Sunday, February 22, 2009

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Exhibit presented by The Black History Preservationist Project, The Dunbar Association, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Syracuse University South Side Initiative, A Community-University Partnership Project, and Umi & Associates Inc.

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Come celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday! Some very intriguing items belonging to our former President are on display.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

How to Kill Someone in Five Easy Steps: Secrets of a Mystery Writer
University Neighbors Lecture Series
Featuring Barbara Block aka Isis Crawford

Price: $10 regular, $5 with student ID
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Isis Crawford was born in Egypt to parents who were in the diplomatic corps. When she was five, her family returned to the States, where her mother opened a restaurant in upper Westchester County and her father became a university professor. Since then, Isis has combined her parents' love of food and travel by running a catering service as well as penning numerous travel-related articles about places ranging from Omsk to Paraguay. Married, with twin boys, she presently resides in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Barbara Block, however, lives in our neighborhood.

Barbara Block has been writing mystery stories since the early 1990s. Many feature Syracuse based amateur detective and pet store owner, Robin Light. Since 1993 she has written under the name of Isis Crawford, writing stories featuring two catering sisters, Bernie and Libby Simmons, who solve the mystery of murders that occur at events they cater. Barbara Block wrote "The Beer Diet" and has written many articles on food based subjects for newspapers in Syracuse where she has lived for 30 years. She was born in Manhattan. She is a partner in Augie's Pizza Shop in Marshall Street.

Djug Django
Arts Alive in Liverpool

Price: Free
Liverpool Public Library
310 Tulip St., Liverpool

This Ithaca-based band performs classic Gypsy swing compositions by the late Django Reinhardt plus original tunes by Dave Davies and the best of the blues age. The combo features violinist Eric Aceto, clarinetist Brian Earle, guitarists Doug Robinson and Harry Aceto, washtub bassist Jim Sherpa and trombonist Dave Davies. They play songs such as the traditional "La Villa Rosa," the standard "Besame Mucho" and the Django tunes like "Sweet Chorus" and "Daphne."

Junior Percussion Recital
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Brian Ludwig

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

Brian Ludwig, a junior music industry major at the Setnor School, will perform a recital of selections by Fissinger, Milhaud, Basta, and Xenakis. The concert will feature a 17-piece chamber orchestra of Setnor students with Charlie Magnone on keyboard. Parking is available in SU pay lots. For parking information, call 315-443-2191.

Jazz Cabaret
LeMoyne College
The Jazzuits
Featuring Ronnie Leigh

Price: $10 regular, $5 seniors, $3 students
James Commons
Le Moyne College, Syracuse

LeMoyne's annual African-American History Month event features CNY's finest song stylist, Ronnie Leigh.

Junior Voice Recital
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Kelly Backus

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

Kelly Backus, a junior music education major, will perform a recital of works by Schubert, G.F. Handel, W.A. Mozart, Ben Moore, and Ernest Charles. The concert will also feature pianist Jacob Hahn. Parking is available in SU pay lots. For parking information, call 315-443-2191.

A Broadway Evening
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music
Featuring Jonathan Shew

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

Jonathan Shew, a senior music industry major, will present a voice recital featuring a diverse repertoire of songs from West Side Story, Children of Eden, and many others. The program will feature Michael Debach on keyboard. At the conclusion of the concert, Shew will collect donations for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Parking is available in SU pay lots. For parking information, call 315-443-2191.

The High Cost of Heating
Armory Square Playwrights

Price: $7 regular, $5 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

What happens when your heating bill arrives and it grows and grows becoming a monster in your living room as it takes over your entire life? The High Cost of Heating, a full-length absurd comedy that is both terrifying and hysterical, explores the plight of a middle-class, middle-aged couple who face the ultimate crisis, their American dream turning into a nightmare.

Where's My Money
Black Box Players

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

Written by John Patrick Shanley; directed by David Julian Melendez.

Carrie the Musical
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

This is a concert version of the musical which is based on the book Carrie which was made into the famous movie of the same name.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

The Crane Show: Origami, Watercolor, and Oriental Brush Painting
Westcott Community Center

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Festival Prescreening
Syracuse International Film Festival

Price: Free
Sugarpearl Cafe
600 Burnet Ave., Syracuse

Feature film "Little Girl Blue"

Matrilineage Symposium: Artist Lecture
Syracuse University School of Art and Design
Featuring Nancy Cohen

Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nancy Cohen is a mixed media artist working in sculpture, installation, and drawing. Through the use of materials and found objects, her work balances fragility and embodiment while evoking domestic objects and nature. The artist states that "My sculpture has always been intended to engage viewers physically--to produce a visceral sensation of bodies interacting and to draw one, emotionally at least, into participation in that interaction."

