Tuesday, March 22, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Ingrid Ludt: "Forest becomes Ocean"
LeMoyne College

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

Winter Art Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Come in from the cold and enjoy the warmth of friends and the glow of ceramic art made in The Studio at Clayscapes Pottery. Featuring ceramic artwork by Millie St. John, Tim See, Don Seymour, Shawn McGuire, Wes Weiss, and Sarah VanDerVoort as well as many others.

Takafumi Ide Gallery Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Takafumi Ide is an interdisciplinary media artist specializing in installation with sound and light. He received his B.A. in graphic design from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1989, and his M.F.A. in studio art from Stony Brook University in 2007. He has worked for more than 10 years as a graphic designer and an illustrator in Japan and now teaches at Stony Brook University as a lecturer, and Suffolk County Community College as an adjunct instructor.

He has received several honors, such as The Sculpture Space Fellowship and Residency (funded by both the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts), the Strategic Opportunity Stipend Program Grant through the New York Foundation for the Arts, and most recently the Nomura Cultural Foundation's Project Grant, Asahi Shimbun Foundation Project Grant, and the Vermont Studio Center's Partial-Grant and Residency. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. More recent exhibitions include Sunroom Project Glynder Gallery, Wave Hill, NY, ISE Cultural Foundation in Soho, NY, and AC Institute in Chelsea, NY.

Read a review!

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marcel Breuer and Postwar America
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

There will be a closing reception this evening 6:30-7:30 pm.

Drawings from the Marcel Breuer Papers, curated by SU Architecture students, with Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey. The exhibition is the outcome of their work in the extensive Breuer archive at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center. It features images of 120 drawings, as well as photographs, documenting thirteen of Breuer’s major postwar buildings and projects. Full-scale reproductions highlight themes that characterized some of Breuer’s lesser-known major work and document his responses to the needs and opportunities of postwar American society.

Breuer (1902-1981) was a leading figure among the second generation of modernist architects whose striking designs for furniture, houses, institutions, and commercial buildings helped to set the shape and style of modernity in Europe and the United States, leading “Time” magazine to characterize him as one of the “form givers of the 20th century.” His works include the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Celebrating CNY Women in Art: 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

This group exhibit showcases both the artwork of local women artists, as well as artwork with women-focused subjects. Artists will be sharing their personal experiences in a number of areas. The artists from the CNY area and include Maria Rizzo (painting), Amanda Gormley (photography), Patricia Seitz (painting), Suzanne Masters (paint and collage), Sherry Gordon (painting), Kristie Hayes (painting and drawing), Carla Senecal (installation artwork), and Michael Moody (painting and prints).

Tonal Gestures
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diana Godfrey: mixed media pastels and acrylic paintings
Carmel Nicoletti: bronze reliefs and glass works

Amos Kennedy Prints!
Community Folk Art Center

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

Focusing on issues of race, violence and community, "Amos Kennedy Prints!" features the hand-printed works of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and will include prints created at CFAC. By transforming the gallery into an active printmaking workshop, Kennedy will collaborate with students from the Syracuse area and Syracuse University to create images and broadsides that reflect issues of race, gender and politics and illustrate the impact of violence in the city on their lives and community. The public is invited to meet Kennedy and to observe and participate in the printmaking process.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Emerging Women of CNY: Student Gallery Show
Redhouse

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

A selection of work from young women at Fowler, Nottingham and IT high schools.

Fashionable Points of View
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

"Fashionable Points of View" marks the first time the SU fashion design faculty has presented its work as a group. The artwork in the exhibition includes beautifully crafted garments, accessories and fine art.

Among the faculty designers showcasing their expertise and interest within the field of fashion are Jeffrey Mayer, fashion design program coordinator; Karen Bakke; Todd Conover; Laurel Morton; Claudia Gervais; Joyce Backus; Elizabeth Shorrock; Megan Lawson Clark; and Jean Henry.

For more information, contact Mayer at jcmayer@syr.edu, or Lauren Tagliaferro at lktaglia@syr.edu.

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

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

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

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

Casey Landerkin: Paintings and Illustrations
Echo

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

Read a review!

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Implements of Mass Construction
Erie Canal Museum

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

The Erie Canal was built by thousands of untrained men during the 19th century, before the United States had any civil engineering professionals. So how did they construct a canal across the entire state of New York? Come by the Erie Canal Museum and see the tools that made it possible. The 16 items on view were used for construction or industry along the Erie Canal in the 19th century. Visit the Museum's second floor gallery to try to guess what each instrument is. Tools similar to some of the implements on display are still used today, but others will require some guesswork. Come visit today to guess for yourself!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pippo Ciorra
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Auditorium
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Lecture by Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of Rome's MAXXI Architeturra exhibit

Closing reception for the "Marcel Breuer and Postwar America" exhibition will immediately follow.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Paul Myoda
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Paul Myoda, a sculptor and co-creator of the "Tribute in Light" 9/11 memorial installation, is an assistant professor of visual art at Brown University whose work includes more than 40 exhibitions of sculptures, drawings and short films. He has also written for various art publications, including Art in America, Flash Art and Frieze. Prior to Brown, he lived in New York City where he co-founded Big Room, an art production company, and Myoda + Ruy-Klein Architecture, an architecture-ideas collaboration.

In 2001, Myoda participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's World Views Program and had a studio on the 91st floor of World Trade Center I. He co-created the "Tribute in Light" in 2001 in memory of the tragic events of 9/11, and the work has subsequently become an annual installation. More recently, Myoda has been developing "Glittering Machines," a series of modular, interactive, kinetic, sonic and illuminating sculptures.

