Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Gallery Talk: Still-lifes in Silver
Everson Museum of Art

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

Dr. Paul D. Schweizer, Director and Chief Curator at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, will present an overview of Tom Mazzullo Drawings, with an introduction to the history of silverpoint. A nationally recognized American Art scholar, Dr. Schweizer will discuss Mazzullo's silverpoints in the context of both historical and contemporary still-lifes.

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $30, $25, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Glass and Abstracts
Delavan Art Gallery

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

Marcia Rutledge, vocal jazz, and Dave Solazzo, jazz piano, will be performing between 5:00 - 7:00 pm as part of as part of Th3, The Third Thursday, Syracuse's visual arts open.

The exhibit features glass works by Jerome R. Durr and R Jason Howard along with abstract paintings by Thomas Barnes, Linda Bigness and Jeff Schuessler.

With a geometric vision, Thomas Barnes began his career as a student of math and sciences during the Cold War. He was always interested in studying art, but it was not until he met Professor Frank Goodnow at Syracuse University in a night class that he finally found a direction for his art studies. Thirty-five years later Barnes has developed into a prolific artist with a solid style of hard-edged geometric shapes and colors used to create acrylic paintings of abstracts and landscapes.

Linda Bigness creates works on paper and canvas. Her largely abstract works have been exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and can be found in both public and private collections. She has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art, the Cultural Center: The Netherlands, Westmoreland, Cooperstown and in Korea. Public commissions include the Temple B'Rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY and the Governor's Mansion in Florida. Bigness was head of the Visual Arts Department and Director of Gallery 320 at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse before it closed and has continued to curate, teach and write on a regular basis.

Jerome R. Durr began designing and fabricating glass artwork in 1973 for private residential collectors, commercial projects, ecclesiastical commissions and public surroundings. Today Jerome R. Durr Studio specializes in architectural art glass for an impressive list of international clientele. His work can be found throughout the U.S., in France, Italy, Germany, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Durr is on the board of directors of the Stained Glass Association of America and is Director of the Stained Glass School. His expertise includes casting, carving, etching and slumping glass. Durr looks forward to the innovative large or small architectural setting project where he can meld human problem solving with quality of design and fabrication.

R Jason Howard calls his current work "an exploration of change, time, and process." Howard first became enthralled with glass as a senior studying ceramics at Hamilton College. After he graduated he received a scholarship to the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and began studying with several renowned glass artists. Howard acted as a consultant for North Star Glassworks developing colored borosilicate glasses including one of their more popular colors, Onyx. Howard's current work through his studio, Cicada Glassworks, can be seen in galleries around the country. Inspired by nature, he draws on the unique combination of traditional Italian techniques and self-invented processes to create large organic colorful forms that push the boundaries of what flameworked glass can do.

Through various drawings and paintings of circles, seemingly both in motion and dynamically frozen, Jeff Schuessler presents ideas concerning space and time. Through various sized charcoal drawings, he explores both the potential for and the continuation of movement across space and time. He creates tension by providing both a sense of motion and a quiet stillness, often simultaneously. Schuessler holds a B.S. in Advertising and an M.S. in Art Education from Syracuse University. Currently, he is an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Die Another Death
Acme Mystery Company

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

Interactive mystery/comedy dinner theater.

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $30, $25, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

Friday, June 22, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Glass and Abstracts
Delavan Art Gallery

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

The exhibit features glass works by Jerome R. Durr and R Jason Howard along with abstract paintings by Thomas Barnes, Linda Bigness and Jeff Schuessler.

With a geometric vision, Thomas Barnes began his career as a student of math and sciences during the Cold War. He was always interested in studying art, but it was not until he met Professor Frank Goodnow at Syracuse University in a night class that he finally found a direction for his art studies. Thirty-five years later Barnes has developed into a prolific artist with a solid style of hard-edged geometric shapes and colors used to create acrylic paintings of abstracts and landscapes.

Linda Bigness creates works on paper and canvas. Her largely abstract works have been exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and can be found in both public and private collections. She has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art, the Cultural Center: The Netherlands, Westmoreland, Cooperstown and in Korea. Public commissions include the Temple B'Rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY and the Governor's Mansion in Florida. Bigness was head of the Visual Arts Department and Director of Gallery 320 at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse before it closed and has continued to curate, teach and write on a regular basis.

