Saturday, December 22, 2007

Syracuse Builds: After the Master Plan
Syracuse University School of Architecture

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

The exhibition presents 13 architectural and landscape projects currently in development for the Syracuse University campus and the city of Syracuse, including a new residence hall on the main campus by Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems headquarters designed by Toshiko Mori Architect, and a community InfoCenter for the Near Westside Initiative project in Syracuse designed by Syracuse Architecture professors Tim Stenson and Scott Ruff.

Off the Wall Show and Sale
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Unlike most gallery shows, this Associated Artists sale allows everyone the opportunity to purchase fine original artwork that can be taken home immediately, and so it's "Off The Wall". A portion of each sale helps support the Manlius Library general fund and the remainder subsidizes various community activities and educational programs of Associated Artists. Please join us and enjoy the creations of the many talented and well-known members of this group. This is a wonderful chance to find one-of-a-kind gifts!

Wrapping Up the Season
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Featuring mixed media by Amy E. Bartell, monoprints and mixed media by Tara Hogan and works by the Syracuse Ceramic Guild.

Amy E. Bartell is showing a new series of mixed media works titled "Archeological Memoir." In her artist statement she describes the body of work as "a glimpse into memory and a quest for directional clues amidst the maps, signs, mysteries, scraps of writing and the compass of magnetic north." Bartell's artwork can be found in the collections of numerous individuals and organizations including Carleton College, California State University, Syracuse University and SUNY New York. She is known as a mural artist around the country and as the former Gallery Coordinator of Delavan Art Gallery. Currently, she is a faculty member of the art department at SUNY Oswego. Bartell's approach in her new series raises the question "What do we see when we scan the horizons of our lives? Where do we dig; does 'X' really mark the spot?"

Tara Hogan is exhibiting a collection of monoprints and mixed media from a new series of work titled "Conversations With Nature." The body of work conveys a dialogue between humans, animals and nature inspired by an interest in environmental consciousness. Hogan has been a graphic designer since earning her BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University eight years ago. Her art has been published in American Illustration, CMYK Magazine, Domino Magazine online and on the back of Bear Magazine. About her distinct style, Hogan explains, "I have a loving appreciation for nature's intricate beauty combined with modern urban style."

Syracuse Ceramic Guild's exhibition features ceramics by 10 its members. Selected works include eclectic ceramics by Lory and Walt Black, porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares, Raku sculpture by Dona Flaherty, Raku pottery by Dee Gage, abstract sculptural stoneware by Jane T. Gillett, ceramic story boxes by Amy Patricia Komar, "Biomorpheus," a body of abstract works by Ron Kalinoski, high-fired porcelain and stoneware by Bobbi Lamb and soda fired works by Steven Pilcher. The Syracuse Ceramic Guild, established in 1947, is a not-for-profit organization of potters dedicated to the promotion of awareness and understanding of the ceramic medium.

R. Bingham Morris: Contemporary Acrylic Paintings
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Paying Attention
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Pastels and oils by Nicora Gangi and glass works by Alex Andreani.

Read a review!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

Under One Roof Reprise
Everson Museum of Art

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

Juxtapose artwork created by artists whose common thread is a shared studio/classroom space and expect the unexpected. This happened in 2004, when a group of women who work and teach at Syracuse University's ComArt building joined together for an exhibition entitled Under One Roof at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. This was the first time the artists - three generations of students/teachers - had shown together, yet their work spoke of seamless connections and closer ties than one might assume.

Nine artists have reunited for the current exhibition Under One Roof Reprise. Their situations have changed slightly but their work once again has come together in surprising and interesting ways. Abby Goodman and Kim Carr Valdez earned their MFA degrees and moved to Brooklyn, while Laura Ledbetter now lives in Philadelphia. Anne Beffel, Ann Clarke, Mary Giehl, Gail Hoffman, and Jude Lewis continue to teach in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, while Claire Harootunian, although officially retired, continues to teach, travel, and explore the art of found objects.

The artists' processes are diverse, including large-scale installations, found object collaboration, casting, kinetics, video, and hand-tooled objects. Emphasis is placed on the creative use of materials such as fibers, metals, wood, plastics, resin, and everyday products. Each artist translates and illuminates human experience through her unique visual language and conceptual sensibility. These artists address common themes such as play, gender, identity, time, place, and most of all, memories. Mary Giehl's Ivory combines happy childhood memories of bathing with her siblings - recalling the "toys, the fun, the soap floating and the smell of Ivory" - with "those of sad and heartbreaking stories" not uncommon in today's headlines.

Gail Hoffman, a sculptor immersed in the concept of time, presents "visual metaphorical narratives, freeze-framed in a state of suspended animation" through a variety of media including bronze, plastic toys, and other found objects. Plasco Ranch (Possible Outcomes) is a minature assemblage designed in the small scale to "invite the viewer to psychologically inhabit the space." A collection of disparate objects including a bronze sheep, Santa Claus, and military vehicles has been arranged to suggest a story that is left to the viewer's imagination. A journal placed nearby offers visitors the opportunity to record their stories and suggest possible outcomes for the scene as they see it unfold. Based on viewers' comments, Hoffman will return periodically to rearrange, add, or remove objects, providing photographic documentation of the ever changing Plasco Ranch as part of the exhibit.

This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Pollock Matters
Everson Museum of Art

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

Pollock Matters, curated by art historian Ellen G. Landau of Case-Western Reserve University, explores for the first time the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his close friend, noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer, Herbert Matter.

Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the artists' interaction on their respective work. Comprising paintings, drawings, works on paper and other documentation -- including previously unseen photographs and letters -- it compares Matter's experimental abstract photos with known works by Pollock, and highlights their significant stylistic, technical and thematic connections.

Pollock Matters also showcases 24 small-scale works discovered by Herbert Matter's son, Alex Matter, in a storage facility in 2002. The paintings, although identified as "Jackson experimental works" by an inscription in Herbert Matter's hand and dated 1958 (2 years after the artist's death), have been the subject of much controversy, scientific study, scholarly analysis, and significant media attention. In the exhibition and accompanying catalog, Curator Ellen Landau thoroughly investigates questions raised by this unprecedented discovery of previously unknown works: "If Pollock did not paint a portion of the cache, who did? How many artists were involved? And, no less importantly, what was the purpose of these paintings?" The debate will, without doubt, continue beyond the exhibition and for decades to come.

16x16 Small Works Show
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Juried exhibition of selected works by local, national and international artists.

Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

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

Show and sale of original fine art and crafts.

For more information, phone 315-468-2616.

Exploring History with Art -- Onondaga County on the Move: 200 Years of Transportation
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibition will feature artwork from the OHA collection that depicts various modes of local transportation and how artists interpreted it over the last two centuries. Local teachers and students will find subjects meeting their document-based questions social studies standards within the exhibit.

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.

Impressions, a Jasper Johns Retrospective
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition of Jasper Johns' prints from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation starts with the artist's first published print in 1960, six years after Johns consciously destroyed all of his artwork. That act liberated him from "becoming" an artist to "being" an artist. Johns spent the next few years in the studio creating a body of imagery: flags, numerals, letters, and targets that flew in the face of the then popular Abstract Expressionism.

Trained briefly at the University of South Carolina, Johns moved to New York in the 1950s. In New York, he met and was influenced by a number of other artists including the composer John Cage, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg. After a visit to Philadelphia to see a Marcel Duchamp painting, Johns became very interested in the French artist's work. Duchamp had revolutionized the art world with his "readymades" - a series of found objects presented as finished works of art.

Jasper Johns' interest in process led him to printmaking. Often he would make counterpart prints
to his paintings. He explains, "My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences." For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation with an ease for repeat patterns. His work in screen printing, lithography, and etching have revolutionized the field.