Myoda has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Warhol Foundation and the Howard Foundation, among others.

Parking is available for $4 in Booth Garage; mention event to obtain rate. For more information, contact Robert Wysocki, 315-443-2318 or rjwysock@syr.edu.

Transformation and Liberation: Rising up from Fear to Hope
University Lectures
Featuring Karen Tse

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

A former public defender, Karen Tse first developed her interest in the intersection of criminal law and human rights as a Thomas J. Watson fellow in 1986 after observing Southeast Asian refugees detained in a local prison without trial. She later moved to Cambodia in 1994 to train the country's first core group of public defenders and subsequently served as a United Nations Judicial Mentor. Under the auspices of the U.N, she trained judges and prosecutors and established the first arraignment court in Cambodia. Tse founded IBJ in 2000 to promote systemic global change in the administration of criminal justice. As director, she provides the vision and direction for IBJ, and is a leader in the global criminal defense movement. She has since negotiated and implemented groundbreaking measures in judicial reform with the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Under her leadership, IBJ has expanded its programming to Rwanda, Burundi and Zimbabwe and is now working to create a Global Defender Support Program that will bring IBJ assistance to public defenders worldwide. Tse is a graduate of UCLA Law School and Harvard Divinity School. She is the recipient of numerous awards and was named by the U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders. In 2008, Tse received the American Bar Association's Section of Litigation International Human Rights Award which annually recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the cause of human rights, rule of law and access to justice.

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

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Ingrid Ludt: "Forest becomes Ocean"
LeMoyne College

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

Winter Art Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Come in from the cold and enjoy the warmth of friends and the glow of ceramic art made in The Studio at Clayscapes Pottery. Featuring ceramic artwork by Millie St. John, Tim See, Don Seymour, Shawn McGuire, Wes Weiss, and Sarah VanDerVoort as well as many others.

Takafumi Ide Gallery Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Takafumi Ide is an interdisciplinary media artist specializing in installation with sound and light. He received his B.A. in graphic design from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1989, and his M.F.A. in studio art from Stony Brook University in 2007. He has worked for more than 10 years as a graphic designer and an illustrator in Japan and now teaches at Stony Brook University as a lecturer, and Suffolk County Community College as an adjunct instructor.

He has received several honors, such as The Sculpture Space Fellowship and Residency (funded by both the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts), the Strategic Opportunity Stipend Program Grant through the New York Foundation for the Arts, and most recently the Nomura Cultural Foundation's Project Grant, Asahi Shimbun Foundation Project Grant, and the Vermont Studio Center's Partial-Grant and Residency. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. More recent exhibitions include Sunroom Project Glynder Gallery, Wave Hill, NY, ISE Cultural Foundation in Soho, NY, and AC Institute in Chelsea, NY.

Read a review!

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

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

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

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

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

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marcel Breuer and Postwar America
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Drawings from the Marcel Breuer Papers, curated by SU Architecture students, with Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey. The exhibition is the outcome of their work in the extensive Breuer archive at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center. It features images of 120 drawings, as well as photographs, documenting thirteen of Breuer’s major postwar buildings and projects. Full-scale reproductions highlight themes that characterized some of Breuer’s lesser-known major work and document his responses to the needs and opportunities of postwar American society.

Breuer (1902-1981) was a leading figure among the second generation of modernist architects whose striking designs for furniture, houses, institutions, and commercial buildings helped to set the shape and style of modernity in Europe and the United States, leading “Time” magazine to characterize him as one of the “form givers of the 20th century.” His works include the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Celebrating CNY Women in Art: 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

This group exhibit showcases both the artwork of local women artists, as well as artwork with women-focused subjects. Artists will be sharing their personal experiences in a number of areas. The artists from the CNY area and include Maria Rizzo (painting), Amanda Gormley (photography), Patricia Seitz (painting), Suzanne Masters (paint and collage), Sherry Gordon (painting), Kristie Hayes (painting and drawing), Carla Senecal (installation artwork), and Michael Moody (painting and prints).

Tonal Gestures
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diana Godfrey: mixed media pastels and acrylic paintings
Carmel Nicoletti: bronze reliefs and glass works

Amos Kennedy Prints!
Community Folk Art Center

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

Focusing on issues of race, violence and community, "Amos Kennedy Prints!" features the hand-printed works of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and will include prints created at CFAC. By transforming the gallery into an active printmaking workshop, Kennedy will collaborate with students from the Syracuse area and Syracuse University to create images and broadsides that reflect issues of race, gender and politics and illustrate the impact of violence in the city on their lives and community. The public is invited to meet Kennedy and to observe and participate in the printmaking process.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

Emerging Women of CNY: Student Gallery Show
Redhouse

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

A selection of work from young women at Fowler, Nottingham and IT high schools.

Fashionable Points of View
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

"Fashionable Points of View" marks the first time the SU fashion design faculty has presented its work as a group. The artwork in the exhibition includes beautifully crafted garments, accessories and fine art.

Among the faculty designers showcasing their expertise and interest within the field of fashion are Jeffrey Mayer, fashion design program coordinator; Karen Bakke; Todd Conover; Laurel Morton; Claudia Gervais; Joyce Backus; Elizabeth Shorrock; Megan Lawson Clark; and Jean Henry.

For more information, contact Mayer at jcmayer@syr.edu, or Lauren Tagliaferro at lktaglia@syr.edu.