Jerome R. Durr began designing and fabricating glass artwork in 1973 for private residential collectors, commercial projects, ecclesiastical commissions and public surroundings. Today Jerome R. Durr Studio specializes in architectural art glass for an impressive list of international clientele. His work can be found throughout the U.S., in France, Italy, Germany, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Durr is on the board of directors of the Stained Glass Association of America and is Director of the Stained Glass School. His expertise includes casting, carving, etching and slumping glass. Durr looks forward to the innovative large or small architectural setting project where he can meld human problem solving with quality of design and fabrication.

R Jason Howard calls his current work "an exploration of change, time, and process." Howard first became enthralled with glass as a senior studying ceramics at Hamilton College. After he graduated he received a scholarship to the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and began studying with several renowned glass artists. Howard acted as a consultant for North Star Glassworks developing colored borosilicate glasses including one of their more popular colors, Onyx. Howard's current work through his studio, Cicada Glassworks, can be seen in galleries around the country. Inspired by nature, he draws on the unique combination of traditional Italian techniques and self-invented processes to create large organic colorful forms that push the boundaries of what flameworked glass can do.

Through various drawings and paintings of circles, seemingly both in motion and dynamically frozen, Jeff Schuessler presents ideas concerning space and time. Through various sized charcoal drawings, he explores both the potential for and the continuation of movement across space and time. He creates tension by providing both a sense of motion and a quiet stillness, often simultaneously. Schuessler holds a B.S. in Advertising and an M.S. in Art Education from Syracuse University. Currently, he is an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $45, $40, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

1776
Appleseed Productions
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $18 regular; $15 seniors/students
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Enjoy this patriotic show in our newly air-conditioned theater!

The play itself revolves around the actions of our nation's Founding Fathers from May 8 to July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress. At issue is America's independence and in that the very future of the colonies. John Adams, delegate from Massachusetts, is the most vocal of the very proponents for American Independence. The play follows the struggle over the creation and ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Adams, and his allies Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, conspire, cajole, compromise, and intimidate their fellow delegates to vote for independence. Opposing them are the Loyalists, led by Jon Dickinson and Edward Rutledge, who all have their own reasons to oppose breaking from Mother England. Though the internal politics of the Continental Congress is the main plot of the play, the heart of the show are the exchanges between John Adams and his wife Abigail. Unknown to most audience members, this was one of the great loves in American history. Abigail, stranded at the family farm in Braintree, and John stranded among quibbling congressmen in Philadelphia long to be together but both feel that the heavy weight of history and destiny require them to be apart. Their only solace are their letters to each other which are portrayed in their scenes together. Book by Peter Stone, music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards.

Read a review!

Lowdown Lies
Armory Square Playwrights

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

Lowdown Lies is a full-length, non-musical comedy written by Post-Standard humor columnist Jeff Kramer, about the mess a man creates after backing out of a vasectomy without telling his wife.

Read a Review!

Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Aubry Ludington, director

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

The fashion for transforming movies into stage musicals may well have hit rock bottom with Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical, an adaptation of the '70s pornographic movie. Calling it a musical is going a bit far. It is closer to an extended revue skit, a scrappy, smutty spoof of a porn movie that strips out the hardcore, replacing it with musical numbers suggestive of the acts taking place. The plot and dialogue that remain are, to say the least, flaccid. Debbie Benton, typical of all-American teens, is "saving herself for marriage" and dreaming of becoming a football cheerleader. Accepted for the Texas Cowgirls squad, she has only two weeks to earn the fare to Dallas. An after-school job paying $2.90 an hour won't cover it, and her boss suggests other ways in which to serve him. Each time, she sings, she is "Another Ten Dollars Closer to Dallas." Her girlfriends join in and their company, Teen Services, has no difficulty finding men willing to pay for services rendered. The songs, by Andrew Sherman, are bright and peppy, with one or two nice ballads such as "Small Town Girl" and "God Must Love a Fool" that would be worthy of a real musical. For the most part, though, they are there to serve as a musical pointers to the sex content - ditties such as "The Dildo Rag," performed by the proprietor of a candle shop (a Mr. Hardwick, of course) and "Dallas I'm Coming," as poignant a song about being deflowered as you've ever heard.

No one under 18 will be admitted.

Read a Review!