Nancy Cohen received her MFA from Columbia University in 1984. She also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Her work has been exhibited at the Noyes Museum of Art, NJ, The Jersey City Museum, and the Heidi Cho Gallery, NY, and can be found in many public and private collections. She has also received numerous commissions for public art projects.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

The Crane Show: Origami, Watercolor, and Oriental Brush Painting
Westcott Community Center

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Spark Video
Spark Contemporary Art Space

Price: $3
Spark Contemporary Art Space
1005 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

This month's Spark Video features all local artists exploring family and relationships.

Domestic situations have changed with communication technology, resulting in mediated love and intimacy forcing families to stay in touch ways never imagined before.

Christina Wu's "Family Portrait" is a touching piece on one family's experience of intimacy and togetherness in the cyber age.

Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby's "Attention Public", Aaron Hraba's "Mary Lee", Holly Rodricks' "Partition" and Nathaniel Sullivan's "Win, Place, Show" are also featured.

Kim Osorio, hip-hop journalist and author

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

Kim Osorio was the first female editor-in-chief of The Source magazine, which covers hip-hop music, culture and politics. She led the publication during some of its highest-selling issues, but later sued for sexual harassment and received a reported $15.5 million settlement. She is the author of Straight from the Source: An Expose from the Former Editor in Chief of the Hip-Hop Bible (VH1, 2008), in which she gives a behind-the-scenes look at her years at The Source.

Osorio is currently an editor-at-large for BET.com and a frequent on-air contributor to BET News. She was formerly the vice president of content for Global Grind, a leading hip-hop media company.

For more information, contact Shelly Griffin at 315-443-4004 or migriffi@syr.edu.

Matrilineage Symposium: Artist Lecture
Syracuse University School of Art and Design
Featuring Laurel Nakadate

Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Laurel Nakadate is a photographer, video artist, and filmmaker. She blurs documentary and fiction through her portrayal of situations that combine sexuality, loneliness, power, and discomfort with play. Nakadate will be an artist in residence from February 23-March 4.

Laurel Nakadate was raised in Ames, Iowa and now lives and works out of both New York and Los Angeles. A 2001 graduate of Yale's MFA photography program, she began her career as a documentary photographer, which eventually led to making documentary-style videos featuring the artist paired with men who she persuaded to "perform" with her in front of the camera. Nakadate's first video installation for which she is probably best known, "[ Wanna Be Your Midlife Crisis," was exhibited by Daniel Silverstein Gallery in the 2002 Armory Show. Since this debut, Nakadate has continued to perform for the camera in work for her two solo shows presented by Danziger Projects in New York: 2005's 'Love Hotel and Other Stories,' 2006's 'A Message To Pretty" and 2007's 'Laurel Nakadate' presented by Chalk Horse Gallery in Sydney, Australia. Nakadate has exhibited at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, MOM,AJPS1 's Greater New York Show, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Kunsrfilm Biennial in Cologne, the Berlin Biennial, New York's Asia Society and at Mary Boone Gallery in New York. Her first feature film, "Stay the Same Never Change," was screened at the 2009 Sundance Festival.

Friends of the Central Library Author Series
Featuring Sarah Vowell

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

Read a review!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

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

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

The Crane Show: Origami, Watercolor, and Oriental Brush Painting
Westcott Community Center

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Come celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday! Some very intriguing items belonging to our former President are on display.

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Exhibit presented by The Black History Preservationist Project, The Dunbar Association, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Syracuse University South Side Initiative, A Community-University Partnership Project, and Umi & Associates Inc.

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Joan Lukas Rothenberg Gallery at Redhouse Arts Center is proud to be the first USA venue to present "Inishlacken; the last parish," curated by Rosie McGurran and Maeve Mulrennan. "Inishlacken; the last parish" is an exhibition that includes the work of 23 leading contemporary Irish artists.

Inishlacken Island, situated one mile off the west coast of County Galway, Ireland, is no longer inhabited; however, with the generosity of people who keep houses there, Rosie McGurran along with several other artists and curators have been able to create an Artists Residency (The Inishlacken Project) program on an annual basis. The Inishlacken Project aims to develop the spirit of friendship and creativity established by late Belfast artist Gerard Dillon during his time on the island. Artists are invited to visit Inishlacken and make work as a response to its unique environment and culture. Surviving on the island is much the same as it was in the '50s; it is an opportunity for artists to leave behind the 21st century and experience a way of life almost forgotten.

"Inishlacken; the last parish" exhibition is a collection of work made by selected artists who have made the journey to the island over the past seven years. Their responses to Inishlacken Island and its rich history are all highly individual. Photography, painting, installation, video, animation and printmaking make up the core of this exhibition. The diverse nature of this collection of artists and their work reflects the ever-changing landscape of an island floating between the embrace of the Twelve Bens mountain range and the watery wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean.