Full Circle
Szozda Gallery

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

Linda Esterley: mixed media collage
Lynette Blake: oil paintings
Elizabeth Moldenhauer: felted vessels

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

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

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

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

Casey Landerkin: Paintings and Illustrations
Echo

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

New Directions in Photography
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

What does it mean to be an art photographer today? In this exhibition, the third-year art photography graduate students prove that the photographic medium has outgrown its traditional function as singular-print-on-the-wall and is now an expanded practice that includes video, sculpture, installation and performance.

Although the four photographers -- Sarah Zamecnik, Shimpei Shirafuji, Jeffrey Einhorn and Colleen Woolpert -- push their work in different directions, one belief unites them: the image is paramount, whether it is static or in motion; surrounded by a frame or mounted to a sculptural form; printed on paper or projected onto surfaces; silent or accompanied by sound. It operates sometimes as documentation, other times as replication or appropriation. It is used variously to depict truths or to create fictions derived from truths or the realm of the artist's imagination.

For more information, contact Colleen Woolpert at cmwoolpe@syr.edu. XL Projects may be contacted at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

Read a review!

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Implements of Mass Construction
Erie Canal Museum

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

The Erie Canal was built by thousands of untrained men during the 19th century, before the United States had any civil engineering professionals. So how did they construct a canal across the entire state of New York? Come by the Erie Canal Museum and see the tools that made it possible. The 16 items on view were used for construction or industry along the Erie Canal in the 19th century. Visit the Museum's second floor gallery to try to guess what each instrument is. Tools similar to some of the implements on display are still used today, but others will require some guesswork. Come visit today to guess for yourself!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Juan La Manna, piano; David Mastrangelo, violin
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Violin and piano works of Schumann, Pärt Fratres, and J.S. Bach.

Civil Twilight, with A Silent Film, Aunt Martha
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Briget Pegeen Kelly, poetry
Raymond Carver Reading Series

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

Reading is preceded by a question and answer session from 3:45-4:30.

Preview: The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Ingrid Ludt: "Forest becomes Ocean"
LeMoyne College

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

Winter Art Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Come in from the cold and enjoy the warmth of friends and the glow of ceramic art made in The Studio at Clayscapes Pottery. Featuring ceramic artwork by Millie St. John, Tim See, Don Seymour, Shawn McGuire, Wes Weiss, and Sarah VanDerVoort as well as many others.

Takafumi Ide Gallery Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Takafumi Ide is an interdisciplinary media artist specializing in installation with sound and light. He received his B.A. in graphic design from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1989, and his M.F.A. in studio art from Stony Brook University in 2007. He has worked for more than 10 years as a graphic designer and an illustrator in Japan and now teaches at Stony Brook University as a lecturer, and Suffolk County Community College as an adjunct instructor.

He has received several honors, such as The Sculpture Space Fellowship and Residency (funded by both the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts), the Strategic Opportunity Stipend Program Grant through the New York Foundation for the Arts, and most recently the Nomura Cultural Foundation's Project Grant, Asahi Shimbun Foundation Project Grant, and the Vermont Studio Center's Partial-Grant and Residency. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. More recent exhibitions include Sunroom Project Glynder Gallery, Wave Hill, NY, ISE Cultural Foundation in Soho, NY, and AC Institute in Chelsea, NY.

Read a review!

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marcel Breuer and Postwar America
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Drawings from the Marcel Breuer Papers, curated by SU Architecture students, with Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey. The exhibition is the outcome of their work in the extensive Breuer archive at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center. It features images of 120 drawings, as well as photographs, documenting thirteen of Breuer’s major postwar buildings and projects. Full-scale reproductions highlight themes that characterized some of Breuer’s lesser-known major work and document his responses to the needs and opportunities of postwar American society.

Breuer (1902-1981) was a leading figure among the second generation of modernist architects whose striking designs for furniture, houses, institutions, and commercial buildings helped to set the shape and style of modernity in Europe and the United States, leading “Time” magazine to characterize him as one of the “form givers of the 20th century.” His works include the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Celebrating CNY Women in Art: 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

This group exhibit showcases both the artwork of local women artists, as well as artwork with women-focused subjects. Artists will be sharing their personal experiences in a number of areas. The artists from the CNY area and include Maria Rizzo (painting), Amanda Gormley (photography), Patricia Seitz (painting), Suzanne Masters (paint and collage), Sherry Gordon (painting), Kristie Hayes (painting and drawing), Carla Senecal (installation artwork), and Michael Moody (painting and prints).

Tonal Gestures
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diana Godfrey: mixed media pastels and acrylic paintings
Carmel Nicoletti: bronze reliefs and glass works

Amos Kennedy Prints!
Community Folk Art Center

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

Focusing on issues of race, violence and community, "Amos Kennedy Prints!" features the hand-printed works of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and will include prints created at CFAC. By transforming the gallery into an active printmaking workshop, Kennedy will collaborate with students from the Syracuse area and Syracuse University to create images and broadsides that reflect issues of race, gender and politics and illustrate the impact of violence in the city on their lives and community. The public is invited to meet Kennedy and to observe and participate in the printmaking process.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

Emerging Women of CNY: Student Gallery Show
Redhouse

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

A selection of work from young women at Fowler, Nottingham and IT high schools.

Fashionable Points of View
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

"Fashionable Points of View" marks the first time the SU fashion design faculty has presented its work as a group. The artwork in the exhibition includes beautifully crafted garments, accessories and fine art.