Lucky Stiff
The Talent Company
Sharee Lemos, director

Price: $25 regular, $22 students/seniors, $14 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Lucky Stiff, a zany, offbeat and hilarious musical murder mystery by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once On This Island, My Favorite Year, Ragtime), concerns Harry Witherspoon whose dreary existence is turned upside down by being named in his Uncle Tony Hendon's will. If he agrees to fulfill the convoluted terms of the will, including taking his dead uncle on his dream vacation to Monte Carlo (a la "Weekend at Bernie's"), Harry stands to inherit $6 million. If terms are not carried out to the letter of the will, the inheritance reverts to Tony's favorite charity, the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn, whose administrator, Annabel Glick, keeps a watchful eye on Harry's every move. Meanwhile, Rita LaPorta discovers that her lover, casino manager Tony Hendon, has left his nephew the money they embezzled from Rita's casino owner husband. To help recover the money, Rita kidnaps her brother Vinnie DeRuzzio and off they go to Monte Carlo. Added into the Monte Carlo melee are Luigi Gaudi, a sinister looking man who seems to have a keen interest in Harry's activities, and an assortment of more than 24 characters all portrayed by a quartet of actors. Join Harry, the corpse, and all the other zany characters on a vacation of a lifetime!

Read a Review!

Saturday, June 23, 2007

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Glass and Abstracts
Delavan Art Gallery

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

The exhibit features glass works by Jerome R. Durr and R Jason Howard along with abstract paintings by Thomas Barnes, Linda Bigness and Jeff Schuessler.

With a geometric vision, Thomas Barnes began his career as a student of math and sciences during the Cold War. He was always interested in studying art, but it was not until he met Professor Frank Goodnow at Syracuse University in a night class that he finally found a direction for his art studies. Thirty-five years later Barnes has developed into a prolific artist with a solid style of hard-edged geometric shapes and colors used to create acrylic paintings of abstracts and landscapes.

Linda Bigness creates works on paper and canvas. Her largely abstract works have been exhibited internationally, won numerous awards and can be found in both public and private collections. She has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art, the Cultural Center: The Netherlands, Westmoreland, Cooperstown and in Korea. Public commissions include the Temple B'Rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY and the Governor's Mansion in Florida. Bigness was head of the Visual Arts Department and Director of Gallery 320 at the Metropolitan School for the Arts in Syracuse before it closed and has continued to curate, teach and write on a regular basis.

Jerome R. Durr began designing and fabricating glass artwork in 1973 for private residential collectors, commercial projects, ecclesiastical commissions and public surroundings. Today Jerome R. Durr Studio specializes in architectural art glass for an impressive list of international clientele. His work can be found throughout the U.S., in France, Italy, Germany, Kuwait and Sri Lanka. Durr is on the board of directors of the Stained Glass Association of America and is Director of the Stained Glass School. His expertise includes casting, carving, etching and slumping glass. Durr looks forward to the innovative large or small architectural setting project where he can meld human problem solving with quality of design and fabrication.

R Jason Howard calls his current work "an exploration of change, time, and process." Howard first became enthralled with glass as a senior studying ceramics at Hamilton College. After he graduated he received a scholarship to the Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and began studying with several renowned glass artists. Howard acted as a consultant for North Star Glassworks developing colored borosilicate glasses including one of their more popular colors, Onyx. Howard's current work through his studio, Cicada Glassworks, can be seen in galleries around the country. Inspired by nature, he draws on the unique combination of traditional Italian techniques and self-invented processes to create large organic colorful forms that push the boundaries of what flameworked glass can do.

Through various drawings and paintings of circles, seemingly both in motion and dynamically frozen, Jeff Schuessler presents ideas concerning space and time. Through various sized charcoal drawings, he explores both the potential for and the continuation of movement across space and time. He creates tension by providing both a sense of motion and a quiet stillness, often simultaneously. Schuessler holds a B.S. in Advertising and an M.S. in Art Education from Syracuse University. Currently, he is an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius High School.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Lakescapes: Selected Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie
Lucas Gallery

Lucas Gallery
33 Jordan St., Skaneateles

Karen Thomas-Lillie is an artist and designer with a degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, who creates impressionistic landscapes of the Finger Lakes using oilbar on panels. Her aesthetic focuses on expanses, edges, distance, fields, drumlins, water and sky. Her work reflects her effort to unite art with the natural environments she sees as well as her respect for the natural beauty of the lakes.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Aldo Tambellini: A Cultural History of Syracuse
ThINC

Price: Free
Company Gallery
110 W. Fayette St. (corner of Clinton), Syracuse

An exhibition of photographs taken by artist, avant-garde filmmaker and video pioneer, Aldo Tambellini. These photographs, taken in 1948 with a Kodak Box Camera, are among the first images he shot, when he was 18 years old. Tambellini documented the people and places of his early life in Syracuse, around Pine Street and East Genesee. These images depict the life and surroundings of the residents of the 15th Ward, a section of Syracuse of important historical significance. The 15th ward was originally a Jewish settlement. As the Jewish community started to establish itself in Syracuse, it moved up towards the South of East Genesee Street and many African Americans moved into the 15th ward.