Artists include Aideen Barry, Eamon Colman, Cian Donnelly, Kathleen Furey, Phil Hession, Pearl Kinnear, Margaret Irwin, Gavin Lavelle, Dolores Lyne, Louise Manifold, Kate Moore, Jay Murphy, Susan McKeever, Rosie McGurran, Joseph McWilliams, Catherine McWilliams, Simon McWilliams, Mick O'Dea, Sean O'Flaithearta, Sioban Piercy, Jonathan Porter, Una Sealy, Caroline Wright.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Matrilineage Symposium: Artist Lecture
Syracuse University School of Art and Design
Featuring Christiane Paul

Shaffer Art Building, Room 121
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Christine Paul is theorist, writer, and curator. Her writing and curation explore new media, net art, information architecture, hyperfiction, and the context and meaning of digital art.

Christiane Paul is the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service organization and information resource dedicated to digital art. Her extensive writings have been published in magazines such as Sculpture, Leonardo, and Intelligent Agent. She is the author of New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (University of California Press, 2008) Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003), which surveys the field of new media art; and of Unreal City: A Hypertextual Guide to T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (Eastgate Systems, 1995).

Paul teaches in the MFA computer graphics department at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has lectured internationally on art and technology. At the Whitney Museum, she curated the show Data Dynamics (2001), the net art selection for the 2002 Whitney Biennial, as well as the online exhibition CODeDOC (2002) for artport, the Whitney Museum's online portal to Internet art, for which she is responsible. Other curatorial work includes The Passage of Mirage (Chelsea Art Museum, New York, 2004); Evident Traces (Ciberarts Festival Bilbao, 2004); eVolutionthe art of living systems (Art Interactive, Boston, 2004); CODeDOC II (Ars Electronica, 2003); the New York Digital Salon's 10th anniversary exhibition (NYC, 2003); Mapping Transitions at the University of Boulder, Colorado (2002); Re-Media (Fotofest, Houston, Texas, 2002); and a net art selection for Evo1 (Gallery L, Moscow, October 2001).

Civic Morning Musicals
Andrew Zaplatynsky, violin; Kevin Moore, piano

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

Excerpts from their complete Beethoven sonata cycle.

Poet and memoirist Sarah Manguso
Raymond Carver Reading Series

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

Sarah Manguso is author of the memoir The Two Kinds of Decay (Farrar, Straus, & Goroux, 2008), named "Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year" by the San Francisco Chronicle and an "Editor's Choice" by The New York Times. Manguso's stories and poetry have drawn praise from outlets worldwide, including The Village Voice, American Book Review, Elle magazine and Readings (Australia), which awarded her story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (McSweeney's Books, 2007) its "Book of the Year" honor. She is an adjunct assistant professor at the Pratt Institute in New York City.

The reading will be preceded by a Q&A session with the author beginning at 3:45 pm.

Parking is available in SU pay lots. For more information, phone 315-443-2174.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

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

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Exhibit presented by The Black History Preservationist Project, The Dunbar Association, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Syracuse University South Side Initiative, A Community-University Partnership Project, and Umi & Associates Inc.

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Come celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday! Some very intriguing items belonging to our former President are on display.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Joan Lukas Rothenberg Gallery at Redhouse Arts Center is proud to be the first USA venue to present "Inishlacken; the last parish," curated by Rosie McGurran and Maeve Mulrennan. "Inishlacken; the last parish" is an exhibition that includes the work of 23 leading contemporary Irish artists.

Inishlacken Island, situated one mile off the west coast of County Galway, Ireland, is no longer inhabited; however, with the generosity of people who keep houses there, Rosie McGurran along with several other artists and curators have been able to create an Artists Residency (The Inishlacken Project) program on an annual basis. The Inishlacken Project aims to develop the spirit of friendship and creativity established by late Belfast artist Gerard Dillon during his time on the island. Artists are invited to visit Inishlacken and make work as a response to its unique environment and culture. Surviving on the island is much the same as it was in the '50s; it is an opportunity for artists to leave behind the 21st century and experience a way of life almost forgotten.

"Inishlacken; the last parish" exhibition is a collection of work made by selected artists who have made the journey to the island over the past seven years. Their responses to Inishlacken Island and its rich history are all highly individual. Photography, painting, installation, video, animation and printmaking make up the core of this exhibition. The diverse nature of this collection of artists and their work reflects the ever-changing landscape of an island floating between the embrace of the Twelve Bens mountain range and the watery wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean.

Artists include Aideen Barry, Eamon Colman, Cian Donnelly, Kathleen Furey, Phil Hession, Pearl Kinnear, Margaret Irwin, Gavin Lavelle, Dolores Lyne, Louise Manifold, Kate Moore, Jay Murphy, Susan McKeever, Rosie McGurran, Joseph McWilliams, Catherine McWilliams, Simon McWilliams, Mick O'Dea, Sean O'Flaithearta, Sioban Piercy, Jonathan Porter, Una Sealy, Caroline Wright.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Works by artists in the third edition of Stone Canoe, a journal of arts and ideas from Upstate New York. Artists featured include Marianne Barcellona, Marty Blake, Lauren Bristol, Elaine R. Defibaugh, Sylvia de Swaan, Donna L. Emerson, Paul Farinacci, Lisbeth Firmin, John Fitzsimmons, Emily Fleisher, Bob Gates, Jon Gernon, Thomas Gokey, Fred Gonyea, Erica Harney and Aldo Lira. Also, David R. MacDonald, Jennifer Marsh, Lalit K. Masih, Deloss McGraw, Rebecca Murtaugh, Mary Nelson Zadrozny, Steven Pearlman, Stephan Phillips, Awenheeyoh Powless, Mark Robbins, Roger Shimomura, Nancy Sirkis, Yolanda Tooley, Gary Trento, Kim Waale, and Phil Young.