Genetic Self-Portrait: Works by Gary Schneider
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The show includes 55 photo-based works that South African-born, NYC-based artist Gary Schneider produced when he was offered a chance to create a new body of work inspired by the Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP, a scientific race to uncover the mysteries of DNA, began formally in the 1990s and was completed in 2003. During that period, Schneider was able to collaborate with a number of scientists and was given access to advanced imaging systems from electron microscopes to x-ray machines.

The work in the exhibition ranges from images of his individual chromosomes made by a light microscope to panoramic dental x-rays. Schneider is known as a master photographic printer, and by combining his skill as a craftsman and selecting specimens for their aesthetic qualities, he moved beyond scientific descriptions to produce a personal portrait that asks us to consider how we are unique and where we stand on common ground.

Schneider had always been interested in alternative imaging techniques, and previous to this project he had been making images by imprinting his hands onto film emulsions. When he decided to include these prints along with the images he had been making with scientists, he realized that what he had been creating was a new kind of portrait. Ann Thomas, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, described it as a new approach that "challenges the traditional definition of the portrait, and revises our understanding of what it means to be revealed before the camera's lens."

By merging scientific accuracy with poetic resonance, Schneider has created a very personal illumination of how our individual identity is so closely linked to our broader understanding and use of the information contained in the human building blocks of our DNA. Through the personal exploration that went into creating genetic self-portrait, Schneider reveals that while we may always want to think of ourselves as more than the sum of our parts, our real promise might be found in looking at the 99 percent of ourselves we have in common with everyone else.

Read a review!

Christmas Around the World

Ste. Marie Among the Iroquois
106 Lake Dr., Liverpool

The museum will be filled with a magnificent collection of international Santas, while fully decorated trees will add to the holiday atmosphere celebrating the traditions of the season in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia and more. In addition, visitors will enjoy an enhanced display of model trains, and various local celebrities will be reading holiday stories for children. The program will feature nightly holiday entertainment with hot beverages available and the mission site may be open weather permitting. A gift shop offering unique holiday items will be open throughout the program.

Classics Series: Postcards from the Piano
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Yefim Bronfman, piano

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

Ellington Nutcracker Suite (after Tchaikovsky)
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3

Sleeping Beauty
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive version of the children's classic.

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Civic Theatre
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Bob Brown, director

Price: $33 regular; $29 students/seniors; $25 ages 12 and under
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Pat Lotito and Ken Prescott that has been delighting local audiences for years under the name A Dickens of a Christmas. For the first time, it has been renamed to assume the title of the Dickens work on which it's based.

Read a Review!

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Civic Theatre
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Bob Brown, director

Price: $33 regular; $29 students/seniors; $25 ages 12 and under
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Pat Lotito and Ken Prescott that has been delighting local audiences for years under the name A Dickens of a Christmas. For the first time, it has been renamed to assume the title of the Dickens work on which it's based.

Read a Review!

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Syracuse Builds: After the Master Plan
Syracuse University School of Architecture

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

The exhibition presents 13 architectural and landscape projects currently in development for the Syracuse University campus and the city of Syracuse, including a new residence hall on the main campus by Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems headquarters designed by Toshiko Mori Architect, and a community InfoCenter for the Near Westside Initiative project in Syracuse designed by Syracuse Architecture professors Tim Stenson and Scott Ruff.

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

Train of Thought: Serial Images from the Light Work Collection
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition features the work of five artists -- Hollis Frampton, Arnold Gassan, Peter Max Kandhola, Judy Natal, and Aaron Siskind -- all of whom generously donated either a series of prints or a portfolio of prints to the Light Work Collection. This exhibition provides us with an opportunity to investigate the artists' use of duplication and repetition to explore a single subject or idea. The images in this exhibition are produced using a variety of techniques, including photogravures, ektacolor, silver gelatin prints, and chromogenic prints.

Artist Showcase: Images by Brian Arnold
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition is comprised of recent acquisitions to the Light Work Collection that come from multiple series that Ithaca-based photographer Brian Arnold has been working on. He utilizes traditional black-and-white processes, remaining committed to what he refers to as "the alchemy of photography." All of his photographs are unique silver gelatin prints, toned with a combination of selenium, sulfur, and gold chloride. Arnold also creates unique limited edition books, two of which are included in this exhibition. He teaches photography and electronic arts at the New York State College of Art and Engineering at Alfred University.

Angelika Rinnhofer: Sammelsurium
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition, featuring the work of German-born artist Angelika Rinnhofer, will feature her large-format color prints from three related series, Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht. She describes her series Menschenkunde as portraits that combine facts, beauty, and irony in a Renaissance-style. Rinnhofer's series Felsenfest continues the same aesthetics in its re-interpretations of martyrs and saints into a modern context. Rinnhofer remembers being frightened as a child when viewing the horrific images of tortured saints commonly found in churches in her hometown Nürnberg, Germany. She now casts a critical eye, juxtaposing religious figures with modern-looking scientists. Seelensucht takes Rinnhofer back to the traditional single-figure portrait, also capturing the themes of martyrs.

Angelika lives in Beacon, NY. She is a commercial photographer and artist. She is the recipient of a Kodak European Gold Award and received a fellowship in photography from the Dutchess County Arts Council. She participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in 2005.

Read a review!

Exploring History with Art -- Onondaga County on the Move: 200 Years of Transportation
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibition will feature artwork from the OHA collection that depicts various modes of local transportation and how artists interpreted it over the last two centuries. Local teachers and students will find subjects meeting their document-based questions social studies standards within the exhibit.

Impressions, a Jasper Johns Retrospective
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition of Jasper Johns' prints from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation starts with the artist's first published print in 1960, six years after Johns consciously destroyed all of his artwork. That act liberated him from "becoming" an artist to "being" an artist. Johns spent the next few years in the studio creating a body of imagery: flags, numerals, letters, and targets that flew in the face of the then popular Abstract Expressionism.

Trained briefly at the University of South Carolina, Johns moved to New York in the 1950s. In New York, he met and was influenced by a number of other artists including the composer John Cage, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg. After a visit to Philadelphia to see a Marcel Duchamp painting, Johns became very interested in the French artist's work. Duchamp had revolutionized the art world with his "readymades" - a series of found objects presented as finished works of art.

Jasper Johns' interest in process led him to printmaking. Often he would make counterpart prints
to his paintings. He explains, "My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences." For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation with an ease for repeat patterns. His work in screen printing, lithography, and etching have revolutionized the field.

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.

Pollock Matters
Everson Museum of Art

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

Pollock Matters, curated by art historian Ellen G. Landau of Case-Western Reserve University, explores for the first time the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his close friend, noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer, Herbert Matter.

Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the artists' interaction on their respective work. Comprising paintings, drawings, works on paper and other documentation -- including previously unseen photographs and letters -- it compares Matter's experimental abstract photos with known works by Pollock, and highlights their significant stylistic, technical and thematic connections.

Pollock Matters also showcases 24 small-scale works discovered by Herbert Matter's son, Alex Matter, in a storage facility in 2002. The paintings, although identified as "Jackson experimental works" by an inscription in Herbert Matter's hand and dated 1958 (2 years after the artist's death), have been the subject of much controversy, scientific study, scholarly analysis, and significant media attention. In the exhibition and accompanying catalog, Curator Ellen Landau thoroughly investigates questions raised by this unprecedented discovery of previously unknown works: "If Pollock did not paint a portion of the cache, who did? How many artists were involved? And, no less importantly, what was the purpose of these paintings?" The debate will, without doubt, continue beyond the exhibition and for decades to come.