Among the faculty designers showcasing their expertise and interest within the field of fashion are Jeffrey Mayer, fashion design program coordinator; Karen Bakke; Todd Conover; Laurel Morton; Claudia Gervais; Joyce Backus; Elizabeth Shorrock; Megan Lawson Clark; and Jean Henry.

For more information, contact Mayer at jcmayer@syr.edu, or Lauren Tagliaferro at lktaglia@syr.edu.

Full Circle
Szozda Gallery

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

Linda Esterley: mixed media collage
Lynette Blake: oil paintings
Elizabeth Moldenhauer: felted vessels

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

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

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

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

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

Casey Landerkin: Paintings and Illustrations
Echo

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

New Directions in Photography
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

What does it mean to be an art photographer today? In this exhibition, the third-year art photography graduate students prove that the photographic medium has outgrown its traditional function as singular-print-on-the-wall and is now an expanded practice that includes video, sculpture, installation and performance.

Although the four photographers -- Sarah Zamecnik, Shimpei Shirafuji, Jeffrey Einhorn and Colleen Woolpert -- push their work in different directions, one belief unites them: the image is paramount, whether it is static or in motion; surrounded by a frame or mounted to a sculptural form; printed on paper or projected onto surfaces; silent or accompanied by sound. It operates sometimes as documentation, other times as replication or appropriation. It is used variously to depict truths or to create fictions derived from truths or the realm of the artist's imagination.

For more information, contact Colleen Woolpert at cmwoolpe@syr.edu. XL Projects may be contacted at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

Read a review!

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

Demitrus Oliver: Mare, 2009
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Mare, 2009, projects a circular image of a wave crashing against an unnamed shore. As the image rotates, the lines of the waves begin to resemble the layered surface of a Jovian planet such as Jupiter. Connecting the sea with heavenly phenomena, the installation recreates the sense of wonderment felt when looking at the night sky and the fundamental human desire to understand one's place in the universe. Mare, which is Latin for "seas", suggests movement and journeys both physical and metaphysical, as well as metaphors of darkness and illumination, looking and discovery.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Implements of Mass Construction
Erie Canal Museum

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

The Erie Canal was built by thousands of untrained men during the 19th century, before the United States had any civil engineering professionals. So how did they construct a canal across the entire state of New York? Come by the Erie Canal Museum and see the tools that made it possible. The 16 items on view were used for construction or industry along the Erie Canal in the 19th century. Visit the Museum's second floor gallery to try to guess what each instrument is. Tools similar to some of the implements on display are still used today, but others will require some guesswork. Come visit today to guess for yourself!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ashley Cox-Sullivan, with Wendy Ramsey, Josh Dekaney, and host Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Words and Music Songwriter Showcase

Price: $10
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

The Words and Music Songwriter Showcase, hosted by singer-songwriter, author, and NPR contributor Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, is a celebration of original music from Central New York and beyond, featuring established and emerging artists of all genres in an up-close-and-personal acoustic setting.

Edwin McCain, with Tommy Connors
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

A Wee Bit O' Murder
Acme Mystery Company

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

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

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

Preview: The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

Friday, March 25, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Ingrid Ludt: "Forest becomes Ocean"
LeMoyne College

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

Winter Art Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Come in from the cold and enjoy the warmth of friends and the glow of ceramic art made in The Studio at Clayscapes Pottery. Featuring ceramic artwork by Millie St. John, Tim See, Don Seymour, Shawn McGuire, Wes Weiss, and Sarah VanDerVoort as well as many others.

Takafumi Ide Gallery Exhibit
Onondaga Community College

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

Takafumi Ide is an interdisciplinary media artist specializing in installation with sound and light. He received his B.A. in graphic design from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1989, and his M.F.A. in studio art from Stony Brook University in 2007. He has worked for more than 10 years as a graphic designer and an illustrator in Japan and now teaches at Stony Brook University as a lecturer, and Suffolk County Community College as an adjunct instructor.

He has received several honors, such as The Sculpture Space Fellowship and Residency (funded by both the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts), the Strategic Opportunity Stipend Program Grant through the New York Foundation for the Arts, and most recently the Nomura Cultural Foundation's Project Grant, Asahi Shimbun Foundation Project Grant, and the Vermont Studio Center's Partial-Grant and Residency. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. More recent exhibitions include Sunroom Project Glynder Gallery, Wave Hill, NY, ISE Cultural Foundation in Soho, NY, and AC Institute in Chelsea, NY.

Read a review!

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

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

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

Davidovich, on Painting and Video Art:

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

Cortland County Art Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marcel Breuer and Postwar America
Syracuse University School of Architecture

Price: Free
Slocum Hall Gallery
Syracuse University campus, Syracuse

Drawings from the Marcel Breuer Papers, curated by SU Architecture students, with Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey. The exhibition is the outcome of their work in the extensive Breuer archive at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center. It features images of 120 drawings, as well as photographs, documenting thirteen of Breuer’s major postwar buildings and projects. Full-scale reproductions highlight themes that characterized some of Breuer’s lesser-known major work and document his responses to the needs and opportunities of postwar American society.

Breuer (1902-1981) was a leading figure among the second generation of modernist architects whose striking designs for furniture, houses, institutions, and commercial buildings helped to set the shape and style of modernity in Europe and the United States, leading “Time” magazine to characterize him as one of the “form givers of the 20th century.” His works include the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Celebrating CNY Women in Art: 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

This group exhibit showcases both the artwork of local women artists, as well as artwork with women-focused subjects. Artists will be sharing their personal experiences in a number of areas. The artists from the CNY area and include Maria Rizzo (painting), Amanda Gormley (photography), Patricia Seitz (painting), Suzanne Masters (paint and collage), Sherry Gordon (painting), Kristie Hayes (painting and drawing), Carla Senecal (installation artwork), and Michael Moody (painting and prints).