In an effort to articulate the historical and contemporary relevance of these images, Lori Convington, a Syracuse based artist/activist and historian, will re-visit some of the locations in Tambellini's photographs to capture the contemporary locations and individuals. Along with engaging and informing text about about the individuals who once lived there and the area itself, Ms. Covington will connect a contemporary meaning for the viewer of Mr. Tambellini's historical photographs.

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

2007 Student Performance: Creatively Progressive and Culturally Significant
Onondaga Dance Institute
Featuring guest artist Aisha Mitchell

Price: $10 in advance, $15 at the door
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-449-1313 or email OnondagaDance@aol.com.

The Little Mermaid
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive adaption of the children's favorite.

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $45, $40, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $45, $40, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

1776
Appleseed Productions
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $18 regular; $15 seniors/students
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Enjoy this patriotic show in our newly air-conditioned theater!

The play itself revolves around the actions of our nation's Founding Fathers from May 8 to July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress. At issue is America's independence and in that the very future of the colonies. John Adams, delegate from Massachusetts, is the most vocal of the very proponents for American Independence. The play follows the struggle over the creation and ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Adams, and his allies Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, conspire, cajole, compromise, and intimidate their fellow delegates to vote for independence. Opposing them are the Loyalists, led by Jon Dickinson and Edward Rutledge, who all have their own reasons to oppose breaking from Mother England. Though the internal politics of the Continental Congress is the main plot of the play, the heart of the show are the exchanges between John Adams and his wife Abigail. Unknown to most audience members, this was one of the great loves in American history. Abigail, stranded at the family farm in Braintree, and John stranded among quibbling congressmen in Philadelphia long to be together but both feel that the heavy weight of history and destiny require them to be apart. Their only solace are their letters to each other which are portrayed in their scenes together. Book by Peter Stone, music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards.

Read a review!

Lowdown Lies
Armory Square Playwrights

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

Lowdown Lies is a full-length, non-musical comedy written by Post-Standard humor columnist Jeff Kramer, about the mess a man creates after backing out of a vasectomy without telling his wife.

Read a Review!

Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Aubry Ludington, director

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

The fashion for transforming movies into stage musicals may well have hit rock bottom with Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical, an adaptation of the '70s pornographic movie. Calling it a musical is going a bit far. It is closer to an extended revue skit, a scrappy, smutty spoof of a porn movie that strips out the hardcore, replacing it with musical numbers suggestive of the acts taking place. The plot and dialogue that remain are, to say the least, flaccid. Debbie Benton, typical of all-American teens, is "saving herself for marriage" and dreaming of becoming a football cheerleader. Accepted for the Texas Cowgirls squad, she has only two weeks to earn the fare to Dallas. An after-school job paying $2.90 an hour won't cover it, and her boss suggests other ways in which to serve him. Each time, she sings, she is "Another Ten Dollars Closer to Dallas." Her girlfriends join in and their company, Teen Services, has no difficulty finding men willing to pay for services rendered. The songs, by Andrew Sherman, are bright and peppy, with one or two nice ballads such as "Small Town Girl" and "God Must Love a Fool" that would be worthy of a real musical. For the most part, though, they are there to serve as a musical pointers to the sex content - ditties such as "The Dildo Rag," performed by the proprietor of a candle shop (a Mr. Hardwick, of course) and "Dallas I'm Coming," as poignant a song about being deflowered as you've ever heard.

No one under 18 will be admitted.

Read a Review!

Lucky Stiff
The Talent Company
Sharee Lemos, director

Price: $25 regular, $22 students/seniors, $14 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Lucky Stiff, a zany, offbeat and hilarious musical murder mystery by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once On This Island, My Favorite Year, Ragtime), concerns Harry Witherspoon whose dreary existence is turned upside down by being named in his Uncle Tony Hendon's will. If he agrees to fulfill the convoluted terms of the will, including taking his dead uncle on his dream vacation to Monte Carlo (a la "Weekend at Bernie's"), Harry stands to inherit $6 million. If terms are not carried out to the letter of the will, the inheritance reverts to Tony's favorite charity, the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn, whose administrator, Annabel Glick, keeps a watchful eye on Harry's every move. Meanwhile, Rita LaPorta discovers that her lover, casino manager Tony Hendon, has left his nephew the money they embezzled from Rita's casino owner husband. To help recover the money, Rita kidnaps her brother Vinnie DeRuzzio and off they go to Monte Carlo. Added into the Monte Carlo melee are Luigi Gaudi, a sinister looking man who seems to have a keen interest in Harry's activities, and an assortment of more than 24 characters all portrayed by a quartet of actors. Join Harry, the corpse, and all the other zany characters on a vacation of a lifetime!