Under One Roof Reprise
Everson Museum of Art

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

Juxtapose artwork created by artists whose common thread is a shared studio/classroom space and expect the unexpected. This happened in 2004, when a group of women who work and teach at Syracuse University's ComArt building joined together for an exhibition entitled Under One Roof at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. This was the first time the artists - three generations of students/teachers - had shown together, yet their work spoke of seamless connections and closer ties than one might assume.

Nine artists have reunited for the current exhibition Under One Roof Reprise. Their situations have changed slightly but their work once again has come together in surprising and interesting ways. Abby Goodman and Kim Carr Valdez earned their MFA degrees and moved to Brooklyn, while Laura Ledbetter now lives in Philadelphia. Anne Beffel, Ann Clarke, Mary Giehl, Gail Hoffman, and Jude Lewis continue to teach in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, while Claire Harootunian, although officially retired, continues to teach, travel, and explore the art of found objects.

The artists' processes are diverse, including large-scale installations, found object collaboration, casting, kinetics, video, and hand-tooled objects. Emphasis is placed on the creative use of materials such as fibers, metals, wood, plastics, resin, and everyday products. Each artist translates and illuminates human experience through her unique visual language and conceptual sensibility. These artists address common themes such as play, gender, identity, time, place, and most of all, memories. Mary Giehl's Ivory combines happy childhood memories of bathing with her siblings - recalling the "toys, the fun, the soap floating and the smell of Ivory" - with "those of sad and heartbreaking stories" not uncommon in today's headlines.

Gail Hoffman, a sculptor immersed in the concept of time, presents "visual metaphorical narratives, freeze-framed in a state of suspended animation" through a variety of media including bronze, plastic toys, and other found objects. Plasco Ranch (Possible Outcomes) is a minature assemblage designed in the small scale to "invite the viewer to psychologically inhabit the space." A collection of disparate objects including a bronze sheep, Santa Claus, and military vehicles has been arranged to suggest a story that is left to the viewer's imagination. A journal placed nearby offers visitors the opportunity to record their stories and suggest possible outcomes for the scene as they see it unfold. Based on viewers' comments, Hoffman will return periodically to rearrange, add, or remove objects, providing photographic documentation of the ever changing Plasco Ranch as part of the exhibit.

This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Off the Wall Show and Sale
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Unlike most gallery shows, this Associated Artists sale allows everyone the opportunity to purchase fine original artwork that can be taken home immediately, and so it's "Off The Wall". A portion of each sale helps support the Manlius Library general fund and the remainder subsidizes various community activities and educational programs of Associated Artists. Please join us and enjoy the creations of the many talented and well-known members of this group. This is a wonderful chance to find one-of-a-kind gifts!

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Civic Theatre
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Bob Brown, director

Price: $33 regular; $29 students/seniors; $25 ages 12 and under
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Pat Lotito and Ken Prescott that has been delighting local audiences for years under the name A Dickens of a Christmas. For the first time, it has been renamed to assume the title of the Dickens work on which it's based.

Read a Review!

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Monday, December 24, 2007

The Never-Ending Wrong: The Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the execution for murder of two Italian anarchist laborers, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a selection of period ephemera issued by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee together with a plethora of books associated with the trial that have been published in the intervening years by Paul Avrich, Felix Frankfurter, and Eugene Lyons, among others. The exhibit features artistic expressions (cartoons, illustrations, novels, plays, poems, songs and music) inspired by the trial, including the work of Maxwell Anderson, John Dos Passos, Fred Ellis, Howard Fast, Woodie Guthrie, William Gropper, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rockwell Kent, Katherine Anne Porter, Pete Seeger, and Upton Sinclair. The story of the Sacco and Vanzetti mural by Ben Shahn on the east wall of H. B. Crouse will also be explored.

A Gala Holiday Art Exhibit
Westcott Community Center

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

Mary Stebbins Taitt: digital paintings
John "Jaw's" McGrath: pen and ink landscapes
Karen Tashkovski: paper collage
Amber Blanding: glass work
Mary Fragapane: pastel paintings and prints
Mick Mather: photographs
Kirsten Moore: acrylic and oil paintings
John Swank: photography

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

16x16 Small Works Show
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Juried exhibition of selected works by local, national and international artists.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Syracuse Builds: After the Master Plan
Syracuse University School of Architecture

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

The exhibition presents 13 architectural and landscape projects currently in development for the Syracuse University campus and the city of Syracuse, including a new residence hall on the main campus by Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems headquarters designed by Toshiko Mori Architect, and a community InfoCenter for the Near Westside Initiative project in Syracuse designed by Syracuse Architecture professors Tim Stenson and Scott Ruff.

Tango
Point of Contact Gallery

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

Tango, a large format folio published by Iris Editions in New York (1991) with eight intaglio prints by Nancy Graves and 13 pages of text by Pedro Cuperman that gaze at the aesthetics of this Latin American dance.

Tango proposes an evening of music, dance, and food transposed into videoa sort of "performance" projected into the space of the gallery where audience and art become intertwined in the field of representation.

"Graves conceived of the prints in the folio as a continued exploration of pattern in nature and as a tonal study of black and white," writes Thomas Padon in his book, Nancy Graves, Excavations in Print A Catalogue Raisonné (1996). "More than once the artist has asserted, 'There is nothing more challenging and meaningful than to make prints in black and white.' For an admitted colorist, it is ironic that the nine prints Graves has made in black and white are among her most powerful." The cryptic titles of the prints in the folio were selected by Graves from Cuperman's text for Tango. The poet speaks of the dance as a gradually unfolding ritual, stating near the conclusion, "Tango helps you find your own levels of proximity."

The Never-Ending Wrong: The Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the execution for murder of two Italian anarchist laborers, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a selection of period ephemera issued by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee together with a plethora of books associated with the trial that have been published in the intervening years by Paul Avrich, Felix Frankfurter, and Eugene Lyons, among others. The exhibit features artistic expressions (cartoons, illustrations, novels, plays, poems, songs and music) inspired by the trial, including the work of Maxwell Anderson, John Dos Passos, Fred Ellis, Howard Fast, Woodie Guthrie, William Gropper, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rockwell Kent, Katherine Anne Porter, Pete Seeger, and Upton Sinclair. The story of the Sacco and Vanzetti mural by Ben Shahn on the east wall of H. B. Crouse will also be explored.

A Gala Holiday Art Exhibit
Westcott Community Center

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

Mary Stebbins Taitt: digital paintings
John "Jaw's" McGrath: pen and ink landscapes
Karen Tashkovski: paper collage
Amber Blanding: glass work
Mary Fragapane: pastel paintings and prints
Mick Mather: photographs
Kirsten Moore: acrylic and oil paintings
John Swank: photography

Paying Attention
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Pastels and oils by Nicora Gangi and glass works by Alex Andreani.

Read a review!

Off the Wall Show and Sale
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Unlike most gallery shows, this Associated Artists sale allows everyone the opportunity to purchase fine original artwork that can be taken home immediately, and so it's "Off The Wall". A portion of each sale helps support the Manlius Library general fund and the remainder subsidizes various community activities and educational programs of Associated Artists. Please join us and enjoy the creations of the many talented and well-known members of this group. This is a wonderful chance to find one-of-a-kind gifts!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

Artist Showcase: Images by Brian Arnold
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition is comprised of recent acquisitions to the Light Work Collection that come from multiple series that Ithaca-based photographer Brian Arnold has been working on. He utilizes traditional black-and-white processes, remaining committed to what he refers to as "the alchemy of photography." All of his photographs are unique silver gelatin prints, toned with a combination of selenium, sulfur, and gold chloride. Arnold also creates unique limited edition books, two of which are included in this exhibition. He teaches photography and electronic arts at the New York State College of Art and Engineering at Alfred University.