Tonal Gestures
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diana Godfrey: mixed media pastels and acrylic paintings
Carmel Nicoletti: bronze reliefs and glass works

Amos Kennedy Prints!
Community Folk Art Center

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

Focusing on issues of race, violence and community, "Amos Kennedy Prints!" features the hand-printed works of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and will include prints created at CFAC. By transforming the gallery into an active printmaking workshop, Kennedy will collaborate with students from the Syracuse area and Syracuse University to create images and broadsides that reflect issues of race, gender and politics and illustrate the impact of violence in the city on their lives and community. The public is invited to meet Kennedy and to observe and participate in the printmaking process.

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

Emerging Women of CNY: Student Gallery Show
Redhouse

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

A selection of work from young women at Fowler, Nottingham and IT high schools.

Full Circle
Szozda Gallery

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

Linda Esterley: mixed media collage
Lynette Blake: oil paintings
Elizabeth Moldenhauer: felted vessels

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CLOSED today* Casey Landerkin: Paintings and Illustrations
Echo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

New Directions in Photography
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

What does it mean to be an art photographer today? In this exhibition, the third-year art photography graduate students prove that the photographic medium has outgrown its traditional function as singular-print-on-the-wall and is now an expanded practice that includes video, sculpture, installation and performance.

Although the four photographers -- Sarah Zamecnik, Shimpei Shirafuji, Jeffrey Einhorn and Colleen Woolpert -- push their work in different directions, one belief unites them: the image is paramount, whether it is static or in motion; surrounded by a frame or mounted to a sculptural form; printed on paper or projected onto surfaces; silent or accompanied by sound. It operates sometimes as documentation, other times as replication or appropriation. It is used variously to depict truths or to create fictions derived from truths or the realm of the artist's imagination.

For more information, contact Colleen Woolpert at cmwoolpe@syr.edu. XL Projects may be contacted at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

Read a review!

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

Demitrus Oliver: Mare, 2009
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Mare, 2009, projects a circular image of a wave crashing against an unnamed shore. As the image rotates, the lines of the waves begin to resemble the layered surface of a Jovian planet such as Jupiter. Connecting the sea with heavenly phenomena, the installation recreates the sense of wonderment felt when looking at the night sky and the fundamental human desire to understand one's place in the universe. Mare, which is Latin for "seas", suggests movement and journeys both physical and metaphysical, as well as metaphors of darkness and illumination, looking and discovery.

Satan's Closet
Salt City Improv Theater

Price: $8 regular, $6 students
Salt City Improv Theatre
Shoppingtown Mall, Sears Wing, Dewitt

An evening of comedy improv.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

The Trial of the St. Patrick's Four
ArtRage Gallery

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

On March 17, 2003, 48 hours before the bombings started in Iraq, a group of dedicated anti-war protesters poured their own blood on the walls of a military recruiting center in Ithaca. They were charged in state court with criminal mischief and trespassing and the trial ended with a 9 for acquittal 3 no-acquittal hung jury. From there the DA decided to refer their case to the Federal government and the St. Patrick's Four -- Daniel Burns, Clare Grady, Peter DeMott and Teresa Grady -- were then put on trial in Binghamton for conspiracy, a charge that carries a 6-8 year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. This was the first trial of anti-war protesters to be charged with Conspiracy since the Vietnam era.

In a climate where dissent equals disloyalty, the St. Patrick's Four contend that complacency equals complicity. This film is about four people who committed an act of peaceful civil disobedience and features appearances by Howard Zinn, Daniel Berrigan and Noam Chomsky. Their story and trial brings to life the critical moment we are living through with regards to our basic civil rights. Join producer Amanda Zacken and the film's director, Adolfo Doring, for a Q&A following the screening. The funds from this screening will go to support the DeMott-Grady family.

Implements of Mass Construction
Erie Canal Museum

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

The Erie Canal was built by thousands of untrained men during the 19th century, before the United States had any civil engineering professionals. So how did they construct a canal across the entire state of New York? Come by the Erie Canal Museum and see the tools that made it possible. The 16 items on view were used for construction or industry along the Erie Canal in the 19th century. Visit the Museum's second floor gallery to try to guess what each instrument is. Tools similar to some of the implements on display are still used today, but others will require some guesswork. Come visit today to guess for yourself!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All-County Jazz Festival

Henninger High School
600 Robinson St., Syracuse

An Evening of Jazz & Wine Tasting
Community Folk Art Center
Featuring Nancy Kelly & The Young Jazz Giants

Price: $25
Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Join us for an evening featuring music from Nancy Kelly and tastings of wines from around the state. Nancy Kelly is an internationally renowned jazz vocalist who will be performing with The Young Jazz Giants, a talented group of high school jazz musicians (Josh Condon, piano; Gabe Condon, guitar; Greg Evans, drums; Joey Arcuri, bass). Wine tastings will be provided by various purveyors from around the state of New York.

All proceeds to benefit CFAC's 40th anniversary celebration in 2012.

Side by Side by Sondheim
LeMoyne College
Le Moyne College Singers

Price: $15 regular; $10 seniors; $5 students and Le Moyne community
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

In celebration of Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday, the Le Moyne College Singers will present an evening of his best-known works, including classics like "Send in the Clowns" and "Being Alive," as well as lesser-known gems including "We're Gonna Be Alright" and "The Boy From..."

