Thursday, May 22, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Onondaga Art Guild Spring Show

Price: Free
Hospice of Central New York
990 Seventh North St., Liverpool

For more information, phone 315-449-2240.

The Materials of Color: Paintings by Italian artist Maria Grazia Facchinetti
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Labyrinths
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A life-size maze of mirrors and dreams reveals an exceptional collection of works by Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna: a fugue-like series of 25 drawings and etchings inspired by the Borgian notion of the labyrinth, with Icarus as protagonist. Twenty-three 7-foot tall mirrored panels form this massive installation that complicates and multiplies the space of the gallery, and infiltrates the observer.

Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This student-curated exhibition illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. The students, members of the Renee Crown University Honors Program taking the Spring 2008 course American Fear, felt that the theme of "invasion" underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. The exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will "understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions."

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 "Out of the Sky."

The Gathering
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Patrice Downes Centore: still life and landscape watercolors
Lauren Bristol: sculptural basketry
Diane Menzies: naturalistic oil paintings

Read a review!

36th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Show
Community Folk Art Center

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

Teen artists of African American, Native American, Hispanic American and Asian American heritage will display their work in the exhibition.

The Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition is the longest running collaborative exhibition in the Greater Syracuse area that features the work of underrepresented teen artists. Prizes are awarded to winners in two-dimensional and three-dimensional categories. A panel of professional local artists serve as judges for the exhibition. Participating students attend Syracuse City High Schools as well as suburban Onondaga County High Schools.

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Exploring History With Art: Work!
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The third art exhibition in the series features occupations and places of work. Appropriately titled "Occupations & Places of Work," the exhibition showcases paintings illustrating different occupations and places of work in Onondaga County through the years.

Inside the exhibit gallery you'll see Onondaga Pottery, Comfort Tyler's Tavern, Good Shepherd Hospital, salt towers, and several others depicting the diverse places to work in Onondaga County from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Bedtime Stories
Redhouse

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

Bedtime Stories began as an exhibition focusing on the indeterminate space of the bedroom as a site for innocence, play, sexuality, deviant behavior, convalescence and death.

Artists Derrick Adams, Yasser Aggour, and Anna Tsouhlarakis explore identity and race, but not in a direct way. Each of these artists' work is more complex, more subversive, difficult, and harder at times to pin down, but it gets the job done by exposing the underpinnings of the dominant culture.

Exhibit curated by Arjan Zazueta.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

Images of Vice and Virtue from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

Images of Vice and Virtue investigates how artists from different cultures and time periods visualized fundamental themes of good and evil. Early civilizations enacted codes of conduct believing that individual behavior benefited from these guidelines. The ancient Greeks developed a set of inspirational values that included prudence, justice, courage and temperance. Later, Christianity refined and enlarged these to the seven holy virtues against which were set seven deadly sins. Additionally, bible stories illustrated what would happen to individuals who either followed or violated church doctrine.

Western society's growing secularization from the late 18th century onward gave artists greater freedom in interpreting biblical subjects and themes. Artists like Picasso strongly criticized the Spanish government in a pair of prints that depicted the ruler Francisco Franco as a biological polyp. Andy Warhol showed his support for the civil rights movement in a 1964 print of the Birmingham race riot. These examples further indicated the artist's growing role as an individual commenting on good and evil.

Also included in the exhibition are several pieces by non-western cultures. Like their western counterparts, these pieces were inspired and informed by their culture's historical beliefs about good and evil and were often drawn from stories used to explain those beliefs. All of the objects in the exhibition have been drawn from Syracuse Universitys encyclopedic collection of over 45,000 objects.

Images of Vice and Virtue is curated by David Prince, Associate Director of Syracuse University Art Collection.

Read a review!

On the Move: Images of Travel from Everson Musuem of Art and Syracuse University Collections
Everson Museum of Art

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

As a result of technological advancement and the human desire to explore and secure resources, travel has become a primary force in shaping contemporary life and global history. In today's world, travel has become a normal part of everyday life. In fact, tourism and travel now drive several of the world's largest economic sectors.

On the Move displays a wide range of objects focusing on travel as a universal experience from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Featuring objects from the Everson Museum and the multiple collections of Syracuse University, the exhibition highlights dreams of idyllic travel as well as the harsher realities of getting from one place to another.