Train of Thought: Serial Images from the Light Work Collection
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition features the work of five artists -- Hollis Frampton, Arnold Gassan, Peter Max Kandhola, Judy Natal, and Aaron Siskind -- all of whom generously donated either a series of prints or a portfolio of prints to the Light Work Collection. This exhibition provides us with an opportunity to investigate the artists' use of duplication and repetition to explore a single subject or idea. The images in this exhibition are produced using a variety of techniques, including photogravures, ektacolor, silver gelatin prints, and chromogenic prints.

Angelika Rinnhofer: Sammelsurium
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition, featuring the work of German-born artist Angelika Rinnhofer, will feature her large-format color prints from three related series, Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht. She describes her series Menschenkunde as portraits that combine facts, beauty, and irony in a Renaissance-style. Rinnhofer's series Felsenfest continues the same aesthetics in its re-interpretations of martyrs and saints into a modern context. Rinnhofer remembers being frightened as a child when viewing the horrific images of tortured saints commonly found in churches in her hometown Nürnberg, Germany. She now casts a critical eye, juxtaposing religious figures with modern-looking scientists. Seelensucht takes Rinnhofer back to the traditional single-figure portrait, also capturing the themes of martyrs.

Angelika lives in Beacon, NY. She is a commercial photographer and artist. She is the recipient of a Kodak European Gold Award and received a fellowship in photography from the Dutchess County Arts Council. She participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in 2005.

Read a review!

16x16 Small Works Show
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Juried exhibition of selected works by local, national and international artists.

Exploring History with Art -- Onondaga County on the Move: 200 Years of Transportation
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibition will feature artwork from the OHA collection that depicts various modes of local transportation and how artists interpreted it over the last two centuries. Local teachers and students will find subjects meeting their document-based questions social studies standards within the exhibit.

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.

Impressions, a Jasper Johns Retrospective
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition of Jasper Johns' prints from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation starts with the artist's first published print in 1960, six years after Johns consciously destroyed all of his artwork. That act liberated him from "becoming" an artist to "being" an artist. Johns spent the next few years in the studio creating a body of imagery: flags, numerals, letters, and targets that flew in the face of the then popular Abstract Expressionism.

Trained briefly at the University of South Carolina, Johns moved to New York in the 1950s. In New York, he met and was influenced by a number of other artists including the composer John Cage, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg. After a visit to Philadelphia to see a Marcel Duchamp painting, Johns became very interested in the French artist's work. Duchamp had revolutionized the art world with his "readymades" - a series of found objects presented as finished works of art.

Jasper Johns' interest in process led him to printmaking. Often he would make counterpart prints
to his paintings. He explains, "My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences." For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation with an ease for repeat patterns. His work in screen printing, lithography, and etching have revolutionized the field.

Pollock Matters
Everson Museum of Art

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

Pollock Matters, curated by art historian Ellen G. Landau of Case-Western Reserve University, explores for the first time the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his close friend, noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer, Herbert Matter.

Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the artists' interaction on their respective work. Comprising paintings, drawings, works on paper and other documentation -- including previously unseen photographs and letters -- it compares Matter's experimental abstract photos with known works by Pollock, and highlights their significant stylistic, technical and thematic connections.

Pollock Matters also showcases 24 small-scale works discovered by Herbert Matter's son, Alex Matter, in a storage facility in 2002. The paintings, although identified as "Jackson experimental works" by an inscription in Herbert Matter's hand and dated 1958 (2 years after the artist's death), have been the subject of much controversy, scientific study, scholarly analysis, and significant media attention. In the exhibition and accompanying catalog, Curator Ellen Landau thoroughly investigates questions raised by this unprecedented discovery of previously unknown works: "If Pollock did not paint a portion of the cache, who did? How many artists were involved? And, no less importantly, what was the purpose of these paintings?" The debate will, without doubt, continue beyond the exhibition and for decades to come.

Under One Roof Reprise
Everson Museum of Art

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

Juxtapose artwork created by artists whose common thread is a shared studio/classroom space and expect the unexpected. This happened in 2004, when a group of women who work and teach at Syracuse University's ComArt building joined together for an exhibition entitled Under One Roof at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. This was the first time the artists - three generations of students/teachers - had shown together, yet their work spoke of seamless connections and closer ties than one might assume.

Nine artists have reunited for the current exhibition Under One Roof Reprise. Their situations have changed slightly but their work once again has come together in surprising and interesting ways. Abby Goodman and Kim Carr Valdez earned their MFA degrees and moved to Brooklyn, while Laura Ledbetter now lives in Philadelphia. Anne Beffel, Ann Clarke, Mary Giehl, Gail Hoffman, and Jude Lewis continue to teach in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, while Claire Harootunian, although officially retired, continues to teach, travel, and explore the art of found objects.

The artists' processes are diverse, including large-scale installations, found object collaboration, casting, kinetics, video, and hand-tooled objects. Emphasis is placed on the creative use of materials such as fibers, metals, wood, plastics, resin, and everyday products. Each artist translates and illuminates human experience through her unique visual language and conceptual sensibility. These artists address common themes such as play, gender, identity, time, place, and most of all, memories. Mary Giehl's Ivory combines happy childhood memories of bathing with her siblings - recalling the "toys, the fun, the soap floating and the smell of Ivory" - with "those of sad and heartbreaking stories" not uncommon in today's headlines.

Gail Hoffman, a sculptor immersed in the concept of time, presents "visual metaphorical narratives, freeze-framed in a state of suspended animation" through a variety of media including bronze, plastic toys, and other found objects. Plasco Ranch (Possible Outcomes) is a minature assemblage designed in the small scale to "invite the viewer to psychologically inhabit the space." A collection of disparate objects including a bronze sheep, Santa Claus, and military vehicles has been arranged to suggest a story that is left to the viewer's imagination. A journal placed nearby offers visitors the opportunity to record their stories and suggest possible outcomes for the scene as they see it unfold. Based on viewers' comments, Hoffman will return periodically to rearrange, add, or remove objects, providing photographic documentation of the ever changing Plasco Ranch as part of the exhibit.

This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Genetic Self-Portrait: Works by Gary Schneider
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The show includes 55 photo-based works that South African-born, NYC-based artist Gary Schneider produced when he was offered a chance to create a new body of work inspired by the Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP, a scientific race to uncover the mysteries of DNA, began formally in the 1990s and was completed in 2003. During that period, Schneider was able to collaborate with a number of scientists and was given access to advanced imaging systems from electron microscopes to x-ray machines.

The work in the exhibition ranges from images of his individual chromosomes made by a light microscope to panoramic dental x-rays. Schneider is known as a master photographic printer, and by combining his skill as a craftsman and selecting specimens for their aesthetic qualities, he moved beyond scientific descriptions to produce a personal portrait that asks us to consider how we are unique and where we stand on common ground.

Schneider had always been interested in alternative imaging techniques, and previous to this project he had been making images by imprinting his hands onto film emulsions. When he decided to include these prints along with the images he had been making with scientists, he realized that what he had been creating was a new kind of portrait. Ann Thomas, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, described it as a new approach that "challenges the traditional definition of the portrait, and revises our understanding of what it means to be revealed before the camera's lens."

By merging scientific accuracy with poetic resonance, Schneider has created a very personal illumination of how our individual identity is so closely linked to our broader understanding and use of the information contained in the human building blocks of our DNA. Through the personal exploration that went into creating genetic self-portrait, Schneider reveals that while we may always want to think of ourselves as more than the sum of our parts, our real promise might be found in looking at the 99 percent of ourselves we have in common with everyone else.

Read a review!