Featuring music direction by Jocelyn Rauch and musical staging by Matthew Chiorini, audience members will be welcomed into a party atmosphere in celebration of the musical theater legend.

Reservations are recommended. For more information, phone 315-445-4523.

Terpsicore
NYS Baroque
Featuring Julie Andrijeski, dancer; Laura Heimes, soprano; José Lemos, alto; Scott Metcalfe, leader

Price: $25 regular, $20 seniors, $10 college students, children free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

An all-Handel program.

Handel's opera-ballet Terpsicore, newly reconstructed by Julie Andrijeski, with a showcase of concerti grossi and virtuoso arias and duets from Handel operas. A collaboration with Pegasus Early Music.

Classics Series: Fisk and Falletta
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Featuring Eliot Fisk and Zaira Meneses, guitars

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

Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Vivaldi Double Concerto in G major
Beaser Guitar Concerto
Turina Danzas fantasticas: Orgia (III)

Read a review!

Reconstruction and Reconciliation
Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences
Featuring Ken Meyer, guitar

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Concert by Ken Meyer, guitar, followed by a screening of "Inanga: An Instrument of Tradition in Rwanda." For more information, phone 315-443-4185.

Opera Karaoke
Syracuse Opera

Price: Free
Opus Restaurant
218 Walton St., Syracuse

Syracuse Opera is pleased to invite all inspired and aspiring singers to Opera Karaoke. Syracuse Opera will provide the sheet music and pianist, while you provide the vocals. The Opus Restaurant & Lounge will provide late-night happy hour and drink specials.

For more information, call the Syracuse Opera administrative offices at 315-475-5915.

The Odd Couple
CNY Playhouse
Daniel & Steve Rowlands, director

Price: Dinner theater: $29 single; $55 couple. Show only: $20 (limited availability)
Fire and Ice Banquet Hall, The Locker Room
528 Hiawatha Blvd., Syracuse

Dinner at 6:45 pm, followed by show at 8:00 pm.

A Slob, A Neatnick, and a Big Mess. Oscar Madison is one of the highest paid sports writers in the east. He's also one of the most unreliable, undependable, and irresponsible slobs in the world. It's no wonder that six months ago his wife took their kids and left Oscar all alone in their big, 8-room apartment. Now Oscar is free to drink, smoke, and have his weekly poker game with his buddies. But Oscar's happy, dirty little world gets turned upside down when his best friend, the excessively neurotic, and obsessively neat Felix Ungar, is thrown out by his wife, and is forced to move in with Oscar. Now their friendship is put to the test as these two unlikely roommates drive each other literally insane. This star-studded cast includes J. Brazil as Oscar and Gerrit VanderWerff Jr. as Felix. Anne Freund, Greg J. Hipius, Alan Stillman, Jim Uva, and Wendy Viggiano round out the cast.

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Urinetown: The Musical
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Deborah Taylor and Heather Jensen, director

Price: $20 adults, $17 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

The satirical comedy musical features music and lyrics by Mark Hollman and book and lyrics by Greg Kotis. Urinetown lampoons the legal system, capitalism, social responsibility, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and local politics. In addition the musical ridicules Broadway itself poking fun at shows such as Les Miserables and Annie, to name a few. The production won three Tony Awards in 2002.

A terrible water shortage, due to a 20-year drought, has hamstrung the Gotham-like town that is the setting for Urinetown: The Musical. In an attempt to regulate water consumption, the government has outlawed the use of private toilets. The citizenry must use public, designated pay-per-flush amenities owned and operated by Urine Good Company, a vindictive corporation run by the corrupt Caldwell B. Cladwell. Urinetown provides a story that centers on the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of a free flush.

Music directed by Dan Williams, choreographed by Stephfond Brunson.

Read a review!

Dog Sees God: Confession of a Teenage Blockhead
Onondaga Community College
OCC Dramatique

Price: $6
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

Corpus Christi
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

The most controversial and talked-about play of 1998. An old and familiar story, but from that point on, nothing feels quite familiar again. What follows is a story that parallels the New Testament, and its subject is nothing less than the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But author Terrence McNally's Christ figure is a character named Joshua, a young man born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the early 1950s.

This play is intended for mature audiences only.

Read a Review!

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Winter Art Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Come in from the cold and enjoy the warmth of friends and the glow of ceramic art made in The Studio at Clayscapes Pottery. Featuring ceramic artwork by Millie St. John, Tim See, Don Seymour, Shawn McGuire, Wes Weiss, and Sarah VanDerVoort as well as many others.

Casey Landerkin: Paintings and Illustrations
Echo

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

Tonal Gestures
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diana Godfrey: mixed media pastels and acrylic paintings
Carmel Nicoletti: bronze reliefs and glass works

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Full Circle
Szozda Gallery

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

Linda Esterley: mixed media collage
Lynette Blake: oil paintings
Elizabeth Moldenhauer: felted vessels

Amos Kennedy Prints!
Community Folk Art Center

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

Focusing on issues of race, violence and community, "Amos Kennedy Prints!" features the hand-printed works of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. and will include prints created at CFAC. By transforming the gallery into an active printmaking workshop, Kennedy will collaborate with students from the Syracuse area and Syracuse University to create images and broadsides that reflect issues of race, gender and politics and illustrate the impact of violence in the city on their lives and community. The public is invited to meet Kennedy and to observe and participate in the printmaking process.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

100 Years of Women Rockin' the World
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

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

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

No Boundaries: Color & Landscape
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Works by Scott Bennett and Michael Matthews.