Wild Card Exhibit: Paintings by Kwangpyo (Steve) Koh
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

Matrilineage Art Show
Spark Contemporary Art Space
Featuring Nao Bustamante, performance artist

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

A one-night exhibition of art work drawn from an open call.

At 7:00 pm, there will be a performance by Nao Bustamante, followed by Q & A.

Nao Bustamante is a performance, video and installation artist. She uses the body as a source of image, narrative and emotion to confront stereotypes. Her performance "Given Over to Want" deals with the themes of transformation and desire.

Bustamante is an internationally known artist originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her (often precarious) work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation and video. Bustamante has presented in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites all around the world. She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the New York Museum of Modern Arts, Sundance 2008, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and in 2007 named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, as well as a Lambent Fellow. Currently Bustamante holds the position of Associate Professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. www.naobustamante.com

"Given Over to Want" is an ongoing conversation within Bustamante's performance works. Sculpting the body with tape, shadow-play and boxed wine all provide material for the exploration between human want, both natural and contrived. The performance deals with the themes of transformation and desire. The image is as primordial as it is hungry and holy, both fully human and fully alien.

Terrance Keenan, author

Price: Free
Bird Library, Peter Graham Scholarly Commons
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Terrance Keenan will speak about his sixth and most recent book, If Our Lives Be Spared: Three Generations of an American Family in Central New York (Syracuse University Press, 2007). Keenan is a former rare books and manuscripts librarian at SU, a poet, artist and Zen Buddhist monk.

Free event parking is available one block from Bird Library in the Booth Garage, on the corner of Waverly and Comstock avenues.

For more information on this lecture, contact Anne Roth at 315-685-6832 or e-mail ABJigger@aol.com.

Breaking the ICE
Syracuse University School of Architecture
Featuring Sunil Bald and Yolande Daniels

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Auditorium
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Sunil Bald and Yolande Daniels are co-founders and principals of cross-disciplinary architecture firm Studio SUMO of Long Island City, NY.

A Conversation with Shen Wei
University Lectures

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

On Feb. 24, world-renowned dancer and choreographer Shen Wei and Shen Wei Dance Arts, the company he founded, begin a three-week residency at Syracuse University. Shen and the company will be based at the former Cathedral School in downtown Syracuse as they develop and rehearse a new work, the third piece in a triptych titled "Re-." During the residency, Shen and the company will meet with many members of the greater Syracuse community, including dance groups and students from the Syracuse City School District and SU.

In this conversation, moderated by former New York Times Chief Dance Critic Anna Kisselgoff, Shen will share his personal story, including reflections on growing up during China's Cultural Revolution; the creative process and development; the philosophy behind his work; reflections on his contributions to the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Beijing; and the development of his new work.
Aside from his work with the company, Shen is also a renowned photographer. He will share a selection of his photographs during the University Lectures presentation.

Shen has been hailed by the Washington Post as "one of the great artists of our time." In 1995, at age 26, Shen left his native China and traveled to the United States. That year, he presented his work at the prestigious American Dance Festival. An international audience immediately took notice. In 2000, he founded Shen Wei Dance Arts, which has become one of the premier dance ensembles in the world.

Sojourner Storytelling Conference: Memories of the 15th Ward

Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The theme is "Memories of the 15th Ward" (an African American and Jewish neighborhood that used to exist underneath I-81 and the medical centers). The event features live storytellers, mixed media projects, and a student-produced documentary. There is also an outstanding photography exhibition developed by Museum Studies graduate students.

A reception will precede the event at 6:00 pm in Shaffer Foyer. The exhibition is open for viewing in Shaffer rotunda.

The Sound of Murder
Acme Mystery Company

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

Inactive comedy murder mystery dinner theater. Up in the hills, a lonely goatherd has died, and the townsfolk, including Capt. Von Trumpp, begin to suspect that sweet young Maria is a serial killer.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Where's My Money
Black Box Players

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

Written by John Patrick Shanley; directed by David Julian Melendez.

Our Town
LeMoyne College
Boot and Buskin

Price: $12 regular, $8 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town explores the traditional American values of religion, community, family and the simple pleasures of life. It is an attempt to find value above all price for even the smallest events in our daily life.

Read a Review!