On the Move has been organized by Syracuse University students in the Graduate Program in Museum Studies, in the Masters in Fine Arts program and the History of Art program who are under the curatorial guidance of Professors Edward Aiken and Judith Meighan in collaboration with the Everson. The exhibition includes works from the Everson Museum of Art, the Syracuse University Art Collections, Light Work, and the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library.

Paper Arts in the Low Countries: 1600 - 1800
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Low Countries, a region comprising present-day Holland and Belgium, was a site of truly spectacular art production during the so-called early modern period, ca. 1600 to ca. 1800. Indeed, some of the foremost artists in the history of European art practiced within this region, including Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. Although the art-loving public is quite familiar with paintings by Dutch (Holland) and Flemish (Belgium) masters their drawings and prints are less known, despite the many outstanding examples of such work that survive. Some of the most memorable and impressive art during this period was made with ink and paper, as opposed to oil paint and canvases and panels. Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1600-1800 consists of 35 noteworthy examples of drawings and prints by prominent masters of the Low Countries (including Rembrandt and Rubens), drawn from a number of private collections and from the holdings of the Syracuse University Art Collection and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Paper Arts in the Low Countries is curated by Dr. Wayne Franits, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University with the assistance of graduate students currently enrolled in the Fine Arts program.

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith
The Warehouse Gallery
Community Folk Art Center

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

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith is artist Terry Adkins' multi-media tribute to Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues. Working with a variety of materials Adkins weaves sculpture into a narrative installation that is both a tribute to and a lament for the transformative power of Smith's vocal artistry.

In an essay that accompanies the exhibition Dr. Kheli R. Willetts, academic director of CFAC and assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University writes, "Adkins' work creates an environment which challenges us to engage with Smith beyond her status as a legendary musical performer. He has resurrected her as a creative deity whose stage has now become a temple and the viewers are transformed into her devotees as they enter the space."

Smith is regarded as one of the greatest blues singers of all time. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African American recording artist before her. Yet in her adopted home of Philadelphia she remains unsung and even her grave remained unmarked until 1970.

Adkins commutes regularly from New York to Philadelphia where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition is a continued exploration of his use of figures in history whose contributions to society are overlooked, under appreciated, or just not given the stature that he believes they should have in society. Although Adkins work emanates from an activist position, it evolves from abstract forms with the intent of educating the public about historical figures through ways that are not image based or narrative-based but that challenge the viewer to think abstractly in relating to the stories of the lives of the people concerned.

Terry Adkins has been exhibiting internationally since 1980. He is Associate Professor of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania where he recently installed Darkwater: A Recital in Four Dominions, a tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Adkins has published numerous essays and has completed several significant public commissions. In addition to being a highly respected artist and sought after guest lecturer, his artworks have been placed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among other significant museums and collections. He received his B.S. from Fisk University and his M.F.A from the University of Kentucky.

Read a review!

Black & White & Deb All Over
May Memorial Unitarian Society

May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A photographic exhibit by Deborah Stearns.

Words and Music Songwriter Showcase
Folkus Project
Featuring Colin Aberdeen of Los Blancos, with host Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Price: $7
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

The Words and Music Songwriter Showcase 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.

The series is hosted by singer-songwriter, author, and NPR contributor Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers.

Each monthly show includes a featured artist performing a full set, four songwriters in the round, original music by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, The Song Schmooze, where musicians and music lovers mingle over a drink and a bite to eat. Plus special guests, surprise collaborations, and the Soundbite of the Night, where Rodgers shares a memorable moment from his extraordinary archive of interviews with artists such as Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Jerry Garcia, Ani DiFranco, and Dave Matthews.

From the Back of the Bus
The Media Unit

Price: Free (reservations required)
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Award-winning original show about teens and race, with drama, dance, comedy, and music. For reservations and more information, phone 315-478-8648.

Death Takes a Bow
Acme Mystery Company

Price: $35.95 plus tax and gratuities (includes meal and show)
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Interactive mystery dinner theater.

Friday, May 23, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Onondaga Art Guild Spring Show

Price: Free
Hospice of Central New York
990 Seventh North St., Liverpool

For more information, phone 315-449-2240.

The Materials of Color: Paintings by Italian artist Maria Grazia Facchinetti
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Labyrinths
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A life-size maze of mirrors and dreams reveals an exceptional collection of works by Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna: a fugue-like series of 25 drawings and etchings inspired by the Borgian notion of the labyrinth, with Icarus as protagonist. Twenty-three 7-foot tall mirrored panels form this massive installation that complicates and multiplies the space of the gallery, and infiltrates the observer.

Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This student-curated exhibition illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. The students, members of the Renee Crown University Honors Program taking the Spring 2008 course American Fear, felt that the theme of "invasion" underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. The exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will "understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions."

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 "Out of the Sky."

The Gathering
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Patrice Downes Centore: still life and landscape watercolors
Lauren Bristol: sculptural basketry
Diane Menzies: naturalistic oil paintings

Read a review!

36th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Show
Community Folk Art Center

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

Teen artists of African American, Native American, Hispanic American and Asian American heritage will display their work in the exhibition.

The Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition is the longest running collaborative exhibition in the Greater Syracuse area that features the work of underrepresented teen artists. Prizes are awarded to winners in two-dimensional and three-dimensional categories. A panel of professional local artists serve as judges for the exhibition. Participating students attend Syracuse City High Schools as well as suburban Onondaga County High Schools.

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Exploring History With Art: Work!
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The third art exhibition in the series features occupations and places of work. Appropriately titled "Occupations & Places of Work," the exhibition showcases paintings illustrating different occupations and places of work in Onondaga County through the years.

Inside the exhibit gallery you'll see Onondaga Pottery, Comfort Tyler's Tavern, Good Shepherd Hospital, salt towers, and several others depicting the diverse places to work in Onondaga County from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Bedtime Stories
Redhouse

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

Bedtime Stories began as an exhibition focusing on the indeterminate space of the bedroom as a site for innocence, play, sexuality, deviant behavior, convalescence and death.

Artists Derrick Adams, Yasser Aggour, and Anna Tsouhlarakis explore identity and race, but not in a direct way. Each of these artists' work is more complex, more subversive, difficult, and harder at times to pin down, but it gets the job done by exposing the underpinnings of the dominant culture.

Exhibit curated by Arjan Zazueta.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

On the Move: Images of Travel from Everson Musuem of Art and Syracuse University Collections
Everson Museum of Art

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

As a result of technological advancement and the human desire to explore and secure resources, travel has become a primary force in shaping contemporary life and global history. In today's world, travel has become a normal part of everyday life. In fact, tourism and travel now drive several of the world's largest economic sectors.

On the Move displays a wide range of objects focusing on travel as a universal experience from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Featuring objects from the Everson Museum and the multiple collections of Syracuse University, the exhibition highlights dreams of idyllic travel as well as the harsher realities of getting from one place to another.

On the Move has been organized by Syracuse University students in the Graduate Program in Museum Studies, in the Masters in Fine Arts program and the History of Art program who are under the curatorial guidance of Professors Edward Aiken and Judith Meighan in collaboration with the Everson. The exhibition includes works from the Everson Museum of Art, the Syracuse University Art Collections, Light Work, and the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library.

Images of Vice and Virtue from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

Images of Vice and Virtue investigates how artists from different cultures and time periods visualized fundamental themes of good and evil. Early civilizations enacted codes of conduct believing that individual behavior benefited from these guidelines. The ancient Greeks developed a set of inspirational values that included prudence, justice, courage and temperance. Later, Christianity refined and enlarged these to the seven holy virtues against which were set seven deadly sins. Additionally, bible stories illustrated what would happen to individuals who either followed or violated church doctrine.

Western society's growing secularization from the late 18th century onward gave artists greater freedom in interpreting biblical subjects and themes. Artists like Picasso strongly criticized the Spanish government in a pair of prints that depicted the ruler Francisco Franco as a biological polyp. Andy Warhol showed his support for the civil rights movement in a 1964 print of the Birmingham race riot. These examples further indicated the artist's growing role as an individual commenting on good and evil.

Also included in the exhibition are several pieces by non-western cultures. Like their western counterparts, these pieces were inspired and informed by their culture's historical beliefs about good and evil and were often drawn from stories used to explain those beliefs. All of the objects in the exhibition have been drawn from Syracuse Universitys encyclopedic collection of over 45,000 objects.

Images of Vice and Virtue is curated by David Prince, Associate Director of Syracuse University Art Collection.

Read a review!