Read a Review!

Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Aubry Ludington, director

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

The fashion for transforming movies into stage musicals may well have hit rock bottom with Debbie Does Dallas, The Musical, an adaptation of the '70s pornographic movie. Calling it a musical is going a bit far. It is closer to an extended revue skit, a scrappy, smutty spoof of a porn movie that strips out the hardcore, replacing it with musical numbers suggestive of the acts taking place. The plot and dialogue that remain are, to say the least, flaccid. Debbie Benton, typical of all-American teens, is "saving herself for marriage" and dreaming of becoming a football cheerleader. Accepted for the Texas Cowgirls squad, she has only two weeks to earn the fare to Dallas. An after-school job paying $2.90 an hour won't cover it, and her boss suggests other ways in which to serve him. Each time, she sings, she is "Another Ten Dollars Closer to Dallas." Her girlfriends join in and their company, Teen Services, has no difficulty finding men willing to pay for services rendered. The songs, by Andrew Sherman, are bright and peppy, with one or two nice ballads such as "Small Town Girl" and "God Must Love a Fool" that would be worthy of a real musical. For the most part, though, they are there to serve as a musical pointers to the sex content - ditties such as "The Dildo Rag," performed by the proprietor of a candle shop (a Mr. Hardwick, of course) and "Dallas I'm Coming," as poignant a song about being deflowered as you've ever heard.

No one under 18 will be admitted.

Read a Review!

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Lakescapes: Selected Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie
Lucas Gallery

Lucas Gallery
33 Jordan St., Skaneateles

Karen Thomas-Lillie is an artist and designer with a degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, who creates impressionistic landscapes of the Finger Lakes using oilbar on panels. Her aesthetic focuses on expanses, edges, distance, fields, drumlins, water and sky. Her work reflects her effort to unite art with the natural environments she sees as well as her respect for the natural beauty of the lakes.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Survivor's Art: Images of Hope & Healing
Everson Museum of Art

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

Survivor's Art is an exhibition initiated by Vera House, a community organization created to assist families in crises related to domestic and sexual violence. As part of their project, The Art of Caring, Vera House brings together gifted artists and a caring community. The exhibition offers hope and healing and celebrates the joy of the arts in our lives.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

2007 Student Performance: Creatively Progressive and Culturally Significant
Onondaga Dance Institute
Featuring guest artist Aisha Mitchell

Price: $10 in advance, $15 at the door
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-449-1313 or email OnondagaDance@aol.com.

Theatre Pipe Organ Pops Concert
Syracuse Wurlitzer
Featuring Joe Donohue

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

Buffalo's Joe Donohue will be performing at the world-famous Syracuse Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ. He will present a wide array of musical selections of all types that appeal to all audiences.

1776
Appleseed Productions
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $18 regular; $15 seniors/students
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Enjoy this patriotic show in our newly air-conditioned theater!

The play itself revolves around the actions of our nation's Founding Fathers from May 8 to July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress. At issue is America's independence and in that the very future of the colonies. John Adams, delegate from Massachusetts, is the most vocal of the very proponents for American Independence. The play follows the struggle over the creation and ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Adams, and his allies Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, conspire, cajole, compromise, and intimidate their fellow delegates to vote for independence. Opposing them are the Loyalists, led by Jon Dickinson and Edward Rutledge, who all have their own reasons to oppose breaking from Mother England. Though the internal politics of the Continental Congress is the main plot of the play, the heart of the show are the exchanges between John Adams and his wife Abigail. Unknown to most audience members, this was one of the great loves in American history. Abigail, stranded at the family farm in Braintree, and John stranded among quibbling congressmen in Philadelphia long to be together but both feel that the heavy weight of history and destiny require them to be apart. Their only solace are their letters to each other which are portrayed in their scenes together. Book by Peter Stone, music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards.

Read a review!

Lowdown Lies
Armory Square Playwrights

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

Lowdown Lies is a full-length, non-musical comedy written by Post-Standard humor columnist Jeff Kramer, about the mess a man creates after backing out of a vasectomy without telling his wife.

Read a Review!