Friday, February 27, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of Milton Glaser
Onondaga Community College

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

To many, Milton Glaser is the embodiment of American graphic design during the latter half of this century. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man -- one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Two: Recent Works by Frederick Bartolovic and Chris McEvoy, and Emerging: Recent Works by Lacey Mckinney
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

Fun, wild, and experimental artwork by Rochester's Arena Art Group.

A Goodly Heritage of Study: The Portfolio Club of Syracuse
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

Displayed are the archives of a still-thriving women's study club that was formed in 1875 in Syracuse. The Portfolio Club exemplifies a post-Civil War movement in which many thousands of middle-class women came together to educate themselves in a society that restricted women's access to institutions of higher learning. This club began a few weeks after the Association for the Advancement of Women held a congress at the Wieting Opera House in downtown Syracuse. At these congresses, which took place in many American cities, Julia Ward Howe and other presenters encouraged women to form study clubs for self-culture.

Nine young women founded the Portfolio Club, with guidance from Mary Dana Hicks, their art teacher. Though they began with a focus on art, in the middle 1880s they expanded their scope to include literature, current events, history, performing arts and many other subjects. Members have always met regularly from October through April to read their papers on a topic assigned by each year's president.

Syracuse residents and those long associated with SU will recognize the married names of many past club members, such as Mrs. Donald Dey, Mrs. William Nottingham, Mrs. E.N. Westcott, and Mrs. Mildred Eggers. Among Portfolio guest speakers during the club's first several decades were Judge Charles Andrews, Dean George Fiske Comfort, Howard Lyman, professors Sawyer Falk and Irene Sargent, Paul Paine, Douglas Petit, Katherine Sibley, and SU Chancellor Charles Sims.

The exhibition, which emphasizes the years 1875-1950, includes annual program booklets, many of them finely crafted. Also on display are meeting minutes, clippings, photographs, film footage of a 1935 gathering and other club documents.

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Opening: Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

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

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Come celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday! Some very intriguing items belonging to our former President are on display.

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Exhibit presented by The Black History Preservationist Project, The Dunbar Association, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Syracuse University South Side Initiative, A Community-University Partnership Project, and Umi & Associates Inc.

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Joan Lukas Rothenberg Gallery at Redhouse Arts Center is proud to be the first USA venue to present "Inishlacken; the last parish," curated by Rosie McGurran and Maeve Mulrennan. "Inishlacken; the last parish" is an exhibition that includes the work of 23 leading contemporary Irish artists.

Inishlacken Island, situated one mile off the west coast of County Galway, Ireland, is no longer inhabited; however, with the generosity of people who keep houses there, Rosie McGurran along with several other artists and curators have been able to create an Artists Residency (The Inishlacken Project) program on an annual basis. The Inishlacken Project aims to develop the spirit of friendship and creativity established by late Belfast artist Gerard Dillon during his time on the island. Artists are invited to visit Inishlacken and make work as a response to its unique environment and culture. Surviving on the island is much the same as it was in the '50s; it is an opportunity for artists to leave behind the 21st century and experience a way of life almost forgotten.

"Inishlacken; the last parish" exhibition is a collection of work made by selected artists who have made the journey to the island over the past seven years. Their responses to Inishlacken Island and its rich history are all highly individual. Photography, painting, installation, video, animation and printmaking make up the core of this exhibition. The diverse nature of this collection of artists and their work reflects the ever-changing landscape of an island floating between the embrace of the Twelve Bens mountain range and the watery wilderness of the Atlantic Ocean.

Artists include Aideen Barry, Eamon Colman, Cian Donnelly, Kathleen Furey, Phil Hession, Pearl Kinnear, Margaret Irwin, Gavin Lavelle, Dolores Lyne, Louise Manifold, Kate Moore, Jay Murphy, Susan McKeever, Rosie McGurran, Joseph McWilliams, Catherine McWilliams, Simon McWilliams, Mick O'Dea, Sean O'Flaithearta, Sioban Piercy, Jonathan Porter, Una Sealy, Caroline Wright.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Wild Card Exhibit: Paintings by Kwangpyo (Steve) Koh
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Works by artists in the third edition of Stone Canoe, a journal of arts and ideas from Upstate New York. Artists featured include Marianne Barcellona, Marty Blake, Lauren Bristol, Elaine R. Defibaugh, Sylvia de Swaan, Donna L. Emerson, Paul Farinacci, Lisbeth Firmin, John Fitzsimmons, Emily Fleisher, Bob Gates, Jon Gernon, Thomas Gokey, Fred Gonyea, Erica Harney and Aldo Lira. Also, David R. MacDonald, Jennifer Marsh, Lalit K. Masih, Deloss McGraw, Rebecca Murtaugh, Mary Nelson Zadrozny, Steven Pearlman, Stephan Phillips, Awenheeyoh Powless, Mark Robbins, Roger Shimomura, Nancy Sirkis, Yolanda Tooley, Gary Trento, Kim Waale, and Phil Young.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

FridayFLICS: Classified X
ArtRage Gallery

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

Compelling documentary explores racial stereotyping of African Americans in 100 years of American cinema. Written and narrated by Melvin van Peebles. Cited by Spike Lee as a major influence in his work. (Directed by Mark Daniels. 1998)

Matrilineage Symposium: Artist Lecture
Syracuse University School of Art and Design
Featuring M.M. Serra

Shaffer Art Building, Room 121
Syracuse University, Syracuse

M.M. Serra is a filmmaker, curator, and educator. Her experimental films are often personal explorations that have recently focused on women, sexuality and fantasy.