Paper Arts in the Low Countries: 1600 - 1800
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Low Countries, a region comprising present-day Holland and Belgium, was a site of truly spectacular art production during the so-called early modern period, ca. 1600 to ca. 1800. Indeed, some of the foremost artists in the history of European art practiced within this region, including Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. Although the art-loving public is quite familiar with paintings by Dutch (Holland) and Flemish (Belgium) masters their drawings and prints are less known, despite the many outstanding examples of such work that survive. Some of the most memorable and impressive art during this period was made with ink and paper, as opposed to oil paint and canvases and panels. Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1600-1800 consists of 35 noteworthy examples of drawings and prints by prominent masters of the Low Countries (including Rembrandt and Rubens), drawn from a number of private collections and from the holdings of the Syracuse University Art Collection and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Paper Arts in the Low Countries is curated by Dr. Wayne Franits, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University with the assistance of graduate students currently enrolled in the Fine Arts program.

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith
The Warehouse Gallery
Community Folk Art Center

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

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith is artist Terry Adkins' multi-media tribute to Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues. Working with a variety of materials Adkins weaves sculpture into a narrative installation that is both a tribute to and a lament for the transformative power of Smith's vocal artistry.

In an essay that accompanies the exhibition Dr. Kheli R. Willetts, academic director of CFAC and assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University writes, "Adkins' work creates an environment which challenges us to engage with Smith beyond her status as a legendary musical performer. He has resurrected her as a creative deity whose stage has now become a temple and the viewers are transformed into her devotees as they enter the space."

Smith is regarded as one of the greatest blues singers of all time. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African American recording artist before her. Yet in her adopted home of Philadelphia she remains unsung and even her grave remained unmarked until 1970.

Adkins commutes regularly from New York to Philadelphia where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition is a continued exploration of his use of figures in history whose contributions to society are overlooked, under appreciated, or just not given the stature that he believes they should have in society. Although Adkins work emanates from an activist position, it evolves from abstract forms with the intent of educating the public about historical figures through ways that are not image based or narrative-based but that challenge the viewer to think abstractly in relating to the stories of the lives of the people concerned.

Terry Adkins has been exhibiting internationally since 1980. He is Associate Professor of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania where he recently installed Darkwater: A Recital in Four Dominions, a tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Adkins has published numerous essays and has completed several significant public commissions. In addition to being a highly respected artist and sought after guest lecturer, his artworks have been placed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among other significant museums and collections. He received his B.S. from Fisk University and his M.F.A from the University of Kentucky.

Read a review!

Pops Series: West Side Story Celebration
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Grant Cooper, conductor
Featuring Syracuse Symphony Pops Chorus

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

We conclude the M&T Bank Pops series with a visit downstate to the Big Apple. Guest Conductor Grant Cooper will lead us from the glamorous glow of Broadway's footlights, to the deliciously dangerous mean streets as the SSO celebrates 50 years of great music from West Side Story.

Read a review!

From the Back of the Bus
The Media Unit

Price: Free (reservations required)
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Award-winning original show about teens and race, with drama, dance, comedy, and music. For reservations and more information, phone 315-478-8648.

Go, Dog, Go!
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

P. D. Eastman's classic children's book comes to life in a free-for-all of movement, color, and space. This is a rollicking riot of canine chicanery, like a pop-up book that comes to life -- and never stops.

Read a Review!

Death Goes Prime Time
Corcoran High School

Price: $5
Corcoran High School
919 Glenwood Ave., Syracuse

Interactive comic murder mystery which satirizes the popular TV crime drama genre and the tempestuous personality dramas of the entertainment industry.

**CANCELLED** Cruizin' thru the '50s, 60s, and 70s

Price: $25
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

All performances have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.

What the Butler Saw
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts

Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Read a review!

Saturday, May 24, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

The Materials of Color: Paintings by Italian artist Maria Grazia Facchinetti
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Skaneateles Fine Arts and Crafts Show

Price: Free
Austin Park
Jordan St., Skaneateles

The Gathering
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Patrice Downes Centore: still life and landscape watercolors
Lauren Bristol: sculptural basketry
Diane Menzies: naturalistic oil paintings

Read a review!

Images of Vice and Virtue from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

Images of Vice and Virtue investigates how artists from different cultures and time periods visualized fundamental themes of good and evil. Early civilizations enacted codes of conduct believing that individual behavior benefited from these guidelines. The ancient Greeks developed a set of inspirational values that included prudence, justice, courage and temperance. Later, Christianity refined and enlarged these to the seven holy virtues against which were set seven deadly sins. Additionally, bible stories illustrated what would happen to individuals who either followed or violated church doctrine.