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

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

New Directions in Photography
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

What does it mean to be an art photographer today? In this exhibition, the third-year art photography graduate students prove that the photographic medium has outgrown its traditional function as singular-print-on-the-wall and is now an expanded practice that includes video, sculpture, installation and performance.

Although the four photographers -- Sarah Zamecnik, Shimpei Shirafuji, Jeffrey Einhorn and Colleen Woolpert -- push their work in different directions, one belief unites them: the image is paramount, whether it is static or in motion; surrounded by a frame or mounted to a sculptural form; printed on paper or projected onto surfaces; silent or accompanied by sound. It operates sometimes as documentation, other times as replication or appropriation. It is used variously to depict truths or to create fictions derived from truths or the realm of the artist's imagination.

For more information, contact Colleen Woolpert at cmwoolpe@syr.edu. XL Projects may be contacted at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Kueng Caputo: The Quadrangular Cloud
The Warehouse Gallery

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

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

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Demitrus Oliver: Mare, 2009
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Mare, 2009, projects a circular image of a wave crashing against an unnamed shore. As the image rotates, the lines of the waves begin to resemble the layered surface of a Jovian planet such as Jupiter. Connecting the sea with heavenly phenomena, the installation recreates the sense of wonderment felt when looking at the night sky and the fundamental human desire to understand one's place in the universe. Mare, which is Latin for "seas", suggests movement and journeys both physical and metaphysical, as well as metaphors of darkness and illumination, looking and discovery.

Spark Video: Performance Edition
Spark Contemporary Art Space

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

Live performances by Evan Pashke, Lindsey Leonard, Misha Rabinovich, Angela Washko, Matthew Lax & Ellen Burke, Jennifer Chan & Arran Ridley

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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The Color of Paradise
ArtRage Gallery

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

From the award-winning Iranian director, Majid Majidi (Children of Heaven). Awash in the sights and sounds of an Iranian summer this moving family drama tells of an 8-year-old blind boy eager to immerse himself in the world of the seeing -- though his poor widower father nearly abandons him at a school for blind children. An exquisitely shot tale from award-winning Majidi, in the compelling spirit of contemporary Iranian cinema. Grand Prize: Montreal Film Festival.

Implements of Mass Construction
Erie Canal Museum

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

The Erie Canal was built by thousands of untrained men during the 19th century, before the United States had any civil engineering professionals. So how did they construct a canal across the entire state of New York? Come by the Erie Canal Museum and see the tools that made it possible. The 16 items on view were used for construction or industry along the Erie Canal in the 19th century. Visit the Museum's second floor gallery to try to guess what each instrument is. Tools similar to some of the implements on display are still used today, but others will require some guesswork. Come visit today to guess for yourself!

Artist Gallery Talk & Demonstration
Everson Museum of Art
Featuring Dan Reynolds

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

Meet the man behind the Cow Wash! In addition to hearing about how he comes up with such universally funny cartoons, Reynolds will present the audience with a demonstration of his talent using a variety of materials to make his characters come to life. Reynolds' widely published cartoons can be found in Readers Digest, American Greetings cards, and packed into the pages of four published book compilations under the title Reynolds Unwrapped.

All-County Jazz Festival

Henninger High School
600 Robinson St., Syracuse

Side by Side by Sondheim
LeMoyne College
Le Moyne College Singers

Price: $15 regular; $10 seniors; $5 students and Le Moyne community
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

In celebration of Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday, the Le Moyne College Singers will present an evening of his best-known works, including classics like "Send in the Clowns" and "Being Alive," as well as lesser-known gems including "We're Gonna Be Alright" and "The Boy From..."

Featuring music direction by Jocelyn Rauch and musical staging by Matthew Chiorini, audience members will be welcomed into a party atmosphere in celebration of the musical theater legend.

Reservations are recommended. For more information, phone 315-445-4523.

Larry Hoyt & The Good Acoustics
Steeple Coffeehouse

Price: $10 donation includes dessert and beverage
United Church of Fayetteville
310 E. Genesee St., Fayetteville

Classics Series: Fisk and Falletta
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Featuring Eliot Fisk and Zaira Meneses, guitars

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

Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Vivaldi Double Concerto in G major
Beaser Guitar Concerto
Turina Danzas fantasticas: Orgia (III)

Read a review!

Funny Stuff
Syracuse Vocal Ensemble
Robert Cowles, conductor

Price: $16 regular, $14 seniors, $5 students
First Unitarian Universalist Society of Syracuse
109 Waring Rd. (at the corner of Nottingham Rd.), Dewitt

A program of silly songs and comical classics. Although SVE is well known for its outstanding performances of great choral literature, it's lightening up a bit this time and showing off its sense of humor. With pieces by composers ranging from Mikhail Glinka to PDQ Bach, this concert promises to brighten your winter-weary mood and leave you smiling. Some of the pieces feature witty lyrics, such as a setting of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," while others take a musical approach to levity, like composer Charles Ives' "Circus Band."

Pianist Kevin Moore, a frequent SVE collaborator, will accompany the singers.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Society for New Music

Price: $15 regular; $12 students/seniors
Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Premiere of a fully staged opera with chamber orchestra by Persis Parshall Vehar, with libretto by Gabrielle Vehar, after Rhoda Lerman's play and book, Eleanor.