Serra is the Executive Director of the Film-Makers Cooperative in New York. She is an experimental filmmaker who has produced, directed, and edited more than fourteen works. Her own work, as well as her curated programs, have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of the Moving Image in New York; The Centre Georges Pompidou and the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, France; The London Film Festival, UK; The Sundance Forum, USA and The Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany. In December 2007 she curated New York Experimental Cinema for the Kulczyk Foundation and the Warszawa Kinolab in Poland. In August 2008 she programmed ART(CORE): The Avant Garde and the Cinematic Body at The Pleasure Dome in Toronto, Canada. Serra teaches Media Studies at The New School for Social Research, where she lectures on genre and sexuality in the moving image.

Onondaga African Percussion Ensemble
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

The group plays on an Ewe set of drums from Ghana as well as djembes, gyils, and most recently, riqs.

Classics Series: From the New World
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Samuel Wong, conductor
Featuring Philippe Quint, violin

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

Mozart Marriage of Figaro Overture
Korngold Violin Concerto in D Major
Dvorák Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, "From the New World"

Read a review!

Novelist Doran Larson
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Doran Larson is the author of two novels and a novella: The Big Deal (Bantam, 1985), Marginalia/ (Permanent Press, 1997), and Syzygy (The Iowa Review, 1998). His short fiction has appeared in Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal of American Studies, Other Voices, and Best American Short Stories. He is associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Hamilton College, and since 2006 has taught a creative writing course inside Attica Correctional Facility.

Hopeful Horizons
Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company

Price: Free
CFAC Black Box Theater
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A story by Zora Neale Hurston presented in collaboration with Syracuse Stage.

Exit the Body
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

Price: $15 adults; $12 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

A mystery writer rents a New England house that is the rendezvous point for some jewel thieves. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at 2:00 AM when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. Not since the days of Mark Sennett has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

Where's My Money
Black Box Players

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

Written by John Patrick Shanley; directed by David Julian Melendez.

Our Town
LeMoyne College
Boot and Buskin

Price: $12 regular, $8 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town explores the traditional American values of religion, community, family and the simple pleasures of life. It is an attempt to find value above all price for even the smallest events in our daily life.

Read a Review!

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Works by artists in the third edition of Stone Canoe, a journal of arts and ideas from Upstate New York. Artists featured include Marianne Barcellona, Marty Blake, Lauren Bristol, Elaine R. Defibaugh, Sylvia de Swaan, Donna L. Emerson, Paul Farinacci, Lisbeth Firmin, John Fitzsimmons, Emily Fleisher, Bob Gates, Jon Gernon, Thomas Gokey, Fred Gonyea, Erica Harney and Aldo Lira. Also, David R. MacDonald, Jennifer Marsh, Lalit K. Masih, Deloss McGraw, Rebecca Murtaugh, Mary Nelson Zadrozny, Steven Pearlman, Stephan Phillips, Awenheeyoh Powless, Mark Robbins, Roger Shimomura, Nancy Sirkis, Yolanda Tooley, Gary Trento, Kim Waale, and Phil Young.

Wild Card Exhibit: Paintings by Kwangpyo (Steve) Koh
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The Nature of Being
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Works based on nature and the figure by John Fitzsimmons (oil paintings) and Patrice Fitzsimmons (ceramic sculpture).

Read a review!

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Works of Karen Thomas-Lillie, Madeline Silber, and Jeremy Randall
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

"Contemporary Craft Masters" features the work of three artists who were featured on HGTV's "Modern Masters: African American Artisans" program in 2003. The featured artists, Espi Frazier, Hermon Futrell, and David MacDonald, are at the forefront of contemporary crafts and reflect the diverse and innovative palette of today's artists.

Selections from the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photograph Collection
Community Folk Art Center

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

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Exhibit presented by The Black History Preservationist Project, The Dunbar Association, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Syracuse University South Side Initiative, A Community-University Partnership Project, and Umi & Associates Inc.

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Come celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday! Some very intriguing items belonging to our former President are on display.

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Hope in a Time of Turmoil: Colombia and the Art of Jafeth Gómez Ledesma
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Artist, activist, dreamer and teacher -- Jafeth Gómez Ledesma will exhibit his vision of Colombia at the ArtRage Gallery as part of a visit to the United States to speak, conduct workshops and celebrate art and hope.