Western society's growing secularization from the late 18th century onward gave artists greater freedom in interpreting biblical subjects and themes. Artists like Picasso strongly criticized the Spanish government in a pair of prints that depicted the ruler Francisco Franco as a biological polyp. Andy Warhol showed his support for the civil rights movement in a 1964 print of the Birmingham race riot. These examples further indicated the artist's growing role as an individual commenting on good and evil.

Also included in the exhibition are several pieces by non-western cultures. Like their western counterparts, these pieces were inspired and informed by their culture's historical beliefs about good and evil and were often drawn from stories used to explain those beliefs. All of the objects in the exhibition have been drawn from Syracuse Universitys encyclopedic collection of over 45,000 objects.

Images of Vice and Virtue is curated by David Prince, Associate Director of Syracuse University Art Collection.

Read a review!

On the Move: Images of Travel from Everson Musuem of Art and Syracuse University Collections
Everson Museum of Art

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

As a result of technological advancement and the human desire to explore and secure resources, travel has become a primary force in shaping contemporary life and global history. In today's world, travel has become a normal part of everyday life. In fact, tourism and travel now drive several of the world's largest economic sectors.

On the Move displays a wide range of objects focusing on travel as a universal experience from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Featuring objects from the Everson Museum and the multiple collections of Syracuse University, the exhibition highlights dreams of idyllic travel as well as the harsher realities of getting from one place to another.

On the Move has been organized by Syracuse University students in the Graduate Program in Museum Studies, in the Masters in Fine Arts program and the History of Art program who are under the curatorial guidance of Professors Edward Aiken and Judith Meighan in collaboration with the Everson. The exhibition includes works from the Everson Museum of Art, the Syracuse University Art Collections, Light Work, and the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library.

Paper Arts in the Low Countries: 1600 - 1800
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Low Countries, a region comprising present-day Holland and Belgium, was a site of truly spectacular art production during the so-called early modern period, ca. 1600 to ca. 1800. Indeed, some of the foremost artists in the history of European art practiced within this region, including Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. Although the art-loving public is quite familiar with paintings by Dutch (Holland) and Flemish (Belgium) masters their drawings and prints are less known, despite the many outstanding examples of such work that survive. Some of the most memorable and impressive art during this period was made with ink and paper, as opposed to oil paint and canvases and panels. Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1600-1800 consists of 35 noteworthy examples of drawings and prints by prominent masters of the Low Countries (including Rembrandt and Rubens), drawn from a number of private collections and from the holdings of the Syracuse University Art Collection and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Paper Arts in the Low Countries is curated by Dr. Wayne Franits, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University with the assistance of graduate students currently enrolled in the Fine Arts program.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

36th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Show
Community Folk Art Center

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

Teen artists of African American, Native American, Hispanic American and Asian American heritage will display their work in the exhibition.

The Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition is the longest running collaborative exhibition in the Greater Syracuse area that features the work of underrepresented teen artists. Prizes are awarded to winners in two-dimensional and three-dimensional categories. A panel of professional local artists serve as judges for the exhibition. Participating students attend Syracuse City High Schools as well as suburban Onondaga County High Schools.

Exploring History With Art: Work!
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The third art exhibition in the series features occupations and places of work. Appropriately titled "Occupations & Places of Work," the exhibition showcases paintings illustrating different occupations and places of work in Onondaga County through the years.

Inside the exhibit gallery you'll see Onondaga Pottery, Comfort Tyler's Tavern, Good Shepherd Hospital, salt towers, and several others depicting the diverse places to work in Onondaga County from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith
The Warehouse Gallery
Community Folk Art Center

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

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith is artist Terry Adkins' multi-media tribute to Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues. Working with a variety of materials Adkins weaves sculpture into a narrative installation that is both a tribute to and a lament for the transformative power of Smith's vocal artistry.

In an essay that accompanies the exhibition Dr. Kheli R. Willetts, academic director of CFAC and assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University writes, "Adkins' work creates an environment which challenges us to engage with Smith beyond her status as a legendary musical performer. He has resurrected her as a creative deity whose stage has now become a temple and the viewers are transformed into her devotees as they enter the space."

Smith is regarded as one of the greatest blues singers of all time. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African American recording artist before her. Yet in her adopted home of Philadelphia she remains unsung and even her grave remained unmarked until 1970.