Lucky Stiff
The Talent Company
Sharee Lemos, director

Price: $25 regular, $22 students/seniors, $14 children 12 and under
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Lucky Stiff, a zany, offbeat and hilarious musical murder mystery by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once On This Island, My Favorite Year, Ragtime), concerns Harry Witherspoon whose dreary existence is turned upside down by being named in his Uncle Tony Hendon's will. If he agrees to fulfill the convoluted terms of the will, including taking his dead uncle on his dream vacation to Monte Carlo (a la "Weekend at Bernie's"), Harry stands to inherit $6 million. If terms are not carried out to the letter of the will, the inheritance reverts to Tony's favorite charity, the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn, whose administrator, Annabel Glick, keeps a watchful eye on Harry's every move. Meanwhile, Rita LaPorta discovers that her lover, casino manager Tony Hendon, has left his nephew the money they embezzled from Rita's casino owner husband. To help recover the money, Rita kidnaps her brother Vinnie DeRuzzio and off they go to Monte Carlo. Added into the Monte Carlo melee are Luigi Gaudi, a sinister looking man who seems to have a keen interest in Harry's activities, and an assortment of more than 24 characters all portrayed by a quartet of actors. Join Harry, the corpse, and all the other zany characters on a vacation of a lifetime!

Read a Review!

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $45, $40, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $40, $35, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

Monday, June 25, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, arts activist
Partners for Arts Education

Price: $50 regular, $15 students and educators
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Partners for Arts Education (PAE) is proud to bring international youth arts leader Marc Bamuthi Joseph for a stunning performance that blends spoken word, drama, dance, and his experiences as an arts educator.

His performance is the highlight of an evening celebrating CNY arts-in-education partnerships and the Culture, Community and Education research project. The performance benefits PAE, which funds arts-in-education partnerships in Central New York and throughout New York State.

The 6:00 pm reception celebrates this year's arts education partnerships in CNY, and includes recognition of arts-in-education heroes for 2006-07. The performance begins at 7:30 pm.

Through movement and poetic language, Mr. Joseph draws his audience into the classroom experience, bringing the audience into the thoughts, responses, frustrations, and miracles of both students and teachers as they encounter the arts and how the arts influence lives. The Seattle Times named him their "cutting-edge performer of the year," and the New York Times declared his work to be "eloquent...seamless...and remarkable."

Mr. Joseph is Artistic Director for the Living Word Project and Program Director for Youth Speaks. Through the spoken word medium, he leads students through a process of examining their world and the issues that are important to them and turning their perspectives into meaningful expression. His mission to be an agent for social change fuels much of his work.

Tickets are available online at www.arts4ed.org, or by calling the PAE office at 315-234-9911.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Spark Contemporary Art Space
The Evens

Price: $5
Spark Contemporary Art Space
1005 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Evens -- on tour from D.C., featuring Amy Farina (The Warmers) and Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, Minor Threat.)

For more information, phone 315-218-5483.

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $40, $35, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Visual Arts Showcase #59
CNY Arts

Price: Free
WCNY
415 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Showcase features the work of area artists in a juried show. This season's work was selected
by Jennifer Pepper, Director of the Cazenovia College Gallery, and Wendy Harris, a working artist from Syracuse University.

In the Blind Spot of a War: Images from the West Bank by photographer Stephen Shaner
The Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Stephen Shaner, a Skaneateles native and former newspaper photojournalist, is currently working on a long-term documentary project in Israel and the Palestinian Territories which he began in 2002. The black-and-white photographs on display highlight Shaner's ongoing exploration of rural Palestinian villages existing in close proximity to Jewish settlements and outposts in the southern West Bank. Largely ignored in the mainstream media, these tiny communities are on the verge of extinction due to land confiscation, shifting borders, violence, and economic constraints.

Art from the CNY Region of the National League of American Pen Women

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

Works by 15 award-winning artists will be on display.

Central New York Book Arts
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Central New York Book Arts is an exhibition that features book works created by regional book artists, including students at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and Printmaking 552 in the School of Art and Design, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at Syracuse University.

The exhibitors are Jennifer Betton, Nicole Blum, Carol Ceraldi, Leigh Craven, Tijana Djordjevic, Diane Fine, Jessica Ginsberg, Beverly Hettig, Zebadiah Keneally, Sue Huggins Leopard, Robert LoMascolo, Conor McGrann, Ellen Nanni, Zoe Nementz, Shalini Patel, Bertha Rogers, Jamie Shoneman, Jane Tam, Robert Walp, Cynthia Wang, Wells College Book Arts Center, and Craig Wischerath.

The 22 works in the exhibition illustrate a wide range of book structures, including sewn books, accordions, and sculptural works using such materials as clay, cloth, paper, leather, and parchment. Techniques used for text and imagery include letterpress printing, woodcuts, silk-screen, laser/inkjet, calligraphic, and combinations of these techniques.