Love & Patience
Orange Line Gallery

Price: Free
Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit is a mix of traditional to abstract works, but remaining modern throughout. The show title refers not only to the content of the pieces, but also the artist's connection to their work and process. New work will be featured by previous OL artists including Alejandro Bettencourt, Amber Blanding, David McKenney, Debra Parry Trichilo, Jace Collins, Jacqueline Adamo, Laura Celuch, Melissa Tiffany and Spencer Baker.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

In this solo exhibition, Los Angeles-Boston based artist Kianga Ford presents a set of installations with sound that explore the contemporary Syracuse landscape and the potential of its spaces to create communities out of relative strangers. The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity -- blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.

Opening Reception -- Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

Dusty Pas'cal and Mikey Powell
Redhouse

Price: $15
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Classics Series: From the New World
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Samuel Wong, conductor
Featuring Philippe Quint, violin

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

Mozart Marriage of Figaro Overture
Korngold Violin Concerto in D Major
Dvorák Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, "From the New World"

Read a review!

Readings at 2:00 Series: Martin Walls
Delavan Art Gallery

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

Noted poet Martin Walls will invoke a bevy of emotions and pictorial scenes as he engages listeners in readings gleaned from the pages of his published works.

A native of Brighton, England, Martin Walls is the author of three books of poems, the latest of which, The Solvay Process, is due out this spring. He is a Witter Bynner Poetry Fellow of the Library of Congress, and was elected to that position by former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. Walls' poems have appeared in Field, The Nation, Commonweal, The Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry, Five Points and Stone Canoe, among others. Two of his pieces, "Dandelions Near The Speed of Light" and "Solvay Convenient & Deli" are included in this year's third edition of the Stone Canoe Journal. Additionally, he is the recipient of The Nation/"Discovery" Award and a Breadloaf Writers' Conference Scholarship.

Little Red Riding Hood
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive version of the children's classic.

Where's My Money
Black Box Players

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

Written by John Patrick Shanley; directed by David Julian Melendez.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!

Exit the Body
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

Price: $15 adults; $12 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

A mystery writer rents a New England house that is the rendezvous point for some jewel thieves. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at 2:00 AM when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. Not since the days of Mark Sennett has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

Where's My Money
Black Box Players

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

Written by John Patrick Shanley; directed by David Julian Melendez.

Our Town
LeMoyne College
Boot and Buskin

Price: $12 regular, $8 seniors, $4 students
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town explores the traditional American values of religion, community, family and the simple pleasures of life. It is an attempt to find value above all price for even the smallest events in our daily life.

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Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

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Sunday, March 1, 2009

Observations East and West: Artists' Views of the Historic Erie Canal
Erie Canal Museum
Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts

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

The exhibition will feature student work from professor Sarah McCoubrey's fall 2008 landscape painting class and will be matted, framed and installed by students in the Museum Studies program. The subject of the works is an exploration of the changing environment as impacted by the Erie Canal. To accomplish this, the class met weekly at a variety of locations along the Erie Canal including the more rural areas, through the suburbs, into the city, and at the Erie Canal Museum.

The choice of these sites represents more than 200 years of transition in the surrounding Syracuse community and illustrates the change in the living environment as the community evolved from a casual based transportation center into a major modern metropolitan city.

Prosthesis: Ambivalence -- Works by Ellen Garvens
Light Work Gallery

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

In "Prosthesis," Ellen Garvens' photographs and sculptures intersect and magnify each other as they reference the ever-present, formidable, and magnificent frailty of the human body. This exhibition unites photographs from Garvens' Ambivalence series with photo-based sculptures from her Constructions series.

Garvens began creating the images from the Ambivalence series, which documents the manufacture of prosthetics, at around the same time the war in Iraq started. The prosthetics depicted in these straightforward and elegant photographs serve as reminders of the consequence of conflict and the ephemeral nature of the humans who carry out that conflict. The photo-based sculptures from Garvens' body of work titled Constructions combine images of the body within delicate metal framings. In this series, hand tools, some from everyday life, such as scissors and pliers, and some, including probes and tooth extractors, more directly related to the maintenance of the body, integrate with images of hands and other overtly organic forms. Much as prosthetic devices contain the memory of the body, the hand-tools and metal framings of this series give form to the photographs within them. The Constructions bring the themes of the body and the revelation of its armature into three dimensions.

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

The Transmedia Photography Annual features photographs by Transmedia undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

Exploring History with Art: The Changing View—Landscapes
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt
Syracuse University Art Museum

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

The exhibition brings together more than 80 engravings, vivid Orientalist paintings, decorative objects, and documents and letters made during General Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign of 1791-1801. While unsuccessful as a military campaign, the endeavor was extremely successful and a cultural expedition. Napoleon brought over 150 scholars with him and their investigations into the country's ancient and contemporary societies formed the foundation of modern Egyptology and were a major achievement. From the Dahesh Museum of Art.

Selections: Works by Ludwig Stein
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) will celebrate the opening of a new venue in downtown Syracuse with an inaugural exhibition by one of its most celebrated faculty artists.