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Syracuse Builds: After the Master Plan
Syracuse University School of Architecture

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

The exhibition presents 13 architectural and landscape projects currently in development for the Syracuse University campus and the city of Syracuse, including a new residence hall on the main campus by Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems headquarters designed by Toshiko Mori Architect, and a community InfoCenter for the Near Westside Initiative project in Syracuse designed by Syracuse Architecture professors Tim Stenson and Scott Ruff.

Tango
Point of Contact Gallery

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

Tango, a large format folio published by Iris Editions in New York (1991) with eight intaglio prints by Nancy Graves and 13 pages of text by Pedro Cuperman that gaze at the aesthetics of this Latin American dance.

Tango proposes an evening of music, dance, and food transposed into videoa sort of "performance" projected into the space of the gallery where audience and art become intertwined in the field of representation.

"Graves conceived of the prints in the folio as a continued exploration of pattern in nature and as a tonal study of black and white," writes Thomas Padon in his book, Nancy Graves, Excavations in Print A Catalogue Raisonné (1996). "More than once the artist has asserted, 'There is nothing more challenging and meaningful than to make prints in black and white.' For an admitted colorist, it is ironic that the nine prints Graves has made in black and white are among her most powerful." The cryptic titles of the prints in the folio were selected by Graves from Cuperman's text for Tango. The poet speaks of the dance as a gradually unfolding ritual, stating near the conclusion, "Tango helps you find your own levels of proximity."

The Never-Ending Wrong: The Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the execution for murder of two Italian anarchist laborers, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a selection of period ephemera issued by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee together with a plethora of books associated with the trial that have been published in the intervening years by Paul Avrich, Felix Frankfurter, and Eugene Lyons, among others. The exhibit features artistic expressions (cartoons, illustrations, novels, plays, poems, songs and music) inspired by the trial, including the work of Maxwell Anderson, John Dos Passos, Fred Ellis, Howard Fast, Woodie Guthrie, William Gropper, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rockwell Kent, Katherine Anne Porter, Pete Seeger, and Upton Sinclair. The story of the Sacco and Vanzetti mural by Ben Shahn on the east wall of H. B. Crouse will also be explored.

A Gala Holiday Art Exhibit
Westcott Community Center

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

Mary Stebbins Taitt: digital paintings
John "Jaw's" McGrath: pen and ink landscapes
Karen Tashkovski: paper collage
Amber Blanding: glass work
Mary Fragapane: pastel paintings and prints
Mick Mather: photographs
Kirsten Moore: acrylic and oil paintings
John Swank: photography

Paying Attention
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Pastels and oils by Nicora Gangi and glass works by Alex Andreani.

Read a review!

Off the Wall Show and Sale
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Unlike most gallery shows, this Associated Artists sale allows everyone the opportunity to purchase fine original artwork that can be taken home immediately, and so it's "Off The Wall". A portion of each sale helps support the Manlius Library general fund and the remainder subsidizes various community activities and educational programs of Associated Artists. Please join us and enjoy the creations of the many talented and well-known members of this group. This is a wonderful chance to find one-of-a-kind gifts!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

Train of Thought: Serial Images from the Light Work Collection
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition features the work of five artists -- Hollis Frampton, Arnold Gassan, Peter Max Kandhola, Judy Natal, and Aaron Siskind -- all of whom generously donated either a series of prints or a portfolio of prints to the Light Work Collection. This exhibition provides us with an opportunity to investigate the artists' use of duplication and repetition to explore a single subject or idea. The images in this exhibition are produced using a variety of techniques, including photogravures, ektacolor, silver gelatin prints, and chromogenic prints.

Artist Showcase: Images by Brian Arnold
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition is comprised of recent acquisitions to the Light Work Collection that come from multiple series that Ithaca-based photographer Brian Arnold has been working on. He utilizes traditional black-and-white processes, remaining committed to what he refers to as "the alchemy of photography." All of his photographs are unique silver gelatin prints, toned with a combination of selenium, sulfur, and gold chloride. Arnold also creates unique limited edition books, two of which are included in this exhibition. He teaches photography and electronic arts at the New York State College of Art and Engineering at Alfred University.

Angelika Rinnhofer: Sammelsurium
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition, featuring the work of German-born artist Angelika Rinnhofer, will feature her large-format color prints from three related series, Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht. She describes her series Menschenkunde as portraits that combine facts, beauty, and irony in a Renaissance-style. Rinnhofer's series Felsenfest continues the same aesthetics in its re-interpretations of martyrs and saints into a modern context. Rinnhofer remembers being frightened as a child when viewing the horrific images of tortured saints commonly found in churches in her hometown Nürnberg, Germany. She now casts a critical eye, juxtaposing religious figures with modern-looking scientists. Seelensucht takes Rinnhofer back to the traditional single-figure portrait, also capturing the themes of martyrs.

Angelika lives in Beacon, NY. She is a commercial photographer and artist. She is the recipient of a Kodak European Gold Award and received a fellowship in photography from the Dutchess County Arts Council. She participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in 2005.

Read a review!

16x16 Small Works Show
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Juried exhibition of selected works by local, national and international artists.

Exploring History with Art -- Onondaga County on the Move: 200 Years of Transportation
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibition will feature artwork from the OHA collection that depicts various modes of local transportation and how artists interpreted it over the last two centuries. Local teachers and students will find subjects meeting their document-based questions social studies standards within the exhibit.

Impressions, a Jasper Johns Retrospective
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition of Jasper Johns' prints from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation starts with the artist's first published print in 1960, six years after Johns consciously destroyed all of his artwork. That act liberated him from "becoming" an artist to "being" an artist. Johns spent the next few years in the studio creating a body of imagery: flags, numerals, letters, and targets that flew in the face of the then popular Abstract Expressionism.

Trained briefly at the University of South Carolina, Johns moved to New York in the 1950s. In New York, he met and was influenced by a number of other artists including the composer John Cage, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg. After a visit to Philadelphia to see a Marcel Duchamp painting, Johns became very interested in the French artist's work. Duchamp had revolutionized the art world with his "readymades" - a series of found objects presented as finished works of art.

Jasper Johns' interest in process led him to printmaking. Often he would make counterpart prints
to his paintings. He explains, "My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences." For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation with an ease for repeat patterns. His work in screen printing, lithography, and etching have revolutionized the field.

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.

Pollock Matters
Everson Museum of Art

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

Pollock Matters, curated by art historian Ellen G. Landau of Case-Western Reserve University, explores for the first time the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his close friend, noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer, Herbert Matter.

Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the artists' interaction on their respective work. Comprising paintings, drawings, works on paper and other documentation -- including previously unseen photographs and letters -- it compares Matter's experimental abstract photos with known works by Pollock, and highlights their significant stylistic, technical and thematic connections.

Pollock Matters also showcases 24 small-scale works discovered by Herbert Matter's son, Alex Matter, in a storage facility in 2002. The paintings, although identified as "Jackson experimental works" by an inscription in Herbert Matter's hand and dated 1958 (2 years after the artist's death), have been the subject of much controversy, scientific study, scholarly analysis, and significant media attention. In the exhibition and accompanying catalog, Curator Ellen Landau thoroughly investigates questions raised by this unprecedented discovery of previously unknown works: "If Pollock did not paint a portion of the cache, who did? How many artists were involved? And, no less importantly, what was the purpose of these paintings?" The debate will, without doubt, continue beyond the exhibition and for decades to come.

Under One Roof Reprise
Everson Museum of Art

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

Juxtapose artwork created by artists whose common thread is a shared studio/classroom space and expect the unexpected. This happened in 2004, when a group of women who work and teach at Syracuse University's ComArt building joined together for an exhibition entitled Under One Roof at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. This was the first time the artists - three generations of students/teachers - had shown together, yet their work spoke of seamless connections and closer ties than one might assume.