Adkins commutes regularly from New York to Philadelphia where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition is a continued exploration of his use of figures in history whose contributions to society are overlooked, under appreciated, or just not given the stature that he believes they should have in society. Although Adkins work emanates from an activist position, it evolves from abstract forms with the intent of educating the public about historical figures through ways that are not image based or narrative-based but that challenge the viewer to think abstractly in relating to the stories of the lives of the people concerned.

Terry Adkins has been exhibiting internationally since 1980. He is Associate Professor of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania where he recently installed Darkwater: A Recital in Four Dominions, a tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Adkins has published numerous essays and has completed several significant public commissions. In addition to being a highly respected artist and sought after guest lecturer, his artworks have been placed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among other significant museums and collections. He received his B.S. from Fisk University and his M.F.A from the University of Kentucky.

Read a review!

Family Series: Adirondack Adventure
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Grant Cooper, conductor
Featuring Dan Berggren, folk singer

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

Our springtime Adirondack Adventure comes complete with traditional folk singing, fine fiddling, plus Grant Cooper's highly entertaining Song of the Wolf -- an updated musical setting of a storybook classic, now with an environmental message. Several local singers will also be featured.

Brews, Blues, and Bar-B-Que

Price: $10; advance sale $7
Paper Mill Island
Baldwinsville

Featuring Mike and Marty; The Kingsnakes; Doyle and Whiting Band; Studebaker John and the Hawks.

Pops Series: West Side Story Celebration
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Grant Cooper, conductor
Featuring Syracuse Symphony Pops Chorus

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

We conclude the M&T Bank Pops series with a visit downstate to the Big Apple. Guest Conductor Grant Cooper will lead us from the glamorous glow of Broadway's footlights, to the deliciously dangerous mean streets as the SSO celebrates 50 years of great music from West Side Story.

Read a review!

Alice in Wonderland
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive family performance.

From the Back of the Bus
The Media Unit

Price: Free (reservations required)
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Award-winning original show about teens and race, with drama, dance, comedy, and music. For reservations and more information, phone 315-478-8648.

Go, Dog, Go!
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

P. D. Eastman's classic children's book comes to life in a free-for-all of movement, color, and space. This is a rollicking riot of canine chicanery, like a pop-up book that comes to life -- and never stops.

Read a Review!

**CANCELLED** Cruizin' thru the '50s, 60s, and 70s

Price: $25
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

All performances have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.

Go, Dog, Go!
Gifford Family Theatre

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

P. D. Eastman's classic children's book comes to life in a free-for-all of movement, color, and space. This is a rollicking riot of canine chicanery, like a pop-up book that comes to life -- and never stops.

Read a Review!

**CANCELLED** Cruizin' thru the '50s, 60s, and 70s

Price: $25
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

All performances have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.

Death Goes Prime Time
Corcoran High School

Price: $5
Corcoran High School
919 Glenwood Ave., Syracuse

Interactive comic murder mystery which satirizes the popular TV crime drama genre and the tempestuous personality dramas of the entertainment industry.

What the Butler Saw
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts

Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Read a review!

Sunday, May 25, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Skaneateles Fine Arts and Crafts Show

Price: Free
Austin Park
Jordan St., Skaneateles

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Exploring History With Art: Work!
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The third art exhibition in the series features occupations and places of work. Appropriately titled "Occupations & Places of Work," the exhibition showcases paintings illustrating different occupations and places of work in Onondaga County through the years.

Inside the exhibit gallery you'll see Onondaga Pottery, Comfort Tyler's Tavern, Good Shepherd Hospital, salt towers, and several others depicting the diverse places to work in Onondaga County from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

On the Move: Images of Travel from Everson Musuem of Art and Syracuse University Collections
Everson Museum of Art

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

As a result of technological advancement and the human desire to explore and secure resources, travel has become a primary force in shaping contemporary life and global history. In today's world, travel has become a normal part of everyday life. In fact, tourism and travel now drive several of the world's largest economic sectors.

On the Move displays a wide range of objects focusing on travel as a universal experience from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. Featuring objects from the Everson Museum and the multiple collections of Syracuse University, the exhibition highlights dreams of idyllic travel as well as the harsher realities of getting from one place to another.

On the Move has been organized by Syracuse University students in the Graduate Program in Museum Studies, in the Masters in Fine Arts program and the History of Art program who are under the curatorial guidance of Professors Edward Aiken and Judith Meighan in collaboration with the Everson. The exhibition includes works from the Everson Museum of Art, the Syracuse University Art Collections, Light Work, and the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library.

