her before. He and Josh take you on a journey in the day and life of Babs herself! Singing many of Barbra's well known hits as well as original material, medleys, and montages.

Jimmy also brings his celebrity impressions to the stage - everyone from Lena Horne to Willie Nelson and Cher to Judy Garland.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Nora O'Dea, director

Price: $10 regular, $5 with SU ID (students, faculy, staff, alumni)
The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This ridiculously funny show covers every play Shakespeare ever wrote in 110 hilarious minutes of side-splitting fun, a witty and wonderful romp through the histories, tragedies and comedies. It's intelligent, insane, interactive, inclusive, irreverent and strictly aimed at adults. See Shakespearean football and a complete audience rendition of Ophelia's psyche. This is the Bard as you've never seen him before.

The show stars Jim Uva, Alan Stillman and Dan Rowlands.

PLEASE NOTE: This show contains adult material and is not recommended for children under 16. For more information, phone 315-476-1835.

The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

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

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Jesus Christ Superstar
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Bob Brown, director

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

Celebrate the Lenten season with the 32nd annual production. New faces and voices continue the legacy of this powerful and moving depiction of the last days of Christ. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Tickets available by calling 315-435-2121.

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The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

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Wrong Window!
The Talent Company
Christine Lightcap, director

Price: $25 regular, $23 students/seniors, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

In a rare departure from big musicals, The Talent Company presents the CNY premiere of Wrong Window!, a hilarious comedy "whodunnit" that pays homage to master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from the obvious Hitchcock film reference to the classic film Rear Window, authors Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore own up to a set of influences that include To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, The 39 Steps and Psycho.

Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. When the lady vanishes, suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. With their best friends Robbie and Midge, Jeff and Marnie sneak into their neighbor's apartment--39 steps away--and the fun begins! Among multiple door slammings, body snatching, and a frantic flashlight chase are Detective Thomas and handyman Loomis who round out the zany cast of characters who try to sort out what has happened as two questions remain: Who killed Lila Larswald? And...if she's not dead...then who is?

This hilarious spoof has fever-pitched one liners and gag-filled dialogue from start to finish. The story plays out on a set designed by Navroz Dabu that allows the audience to be present in one apartment while viewing the action in its mirror-image unit across the way. Light design by Cindy Shippers and sound design by Tony Vadala add to the zaniness.

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Saturday, April 23, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

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

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

Annual High School Seniors Exhibit
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Hands On!
Szozda Gallery

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

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

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

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

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

MFA 2011
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

Cannonball Press Exhibition
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

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

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

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Poster Girl and Iraq Paper Scissors
ArtRage Gallery

Price: $10 suggested donation
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Poster Girl (2010, 38 minutes)
Apple pie cheerleader turned tough-as-nails machine gunner in the Iraq War, Sgt. Robynn Murray comes home to face a new kind of battle she never anticipated. Academy-Award-nominated Poster Girl is Robynn's story, an all-American high-school cheerleader turned "poster girl" for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine's cover shot. Now home from Iraq, her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Shot and directed by first-time filmmaker Sara Nesson, Poster Girl is an emotionally raw documentary that follows Robynn over the course of two years as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption, using art and poetry to redefine her life. (2010, 38 minutes)

Iraq Paper Scissors (2007-, 45 minutes)
Right now, 18 veterans commit suicide every day. As more veterans seek help from the Veterans Administration (VA) they must wait in line behind the backlog of 400,000 claims for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). While this rising "epidemic" is mostly overlooked by society, the government is preparing to send more troops to fight a deadly war in Afghanistan and veterans home from Iraq and previous wars are left to suffer alone. Yet, in an old Vermont papermaking mill, one group of veterans have discovered a unique way to cope, by transforming their uniforms worn in combat into paper, books and art. Iraq Paper Scissors is a documentary film that takes us into the lives of five Iraq War veterans who struggle with PTSD as they discover that they have dreams and talents beyond machine guns and combat.

Over the course of two years, director Sara Nesson, intimately captures the young men and women deconstructing their uniforms, while sharing their memories as soldiers and uncertain futures as civilians. Through following their creative and emotionally difficult yet healing journey, the dark space war that occupies their minds, gives way to light, allowing us to see more clearly, those who have served refuse to be forgotten and more importantly, ask to be understood.