Nine artists have reunited for the current exhibition Under One Roof Reprise. Their situations have changed slightly but their work once again has come together in surprising and interesting ways. Abby Goodman and Kim Carr Valdez earned their MFA degrees and moved to Brooklyn, while Laura Ledbetter now lives in Philadelphia. Anne Beffel, Ann Clarke, Mary Giehl, Gail Hoffman, and Jude Lewis continue to teach in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, while Claire Harootunian, although officially retired, continues to teach, travel, and explore the art of found objects.

The artists' processes are diverse, including large-scale installations, found object collaboration, casting, kinetics, video, and hand-tooled objects. Emphasis is placed on the creative use of materials such as fibers, metals, wood, plastics, resin, and everyday products. Each artist translates and illuminates human experience through her unique visual language and conceptual sensibility. These artists address common themes such as play, gender, identity, time, place, and most of all, memories. Mary Giehl's Ivory combines happy childhood memories of bathing with her siblings - recalling the "toys, the fun, the soap floating and the smell of Ivory" - with "those of sad and heartbreaking stories" not uncommon in today's headlines.

Gail Hoffman, a sculptor immersed in the concept of time, presents "visual metaphorical narratives, freeze-framed in a state of suspended animation" through a variety of media including bronze, plastic toys, and other found objects. Plasco Ranch (Possible Outcomes) is a minature assemblage designed in the small scale to "invite the viewer to psychologically inhabit the space." A collection of disparate objects including a bronze sheep, Santa Claus, and military vehicles has been arranged to suggest a story that is left to the viewer's imagination. A journal placed nearby offers visitors the opportunity to record their stories and suggest possible outcomes for the scene as they see it unfold. Based on viewers' comments, Hoffman will return periodically to rearrange, add, or remove objects, providing photographic documentation of the ever changing Plasco Ranch as part of the exhibit.

This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Genetic Self-Portrait: Works by Gary Schneider
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The show includes 55 photo-based works that South African-born, NYC-based artist Gary Schneider produced when he was offered a chance to create a new body of work inspired by the Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP, a scientific race to uncover the mysteries of DNA, began formally in the 1990s and was completed in 2003. During that period, Schneider was able to collaborate with a number of scientists and was given access to advanced imaging systems from electron microscopes to x-ray machines.

The work in the exhibition ranges from images of his individual chromosomes made by a light microscope to panoramic dental x-rays. Schneider is known as a master photographic printer, and by combining his skill as a craftsman and selecting specimens for their aesthetic qualities, he moved beyond scientific descriptions to produce a personal portrait that asks us to consider how we are unique and where we stand on common ground.

Schneider had always been interested in alternative imaging techniques, and previous to this project he had been making images by imprinting his hands onto film emulsions. When he decided to include these prints along with the images he had been making with scientists, he realized that what he had been creating was a new kind of portrait. Ann Thomas, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, described it as a new approach that "challenges the traditional definition of the portrait, and revises our understanding of what it means to be revealed before the camera's lens."

By merging scientific accuracy with poetic resonance, Schneider has created a very personal illumination of how our individual identity is so closely linked to our broader understanding and use of the information contained in the human building blocks of our DNA. Through the personal exploration that went into creating genetic self-portrait, Schneider reveals that while we may always want to think of ourselves as more than the sum of our parts, our real promise might be found in looking at the 99 percent of ourselves we have in common with everyone else.

Read a review!

The Secret of the Puppet's Book
Open Hand Theater

Price: $8 adults; $6 children
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

"Once there was a most unusual puppet who lived with a grumpy old man." Celebrate the magic of books with Lewis the break dancing puppet and his friends.

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Pirates of the Yuletide
Acme Mystery Company

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

London 1757: The world's hardiest pirates are planning to raid the North Pole and kidnap Santa. Interactive mystery/comedy dinner theater.

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Friday, December 28, 2007

Syracuse Builds: After the Master Plan
Syracuse University School of Architecture

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

The exhibition presents 13 architectural and landscape projects currently in development for the Syracuse University campus and the city of Syracuse, including a new residence hall on the main campus by Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems headquarters designed by Toshiko Mori Architect, and a community InfoCenter for the Near Westside Initiative project in Syracuse designed by Syracuse Architecture professors Tim Stenson and Scott Ruff.

Tango
Point of Contact Gallery

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

Tango, a large format folio published by Iris Editions in New York (1991) with eight intaglio prints by Nancy Graves and 13 pages of text by Pedro Cuperman that gaze at the aesthetics of this Latin American dance.

Tango proposes an evening of music, dance, and food transposed into videoa sort of "performance" projected into the space of the gallery where audience and art become intertwined in the field of representation.

"Graves conceived of the prints in the folio as a continued exploration of pattern in nature and as a tonal study of black and white," writes Thomas Padon in his book, Nancy Graves, Excavations in Print A Catalogue Raisonné (1996). "More than once the artist has asserted, 'There is nothing more challenging and meaningful than to make prints in black and white.' For an admitted colorist, it is ironic that the nine prints Graves has made in black and white are among her most powerful." The cryptic titles of the prints in the folio were selected by Graves from Cuperman's text for Tango. The poet speaks of the dance as a gradually unfolding ritual, stating near the conclusion, "Tango helps you find your own levels of proximity."

The Never-Ending Wrong: The Execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the execution for murder of two Italian anarchist laborers, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a selection of period ephemera issued by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee together with a plethora of books associated with the trial that have been published in the intervening years by Paul Avrich, Felix Frankfurter, and Eugene Lyons, among others. The exhibit features artistic expressions (cartoons, illustrations, novels, plays, poems, songs and music) inspired by the trial, including the work of Maxwell Anderson, John Dos Passos, Fred Ellis, Howard Fast, Woodie Guthrie, William Gropper, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rockwell Kent, Katherine Anne Porter, Pete Seeger, and Upton Sinclair. The story of the Sacco and Vanzetti mural by Ben Shahn on the east wall of H. B. Crouse will also be explored.

A Gala Holiday Art Exhibit
Westcott Community Center

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

Mary Stebbins Taitt: digital paintings
John "Jaw's" McGrath: pen and ink landscapes
Karen Tashkovski: paper collage
Amber Blanding: glass work
Mary Fragapane: pastel paintings and prints
Mick Mather: photographs
Kirsten Moore: acrylic and oil paintings
John Swank: photography

Paying Attention
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Pastels and oils by Nicora Gangi and glass works by Alex Andreani.

Read a review!

Off the Wall Show and Sale
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Unlike most gallery shows, this Associated Artists sale allows everyone the opportunity to purchase fine original artwork that can be taken home immediately, and so it's "Off The Wall". A portion of each sale helps support the Manlius Library general fund and the remainder subsidizes various community activities and educational programs of Associated Artists. Please join us and enjoy the creations of the many talented and well-known members of this group. This is a wonderful chance to find one-of-a-kind gifts!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

Artist Showcase: Images by Brian Arnold
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition is comprised of recent acquisitions to the Light Work Collection that come from multiple series that Ithaca-based photographer Brian Arnold has been working on. He utilizes traditional black-and-white processes, remaining committed to what he refers to as "the alchemy of photography." All of his photographs are unique silver gelatin prints, toned with a combination of selenium, sulfur, and gold chloride. Arnold also creates unique limited edition books, two of which are included in this exhibition. He teaches photography and electronic arts at the New York State College of Art and Engineering at Alfred University.

Train of Thought: Serial Images from the Light Work Collection
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition features the work of five artists -- Hollis Frampton, Arnold Gassan, Peter Max Kandhola, Judy Natal, and Aaron Siskind -- all of whom generously donated either a series of prints or a portfolio of prints to the Light Work Collection. This exhibition provides us with an opportunity to investigate the artists' use of duplication and repetition to explore a single subject or idea. The images in this exhibition are produced using a variety of techniques, including photogravures, ektacolor, silver gelatin prints, and chromogenic prints.