Bag-It: Works By Lori Crawford
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit is based on the "Brown Paper Bag Test," which dealt with the complexion of one's skin and whether it was lighter or darker than a brown paper bag. The works in the exhibition speak of the biases faced by each of the artist's subjects. The works offer a strong commentary on issues of prejudice faced every day in our modern society. The artist writes, "By creating images directly onto actual paper bags I attempt to bring the viewer face to face with the ignorance of judging others by his/her hue or race, weight, age, religion, sexuality, etc." Lori Crawford is an Associate Professor of Art at Delaware State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Works of George Mayocole
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibition features vibrant, abstract, mixed media works on paper by this New York City-based artist.

The Fathers' Project: Ellen Blalock
Community Folk Art Center

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

A portrait of teen fathers and their children, told through photographs, video and audio presentations.

Illuminate the Arts: Portraits By Brantley Carroll
Community Folk Art Center

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

This exhibit contains photographs taken during the Illuminate the Arts Winter Break Camp at the Community Folk Art Center in February 2007. The portraits are of participants in the camp. Brantley Carroll is a self-taught photographer. He has taught courses in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University as well as at Community Darkrooms. He has received grants from Light Work and the New York Foundation For the Arts. He has been a commercial photographer in the Syracuse area for 15 years.

Photographs by Ben Gest
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Robert B. Menschel Media Center
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Gest's photographs depict people in moments of deep private thought. The figures appear emotionally removed from their environment as if withdrawing from a public self. The work focuses on the way who we are can change when we are in a group. Although the subjects are alone in the photographs, the presence of others is implied. The images depict people in the last moments of being in their own world before seeing people, or going somewhere where others will be around. These are the last breaths and the last seconds of personal time before the subjects put on a public face and adopt the persona that they use while in a group of people.

To create these images, Gest combines numerous photographs into seamless final compositions using digital technology. Each image may consist of twenty or more separate photographs taken from various vantage points. The visually surprising images direct the viewer in the construction of everyday narratives.

Diane Menzies/Jane Daroskikh: Painting and Sculpture
Redhouse

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

Local artist Janie Darovskikh, lives in Skaneateles and is a figurative artist working in traditional sculpting methods such as carving, clay and wax modeling, plaster and bronze casting. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants, the Suomalainen Perustus Grant, support from the New York Foundation on the Arts and numerous other awards. She exhibits in the United States and internationally. Her art has taken her to Kulusuk, Greenland; the Ural Mountains of Russia; Yangshuo, China; and to Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia. Jane is passionate about Nordic mythology, cultural exchange and her belief in art as an international language. "The process I use involves a constantly evolving search to learn, grow, exchange, feel and create. May the work tell a story of an adventure, a feeling, a dream or a journey."

Diane Menzies, also a local artist, lives in Jamesville, NY. The drawings selected for this exhibition are from a series entitled "The Passing." These mystifying drawings served as a cathartic expression of the joys and sorrows Menzies experienced while a hospice attendant for those dying of AIDS. When the works were exhibited at the Jean Cocteau Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reviewer Diane Armitage wrote: "The gothic tension that Menzies creates might seem overwrought if not for the fact that her environmental concerns and melancholy response is right on target. Her psychological distress is not a bid for personal attention. It is, rather, a transpersonal sublimation of individual identity in favor of an emotional identification with torn bark, barren ground, and polluted air and water. Because of the careful way that Menzies limits her visual elements and establishes an air of stark abandonment, her mood of intense grieving appears as more than empty rhetoric."

Networked Nature
The Warehouse Gallery

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

"Networked Nature" uses innovative technology to combine art, science and politics. The group exhibition inventively explores the meaning and representation of "nature," from the perspective of networked culture. The featured works employ various scientific processes and locative media, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and robotics, and take the form of installations, video and sound art. Together, they make new contributions to the discourses of extant genres, such as sculpture, earth works and landscape imagery, while also demonstrating the scientific beauty and complexity of electronic and digital art.

"Networked Nature" was organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator for Rhizome, a leading new media organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways.

Women at Work: Members of the Art Students League of New York
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition of paintings, prints and drawings from the University's permanent collection examines how Modernism and the formation of the Art Students League impacted the influx of women into the field and their development as professional and influential artists.

The selection of work begins with artists who were directly influenced by the 1913 Amory Show such as Peggy Bacon, Maria Wickey, and Isabel Bishop. The exhibition concludes with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, showing works by Jan Gelb, Minna Citron, Terry Haass, and Helen Frankenthaler. These works illustrate American art's stylistic evolution during the period. Early drawings like Harriet Frishmuth's "Study, reclining nude," reveal a classical, academic structure. This type of work gave way in the 1920s to the gritty and modern "realism" of Isabel Bishop's "Sleeping Man." After World War II, Abstract Expressionism began to take over, as seen in Minna
Citron's "Men Seldom Make Passes...," and later in the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Weekend and evening Galleries 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.