The work in "Selections" spans Stein's 37 years at VPA, teaching on the SU campus as well as in London and in Florence, Italy.

"My desires for the viewer are to perceive elegance, richness, passion and rediscover sensitivity for the world around them," says Stein in his artist's statement for the exhibition. "I want my viewers to understand that each artist must find their muse and, within that finding, show love for themselves, the object of desire, the painting and the viewer. My intention as an artist-teacher is to pass this passion and knowledge on to my students, knowing full well that discovery and understanding are personal."

Stein has exhibited his work in solo and group shows in cities around the world, including Guayaquil, Ecuador; Basel, Switzerland; and London. His work is included in many permanent collections, including those of the University of London, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, American Airlines and JPMorgan Chase. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the British Council Arts Group and the Ford Foundation, among others.

VPA will use the Hot Shop as an additional space to showcase the curriculum-related activities of its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists.

50/50: Works of Nancy Jurs
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Nancy Jurs juxtaposes her signature large-scale, hand-built ceramic sculptures with recent site-specific installations composed of ceramic, mixed-media and found objects. Throughout her 40-year career Jurs, a Rochester-based sculptor and ceramic artist, has produced an astounding body of work that largely addresses female power and strength. In 2003, Jurs completed the Armor Series, a grouping of six life-size armored torsos that present themselves with empowered determination. The stylized shells not only serve to protect the figures but to symbolize renewed confidence and strength in a post-9/11 world. "Undaunted" (2003), which is part of the Armor Series, was acquired by the Everson in 2004.

Also on view will be "Triad," a monumental 16-foot high sculpture composed of ceramic slabs that have been hand-built: cut, scraped, modeled, and stacked in three interacting totem-like structures. Triad will be prominently displayed in the Rosamond Gifford Sculpture Court.

Anne Cofer: Concealed Objects
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Anne Cofer's interest in materials and artistic processes is evident in "Concealed Objects," a provocative new site-specific installation created for her first museum solo exhibition at the Everson. Inspired by British artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose sculpture is at once unique and fleeting, Cofer creates objects that exist for a moment and place in time and then are recycled and reused for other projects. The installation designed for the Everson is composed of skirt forms constructed of cloth and wet clay suspended from the ceiling in grid fashion. The skirts, arranged in perfect harmony within the space that contains them, appear to float in contradiction to the heavy clay that pulls them downward. Each garment is cut from a Victorian-era dress pattern (ca. 1895), combined with wet clay and modeled by hand to capture every fold of the fabric as it cascades to the floor. The repetition of form and motion recalls the monotonous tasks of domestic chores that have existed for centuries without change. Cofer assigns new meaning to the found and recycled fabrics she chooses for the garments: the bed linens, table cloths, furniture upholstery, and well-worn clothing conceal the individual histories, memories and stories untold about their previous owners.

Anne Cofer was the recipient of the Best-of-Show Award given at the 2008 Everson Biennial exhibition.

Silverwood Musicians
Arts Alive in Liverpool

Price: Free
Liverpool Public Library
310 Tulip St., Liverpool

Music for multiple clarinets

SSO Brass Quintet
Fayetteville Free Library

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

St. Paul Oratorio excerpts
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
SSO Pops Chorus
Andrew Russo, conductor
Featuring Janet Brown, soprano; Bob Allen, tenor

Price: Free (goodwill offering to Pompei suggested)
Our Lady of Pompei Church
301 Ash St., Syracuse

Members of the SSO and SSO Pops Chorus perform excerpts from Mendelssohn's St. Paul Oratorio.
Soprano Janet Brown and tenor Bob Allen join conductor Andrew Russo for this celebration of the Pauline Year and the bicentennial of Mendelssohn's birth.

Shiru! (Sing!) - A Concert of Hebrew Music
Syracuse Children's Chorus
Featuring Jonathan Dinkin and Klezmercuse

Price: Adults $18/$14; Students $16/$12
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This spirited concert will pay tribute to the rich tradition of Hebrew music. SCC welcomes guest artists Jonathan Dinkin and Klezmercuse to perform traditional songs and folk melodies, including Dodi Li, Shalom Chaverim, Bashana Haba'a, Hiney Ma Tov, and Mayim, Mayim.

Up
Syracuse Stage
Penny Metropulos, director

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

Once upon a time Walter Griffin attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and soared 16,000 feet into the wild blue yonder. Mission accomplished. Dream fulfilled. What could he see of his life in such rarefied air? What was left of the vision when he touched down on the ground? Bridget Carpenter is a young American playwright on the rise, and in this contemporary parable, based on the true story of Walter Griffin, she dares us to consider what it is in the human spirit that makes us want to soar beyond the realm of reason. Why are we fascinated with the seemingly impossible? What makes daredevil aerialist Philippe Petit ascend the high wire? And why does he make frequent appearances in this clever and altogether amusing and intriguing play? Come down from the wire and we might have to find a job, or support a wife, or take care of a son, or ... find a new dream.

Read a Review!