Angelika Rinnhofer: Sammelsurium
Light Work Gallery

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

This exhibition, featuring the work of German-born artist Angelika Rinnhofer, will feature her large-format color prints from three related series, Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht. She describes her series Menschenkunde as portraits that combine facts, beauty, and irony in a Renaissance-style. Rinnhofer's series Felsenfest continues the same aesthetics in its re-interpretations of martyrs and saints into a modern context. Rinnhofer remembers being frightened as a child when viewing the horrific images of tortured saints commonly found in churches in her hometown Nürnberg, Germany. She now casts a critical eye, juxtaposing religious figures with modern-looking scientists. Seelensucht takes Rinnhofer back to the traditional single-figure portrait, also capturing the themes of martyrs.

Angelika lives in Beacon, NY. She is a commercial photographer and artist. She is the recipient of a Kodak European Gold Award and received a fellowship in photography from the Dutchess County Arts Council. She participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in 2005.

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16x16 Small Works Show
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Juried exhibition of selected works by local, national and international artists.

Exploring History with Art -- Onondaga County on the Move: 200 Years of Transportation
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibition will feature artwork from the OHA collection that depicts various modes of local transportation and how artists interpreted it over the last two centuries. Local teachers and students will find subjects meeting their document-based questions social studies standards within the exhibit.

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.

Impressions, a Jasper Johns Retrospective
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition of Jasper Johns' prints from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation starts with the artist's first published print in 1960, six years after Johns consciously destroyed all of his artwork. That act liberated him from "becoming" an artist to "being" an artist. Johns spent the next few years in the studio creating a body of imagery: flags, numerals, letters, and targets that flew in the face of the then popular Abstract Expressionism.

Trained briefly at the University of South Carolina, Johns moved to New York in the 1950s. In New York, he met and was influenced by a number of other artists including the composer John Cage, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg. After a visit to Philadelphia to see a Marcel Duchamp painting, Johns became very interested in the French artist's work. Duchamp had revolutionized the art world with his "readymades" - a series of found objects presented as finished works of art.

Jasper Johns' interest in process led him to printmaking. Often he would make counterpart prints
to his paintings. He explains, "My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences." For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation with an ease for repeat patterns. His work in screen printing, lithography, and etching have revolutionized the field.

Pollock Matters
Everson Museum of Art

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

Pollock Matters, curated by art historian Ellen G. Landau of Case-Western Reserve University, explores for the first time the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his close friend, noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer, Herbert Matter.

Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the artists' interaction on their respective work. Comprising paintings, drawings, works on paper and other documentation -- including previously unseen photographs and letters -- it compares Matter's experimental abstract photos with known works by Pollock, and highlights their significant stylistic, technical and thematic connections.

Pollock Matters also showcases 24 small-scale works discovered by Herbert Matter's son, Alex Matter, in a storage facility in 2002. The paintings, although identified as "Jackson experimental works" by an inscription in Herbert Matter's hand and dated 1958 (2 years after the artist's death), have been the subject of much controversy, scientific study, scholarly analysis, and significant media attention. In the exhibition and accompanying catalog, Curator Ellen Landau thoroughly investigates questions raised by this unprecedented discovery of previously unknown works: "If Pollock did not paint a portion of the cache, who did? How many artists were involved? And, no less importantly, what was the purpose of these paintings?" The debate will, without doubt, continue beyond the exhibition and for decades to come.

Under One Roof Reprise
Everson Museum of Art

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

Juxtapose artwork created by artists whose common thread is a shared studio/classroom space and expect the unexpected. This happened in 2004, when a group of women who work and teach at Syracuse University's ComArt building joined together for an exhibition entitled Under One Roof at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. This was the first time the artists - three generations of students/teachers - had shown together, yet their work spoke of seamless connections and closer ties than one might assume.

Nine artists have reunited for the current exhibition Under One Roof Reprise. Their situations have changed slightly but their work once again has come together in surprising and interesting ways. Abby Goodman and Kim Carr Valdez earned their MFA degrees and moved to Brooklyn, while Laura Ledbetter now lives in Philadelphia. Anne Beffel, Ann Clarke, Mary Giehl, Gail Hoffman, and Jude Lewis continue to teach in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, while Claire Harootunian, although officially retired, continues to teach, travel, and explore the art of found objects.

The artists' processes are diverse, including large-scale installations, found object collaboration, casting, kinetics, video, and hand-tooled objects. Emphasis is placed on the creative use of materials such as fibers, metals, wood, plastics, resin, and everyday products. Each artist translates and illuminates human experience through her unique visual language and conceptual sensibility. These artists address common themes such as play, gender, identity, time, place, and most of all, memories. Mary Giehl's Ivory combines happy childhood memories of bathing with her siblings - recalling the "toys, the fun, the soap floating and the smell of Ivory" - with "those of sad and heartbreaking stories" not uncommon in today's headlines.

Gail Hoffman, a sculptor immersed in the concept of time, presents "visual metaphorical narratives, freeze-framed in a state of suspended animation" through a variety of media including bronze, plastic toys, and other found objects. Plasco Ranch (Possible Outcomes) is a minature assemblage designed in the small scale to "invite the viewer to psychologically inhabit the space." A collection of disparate objects including a bronze sheep, Santa Claus, and military vehicles has been arranged to suggest a story that is left to the viewer's imagination. A journal placed nearby offers visitors the opportunity to record their stories and suggest possible outcomes for the scene as they see it unfold. Based on viewers' comments, Hoffman will return periodically to rearrange, add, or remove objects, providing photographic documentation of the ever changing Plasco Ranch as part of the exhibit.

This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Genetic Self-Portrait: Works by Gary Schneider
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The show includes 55 photo-based works that South African-born, NYC-based artist Gary Schneider produced when he was offered a chance to create a new body of work inspired by the Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP, a scientific race to uncover the mysteries of DNA, began formally in the 1990s and was completed in 2003. During that period, Schneider was able to collaborate with a number of scientists and was given access to advanced imaging systems from electron microscopes to x-ray machines.

The work in the exhibition ranges from images of his individual chromosomes made by a light microscope to panoramic dental x-rays. Schneider is known as a master photographic printer, and by combining his skill as a craftsman and selecting specimens for their aesthetic qualities, he moved beyond scientific descriptions to produce a personal portrait that asks us to consider how we are unique and where we stand on common ground.

Schneider had always been interested in alternative imaging techniques, and previous to this project he had been making images by imprinting his hands onto film emulsions. When he decided to include these prints along with the images he had been making with scientists, he realized that what he had been creating was a new kind of portrait. Ann Thomas, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, described it as a new approach that "challenges the traditional definition of the portrait, and revises our understanding of what it means to be revealed before the camera's lens."

By merging scientific accuracy with poetic resonance, Schneider has created a very personal illumination of how our individual identity is so closely linked to our broader understanding and use of the information contained in the human building blocks of our DNA. Through the personal exploration that went into creating genetic self-portrait, Schneider reveals that while we may always want to think of ourselves as more than the sum of our parts, our real promise might be found in looking at the 99 percent of ourselves we have in common with everyone else.

Read a review!

Grandfather Frost's Stories of Russia
Open Hand Theater

Price: $8 adults; $6 children
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

Baba Yaga and her mischievous cat spin a timeless folk story of winter magic in this lively performance.

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Off the Wall Show and Sale
Associated Artists of Central New York

Price: Free
Manlius Village Library
Manlius Village Center, 1 Arkie Albanese Dr., Manlius

Unlike most gallery shows, this Associated Artists sale allows everyone the opportunity to purchase fine original artwork that can be taken home immediately, and so it's "Off The Wall". A portion of each sale helps support the Manlius Library general fund and the remainder subsidizes various community activities and educational programs of Associated Artists. Please join us and enjoy the creations of the many talented and well-known members of this group. This is a wonderful chance to find one-of-a-kind gifts!

Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular; $4 seniors; $2 children 12 and under
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

Display of more than 40 gingerbread creations.

Under One Roof Reprise
Everson Museum of Art

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

Juxtapose artwork created by artists whose common thread is a shared studio/classroom space and expect the unexpected. This happened in 2004, when a group of women who work and teach at Syracuse University's ComArt building joined together for an exhibition entitled Under One Roof at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea, NY. This was the first time the artists - three generations of students/teachers - had shown together, yet their work spoke of seamless connections and closer ties than one might assume.

Nine artists have reunited for the current exhibition Under One Roof Reprise. Their situations have changed slightly but their work once again has come together in surprising and interesting ways. Abby Goodman and Kim Carr Valdez earned their MFA degrees and moved to Brooklyn, while Laura Ledbetter now lives in Philadelphia. Anne Beffel, Ann Clarke, Mary Giehl, Gail Hoffman, and Jude Lewis continue to teach in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, while Claire Harootunian, although officially retired, continues to teach, travel, and explore the art of found objects.

The artists' processes are diverse, including large-scale installations, found object collaboration, casting, kinetics, video, and hand-tooled objects. Emphasis is placed on the creative use of materials such as fibers, metals, wood, plastics, resin, and everyday products. Each artist translates and illuminates human experience through her unique visual language and conceptual sensibility. These artists address common themes such as play, gender, identity, time, place, and most of all, memories. Mary Giehl's Ivory combines happy childhood memories of bathing with her siblings - recalling the "toys, the fun, the soap floating and the smell of Ivory" - with "those of sad and heartbreaking stories" not uncommon in today's headlines.

Gail Hoffman, a sculptor immersed in the concept of time, presents "visual metaphorical narratives, freeze-framed in a state of suspended animation" through a variety of media including bronze, plastic toys, and other found objects. Plasco Ranch (Possible Outcomes) is a minature assemblage designed in the small scale to "invite the viewer to psychologically inhabit the space." A collection of disparate objects including a bronze sheep, Santa Claus, and military vehicles has been arranged to suggest a story that is left to the viewer's imagination. A journal placed nearby offers visitors the opportunity to record their stories and suggest possible outcomes for the scene as they see it unfold. Based on viewers' comments, Hoffman will return periodically to rearrange, add, or remove objects, providing photographic documentation of the ever changing Plasco Ranch as part of the exhibit.

This group exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Pollock Matters
Everson Museum of Art

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

Pollock Matters, curated by art historian Ellen G. Landau of Case-Western Reserve University, explores for the first time the personal and artistic relationship between famed American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his close friend, noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer, Herbert Matter.

Featuring compelling visual and documentary evidence, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the artists' interaction on their respective work. Comprising paintings, drawings, works on paper and other documentation -- including previously unseen photographs and letters -- it compares Matter's experimental abstract photos with known works by Pollock, and highlights their significant stylistic, technical and thematic connections.

Pollock Matters also showcases 24 small-scale works discovered by Herbert Matter's son, Alex Matter, in a storage facility in 2002. The paintings, although identified as "Jackson experimental works" by an inscription in Herbert Matter's hand and dated 1958 (2 years after the artist's death), have been the subject of much controversy, scientific study, scholarly analysis, and significant media attention. In the exhibition and accompanying catalog, Curator Ellen Landau thoroughly investigates questions raised by this unprecedented discovery of previously unknown works: "If Pollock did not paint a portion of the cache, who did? How many artists were involved? And, no less importantly, what was the purpose of these paintings?" The debate will, without doubt, continue beyond the exhibition and for decades to come.

16x16 Small Works Show
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Juried exhibition of selected works by local, national and international artists.

Exploring History with Art -- Onondaga County on the Move: 200 Years of Transportation
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibition will feature artwork from the OHA collection that depicts various modes of local transportation and how artists interpreted it over the last two centuries. Local teachers and students will find subjects meeting their document-based questions social studies standards within the exhibit.

Impressions, a Jasper Johns Retrospective
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

This retrospective exhibition of Jasper Johns' prints from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation starts with the artist's first published print in 1960, six years after Johns consciously destroyed all of his artwork. That act liberated him from "becoming" an artist to "being" an artist. Johns spent the next few years in the studio creating a body of imagery: flags, numerals, letters, and targets that flew in the face of the then popular Abstract Expressionism.

Trained briefly at the University of South Carolina, Johns moved to New York in the 1950s. In New York, he met and was influenced by a number of other artists including the composer John Cage, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg. After a visit to Philadelphia to see a Marcel Duchamp painting, Johns became very interested in the French artist's work. Duchamp had revolutionized the art world with his "readymades" - a series of found objects presented as finished works of art.

Jasper Johns' interest in process led him to printmaking. Often he would make counterpart prints
to his paintings. He explains, "My experience of life is that it's very fragmented; certain kinds of things happen, and in another place, a different kind of thing occurs. I would like my work to have some vivid indication of those differences." For Johns, printmaking was a medium that encouraged experimentation with an ease for repeat patterns. His work in screen printing, lithography, and etching have revolutionized the field.

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.

Genetic Self-Portrait: Works by Gary Schneider
The Warehouse Gallery

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

The show includes 55 photo-based works that South African-born, NYC-based artist Gary Schneider produced when he was offered a chance to create a new body of work inspired by the Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP, a scientific race to uncover the mysteries of DNA, began formally in the 1990s and was completed in 2003. During that period, Schneider was able to collaborate with a number of scientists and was given access to advanced imaging systems from electron microscopes to x-ray machines.

The work in the exhibition ranges from images of his individual chromosomes made by a light microscope to panoramic dental x-rays. Schneider is known as a master photographic printer, and by combining his skill as a craftsman and selecting specimens for their aesthetic qualities, he moved beyond scientific descriptions to produce a personal portrait that asks us to consider how we are unique and where we stand on common ground.

Schneider had always been interested in alternative imaging techniques, and previous to this project he had been making images by imprinting his hands onto film emulsions. When he decided to include these prints along with the images he had been making with scientists, he realized that what he had been creating was a new kind of portrait. Ann Thomas, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, described it as a new approach that "challenges the traditional definition of the portrait, and revises our understanding of what it means to be revealed before the camera's lens."

By merging scientific accuracy with poetic resonance, Schneider has created a very personal illumination of how our individual identity is so closely linked to our broader understanding and use of the information contained in the human building blocks of our DNA. Through the personal exploration that went into creating genetic self-portrait, Schneider reveals that while we may always want to think of ourselves as more than the sum of our parts, our real promise might be found in looking at the 99 percent of ourselves we have in common with everyone else.

Read a review!

Sleeping Beauty
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive version of the children's classic.

Fiddler on the Roof
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Anthony Salatino, director

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

Brimming with wonderfully memorable songs (Tradition; Matchmaker, Matchmaker; If I Were a Rich Man;
Sunrise, Sunset; To Life) and folk-inspired choreography, Fiddler on the Roof is the touching tale of Tevye, his family and the tiny Russian town of Anatevka. Tradition is the fabric that holds body and soul, family and community together. But can tradition, however strong, withstand the strain of pressure from within and without. Fiddler is a classic of American musical theatre.

Read a Review!

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Civic Theatre
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Bob Brown, director

Price: $33 regular; $29 students/seniors; $25 ages 12 and under
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

A musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Pat Lotito and Ken Prescott that has been delighting local audiences for years under the name A Dickens of a Christmas. For the first time, it has been renamed to assume the title of the Dickens work on which it's based.

Read a Review!