Stickley and His Work
The Stickley Museum

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

Working Together To Promote the Arts

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

Subcat Series: Andrew Greacen
Redhouse

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

Andrew Greacen is a Syracuse-based recording artist who recently released his debut album, Soul Searching. His smooth easy-going tunes mix acoustic, soul, R&B and pop. His first full length effort explores all the aspects of falling in love. Andrew is currently on a tour of upstate New York.

Rubblebucket, with Phantom Chemistry
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Snow White
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive retelling of the classic children's story.

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

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Colour Me Streisand
Dan Tursi, director
Featuring Jimmy Wachter

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

The award-winning cabaret, written by Josh Smith and Jimmy Wachter, that pays tribute to the one and only Barbra Streisand. Jimmy Wachter portrays Barbra Streisand as you have never seen her before. He and Josh take you on a journey in the day and life of Babs herself! Singing many of Barbra's well known hits as well as original material, medleys, and montages.

Jimmy also brings his celebrity impressions to the stage - everyone from Lena Horne to Willie Nelson and Cher to Judy Garland.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged
Syracuse Shakespeare-in-the-Park
Nora O'Dea, director

Price: $10 regular, $5 with SU ID (students, faculy, staff, alumni)
The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This ridiculously funny show covers every play Shakespeare ever wrote in 110 hilarious minutes of side-splitting fun, a witty and wonderful romp through the histories, tragedies and comedies. It's intelligent, insane, interactive, inclusive, irreverent and strictly aimed at adults. See Shakespearean football and a complete audience rendition of Ophelia's psyche. This is the Bard as you've never seen him before.

The show stars Jim Uva, Alan Stillman and Dan Rowlands.

PLEASE NOTE: This show contains adult material and is not recommended for children under 16. For more information, phone 315-476-1835.

The Marvelous Wonderettes
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

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

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Jesus Christ Superstar
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Bob Brown, director

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

Celebrate the Lenten season with the 32nd annual production. New faces and voices continue the legacy of this powerful and moving depiction of the last days of Christ. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Tickets available by calling 315-435-2121.

Read a review!

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

Wrong Window!
The Talent Company
Christine Lightcap, director

Price: $25 regular, $23 students/seniors, $20 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

In a rare departure from big musicals, The Talent Company presents the CNY premiere of Wrong Window!, a hilarious comedy "whodunnit" that pays homage to master of horror, Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from the obvious Hitchcock film reference to the classic film Rear Window, authors Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore own up to a set of influences that include To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, The 39 Steps and Psycho.

Off-and-on New York couple Marnie and Jeff enter an even more complicated phase of their relationship when they think they spy their cross-courtyard neighbor do away with his wife. When the lady vanishes, suspicion places murder beyond a shadow of a doubt. With their best friends Robbie and Midge, Jeff and Marnie sneak into their neighbor's apartment--39 steps away--and the fun begins! Among multiple door slammings, body snatching, and a frantic flashlight chase are Detective Thomas and handyman Loomis who round out the zany cast of characters who try to sort out what has happened as two questions remain: Who killed Lila Larswald? And...if she's not dead...then who is?

This hilarious spoof has fever-pitched one liners and gag-filled dialogue from start to finish. The story plays out on a set designed by Navroz Dabu that allows the audience to be present in one apartment while viewing the action in its mirror-image unit across the way. Light design by Cindy Shippers and sound design by Tony Vadala add to the zaniness.

Read a review!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Monday, April 25, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

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

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

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

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

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Architecture & Interior Design Student Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

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

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

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

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

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

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

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

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

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Members' Theme Show
Associated Artists of Central New York

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Women of CNY Student Art Show
Redhouse

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

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

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

Price: Free
Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

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

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

Self-Portrait Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

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

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Charley's Aunt (1941)
Syracuse Cinephile Society

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

Director: Archie Mayo. Cast: Jack Benny, Kay Francis, James Ellison, Laird Cregar, Edmund Gwenn, Richard Haydn, Anne Baxter, Reginald Owen. Excellent film adaptation of the classic Brandon Thomas farce involving an Oxford student (Benny) who must pose as his roommate's maiden aunt. The situation gets increasingly out of hand in this fun comedy with a top-notch cast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Annual Le Moyne College Student Art Exhibition
LeMoyne College

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

Opening: Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

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

There will be an opening reception this evening 5:00-7:00 pm.

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

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

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

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

Hectic Eclectic Art Show
CNY Artists

Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Feats of Clay Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

Architecture & Interior Design Student Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

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

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

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