CAST
Eleanor: Bridget Moriarty
FDR: David Neal
Mama (Sarah): Lori Larson
Major Duckworth: Jonathan Howell
Uncle Teddy: Phil Eisenman
3 French Women: Sangeetha Ekambaram, Elizabeth Sutphen, Carolyn Weber

Stage Director: Gerard Moses
Musical Director: Neva Pilgrim
Conductor: Heather Buchman

Read a review!

Sleeping Beauty
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive comedy retelling of the children's classic.

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

The Odd Couple
CNY Playhouse
Daniel & Steve Rowlands, director

Price: Dinner theater: $29 single; $55 couple. Show only: $20 (limited availability)
Fire and Ice Banquet Hall, The Locker Room
528 Hiawatha Blvd., Syracuse

Dinner at 6:45 pm, followed by show at 8:00 pm.

A Slob, A Neatnick, and a Big Mess. Oscar Madison is one of the highest paid sports writers in the east. He's also one of the most unreliable, undependable, and irresponsible slobs in the world. It's no wonder that six months ago his wife took their kids and left Oscar all alone in their big, 8-room apartment. Now Oscar is free to drink, smoke, and have his weekly poker game with his buddies. But Oscar's happy, dirty little world gets turned upside down when his best friend, the excessively neurotic, and obsessively neat Felix Ungar, is thrown out by his wife, and is forced to move in with Oscar. Now their friendship is put to the test as these two unlikely roommates drive each other literally insane. This star-studded cast includes J. Brazil as Oscar and Gerrit VanderWerff Jr. as Felix. Anne Freund, Greg J. Hipius, Alan Stillman, Jim Uva, and Wendy Viggiano round out the cast.

Read a Review!

Urinetown: The Musical
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Deborah Taylor and Heather Jensen, director

Price: $20 adults, $17 students
First Presbyterian Church of Baldwinsville
64 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

The satirical comedy musical features music and lyrics by Mark Hollman and book and lyrics by Greg Kotis. Urinetown lampoons the legal system, capitalism, social responsibility, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and local politics. In addition the musical ridicules Broadway itself poking fun at shows such as Les Miserables and Annie, to name a few. The production won three Tony Awards in 2002.

A terrible water shortage, due to a 20-year drought, has hamstrung the Gotham-like town that is the setting for Urinetown: The Musical. In an attempt to regulate water consumption, the government has outlawed the use of private toilets. The citizenry must use public, designated pay-per-flush amenities owned and operated by Urine Good Company, a vindictive corporation run by the corrupt Caldwell B. Cladwell. Urinetown provides a story that centers on the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of a free flush.

Music directed by Dan Williams, choreographed by Stephfond Brunson.

Read a review!

Dog Sees God: Confession of a Teenage Blockhead
Onondaga Community College
OCC Dramatique

Price: $6
Storer Auditorium
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

*SOLD OUT* Corpus Christi
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

The most controversial and talked-about play of 1998. An old and familiar story, but from that point on, nothing feels quite familiar again. What follows is a story that parallels the New Testament, and its subject is nothing less than the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But author Terrence McNally's Christ figure is a character named Joshua, a young man born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the early 1950s.

This play is intended for mature audiences only.

Read a Review!

The Miracle Worker
Syracuse Stage
Paul Barnes, director

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

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

Read a Review!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

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

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Thilde Jensen: Canaries
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Read a review!

Full Circle
Szozda Gallery

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

Linda Esterley: mixed media collage
Lynette Blake: oil paintings
Elizabeth Moldenhauer: felted vessels

Forrest Lesch-Middelton: Recent Work
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

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

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

Toys from the 1970s
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

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New Directions in Photography
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

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

What does it mean to be an art photographer today? In this exhibition, the third-year art photography graduate students prove that the photographic medium has outgrown its traditional function as singular-print-on-the-wall and is now an expanded practice that includes video, sculpture, installation and performance.

Although the four photographers -- Sarah Zamecnik, Shimpei Shirafuji, Jeffrey Einhorn and Colleen Woolpert -- push their work in different directions, one belief unites them: the image is paramount, whether it is static or in motion; surrounded by a frame or mounted to a sculptural form; printed on paper or projected onto surfaces; silent or accompanied by sound. It operates sometimes as documentation, other times as replication or appropriation. It is used variously to depict truths or to create fictions derived from truths or the realm of the artist's imagination.

For more information, contact Colleen Woolpert at cmwoolpe@syr.edu. XL Projects may be contacted at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Demitrus Oliver: Mare, 2009
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Mare, 2009, projects a circular image of a wave crashing against an unnamed shore. As the image rotates, the lines of the waves begin to resemble the layered surface of a Jovian planet such as Jupiter. Connecting the sea with heavenly phenomena, the installation recreates the sense of wonderment felt when looking at the night sky and the fundamental human desire to understand one's place in the universe. Mare, which is Latin for "seas", suggests movement and journeys both physical and metaphysical, as well as metaphors of darkness and illumination, looking and discovery.

Frida: Naturaleza Viva
ArtRage Gallery

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

This film tells the story of art legend Frida Kahlo. Capturing the painter during time in her Coyoacan home, the film follows her turbulent marriage to artist Diego Rivera, her friendships with Leon Trotsky and painter Alfaro Siqueiros, her political involvement, and the many tragedies in her life, including the trolley accident that impacted her spine and left her in constant physical pain. Kahlo overcame such hardship and led a dramatic life, making her a rich biographical subject, and this film does justice to her legacy. (Directed by Paul Leduc, 1984, Spanish with sub-titles)

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

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