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The Collector's Gene: Passion, Devotion and Learning uses a diverse selection of nearly 100 objects from the permanent collection to illustrate the collecting interests of Cloud Wampler, Colonel John Fox, Dr. Henry and Nancy Rosin, and Ruth Reeves. Henry Rosin says, "My collecting began as a child when I'd gather up the bottle caps under the stands at semi-professional baseball games in Brooklyn." He later turned his interests towards Japan where, as an Air Force flight surgeon, he accumulated a large group of Japanese sword fittings and hand colored photographs. The three other individuals profiled in the exhibition share similar experiences. Cloud Wampler, best known locally as the past Chairman of Carrier Corporation, was passionate about master prints, John Fox, stationed in Korea with the Army, insisted that the best way to learn about Korean culture was to go out and visit shopkeepers and merchants. Ruth Reeves went to India in 1956 on a Fulbright fellowship to study local brass casting techniques. She collected a large number of brass objects and a rare group of clay ceremonial sculptures. The university saw the educational potential in the collection and agreed to purchase her collection in 1963.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Defining Moments: American Masterworks from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This exhibition illustrates the development of American Art from the middle of the 19th century and through the 20th century. The selection of paintings, prints and sculpture in this exhibit show how art in the U.S. progressed out of Eurocentric visual and cultural ideals to form a purely American aesthetic culture. Louis Comfort Tiffany married the French Art Nouveau style with the American ingenuity of the light bulb to design masterpieces such as the Murano Design Lamp (1893-95). During the 20th century, the U.S. became a major exponent of Modernism, with artists like Rico Lebrun and Yasuo Kuniyoshi leading the way. Lebrun's "Woman with Arms over Head" (1962-63) reflects his spontaneity and experimental philosophy, while the bright, acidic colors in Kuniyoshi's "Forbidden Fruit" (1950) exemplify the prevailing aesthetic current of the New York School shortly after World War II.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

Water and Light: The Etchings and Drypoints of James MacNeill Whistler
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

Water and Light is a focused examination of two of James MacNeill Whistler's favorite subjects. The American expatriate was fascinated with water and the effects of light. A highlight of his career as a printmaker were his famous Venetian "nocturnes" that so effectively captured the mood and atmosphere of Italy's famous floating city.

The strength of these images is Whistler's unique talent at blending the reflections of the water in the canals with the natural light that suffused the city. Later in his career he journeyed to Amsterdam where he again combined water and light into images that captured that city's particular flavor.

Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 (VIP) 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.

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art
Everson Museum of Art

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

African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art, an exhibition organized by the Longyear Museum of Anthropology at Colgate University, includes 85 religious objects, most of them from the 20th century, such as figures, masks and headdresses, divination trays, staffs, vessels, and shrine furniture. Much of the art figures in the veneration of divinities and ancestors, and the control of supernatural powers associated with nature, medicine, and witchcraft.

Tom Mazzullo Drawings
Everson Museum of Art

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

Tom Mazzullo is quietly turning the age-old idea of still-life upside down. In Tom Mazzullo Drawings, fruits and vegetables no longer rest among plentiful pre-arranged settings atop tablecloths dressed with lacey doilies and wrinkles that fall gracefully to the floor. There are no half-filled water glasses for light to dance in or mirrored reflections to play tricks on the eye.

The objects are meticulously drawn to scale, an invitation to move in for a closer look. The delicate, silverpoint lines become more apparent, reflecting light as one's eye wanders fervently over the layered network of cross-hatching where every line counts. Mazzullo wants the viewer to "concentrate on one subject, one idea at a time." The artist feels he has succeeded when "a drawing's pale, perfect surface elicits a liveliness and presence greater than the simplicity of its construction."

Tom Mazzullo Drawings, which includes 20 silverpoint and four conté crayon drawings, is the artist's first solo museum exhibition.

Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $45, $40, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

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Menopause the Musical
Syracuse Stage

Price: $40, $35, $22 (adults); $20 (ages 18 and under)
Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Menopause The Musical brings together four women (a Power Woman, Earth Mother, Soap Star and an Iowa Housewife) at a NYC Bloomingdale's lingerie sale, who have nothing in common but a black lace bra and hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex, plastic surgery and more! Menopause The Musical joyfully parodies 25 of the top "baby boomer" songs of the '60s and '70s celebrating women who are or will be experiencing The Change.

Read a review!