Images of Vice and Virtue from the Syracuse University Art Collection
Everson Museum of Art

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

Images of Vice and Virtue investigates how artists from different cultures and time periods visualized fundamental themes of good and evil. Early civilizations enacted codes of conduct believing that individual behavior benefited from these guidelines. The ancient Greeks developed a set of inspirational values that included prudence, justice, courage and temperance. Later, Christianity refined and enlarged these to the seven holy virtues against which were set seven deadly sins. Additionally, bible stories illustrated what would happen to individuals who either followed or violated church doctrine.

Western society's growing secularization from the late 18th century onward gave artists greater freedom in interpreting biblical subjects and themes. Artists like Picasso strongly criticized the Spanish government in a pair of prints that depicted the ruler Francisco Franco as a biological polyp. Andy Warhol showed his support for the civil rights movement in a 1964 print of the Birmingham race riot. These examples further indicated the artist's growing role as an individual commenting on good and evil.

Also included in the exhibition are several pieces by non-western cultures. Like their western counterparts, these pieces were inspired and informed by their culture's historical beliefs about good and evil and were often drawn from stories used to explain those beliefs. All of the objects in the exhibition have been drawn from Syracuse Universitys encyclopedic collection of over 45,000 objects.

Images of Vice and Virtue is curated by David Prince, Associate Director of Syracuse University Art Collection.

Read a review!

Paper Arts in the Low Countries: 1600 - 1800
Everson Museum of Art

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

The Low Countries, a region comprising present-day Holland and Belgium, was a site of truly spectacular art production during the so-called early modern period, ca. 1600 to ca. 1800. Indeed, some of the foremost artists in the history of European art practiced within this region, including Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. Although the art-loving public is quite familiar with paintings by Dutch (Holland) and Flemish (Belgium) masters their drawings and prints are less known, despite the many outstanding examples of such work that survive. Some of the most memorable and impressive art during this period was made with ink and paper, as opposed to oil paint and canvases and panels. Paper Arts in the Low Countries, 1600-1800 consists of 35 noteworthy examples of drawings and prints by prominent masters of the Low Countries (including Rembrandt and Rubens), drawn from a number of private collections and from the holdings of the Syracuse University Art Collection and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Paper Arts in the Low Countries is curated by Dr. Wayne Franits, Professor and Department Chair, Department of Fine Arts, Syracuse University with the assistance of graduate students currently enrolled in the Fine Arts program.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Memorial Day Concert
Stan Colella Orchestra

Price: Free
Palace Theater
2384 James St., Syracuse

Program will include a pictorial tribute to those who died while serving the country. For more information, phone 315-473-4330.

Fetch Franny; Over the Deep Part; Line-Up; and A Crisis for Mr. Lion
Armory Square Playwrights

Price: $6 regular, $5 students/seniors
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Armory Square Playhouse will present a reading of a staged reading of 3 new short plays and an award winning short story.

Fetch, Franny by Richard Harris, is the story of a desperate pet owner, driven by concern for a missing pet. As a last attempt, he visits a medium where he meets a trainee who keeps bringing him solutions to concerns he does not have. Finally the head medium goes into a trance to solve problem.

Kathy Kramer's Over the Deep Part, is set in that evocative space, the family attic, as two sisters sort through a lifetime of memories following their parents’ deaths. They will discover that truth and love, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. The reading will be directed by Kit Wainer and features Camilla Schade and Mary Beth Bunge. In the comedy Line-up, four hapless suspects in a police line-up face Lydia, who claims to have endured inappropriate behavior at the hands of one of them. Who'’s guilty? And guilty of what, exactly? The sarge will find out! (And so will the audience.) Donna Stuccio will direct.

Is a lion still a lion when the savannah becomes a suburb? “A Crisis for Mr. Lion” illustrates in words a picture book no child will ever see, a tale of talking animals who wonder at their place in the world. Written by William Preston, it was the winner of the 2006 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Award and it was recently selected as one of 2007’s most notable stories by storySouth, making it eligible for the upcoming Million Writers Award.

Richard Harris is a retired advertising executive, educated at Texas Wesleyan College and Cooper Union, and a veteran community actor who also tried to make it in Hollywood. (They weren't waiting for him.) He now finds playwriting brings him the joy of communicating with a very enticing muse.

Kathleen Kramer lives near Ithaca, where several of her full-length plays and numerous shorter works have been produced. In 2007, her play, “Hearts of Clover,” was a semi-finalist in the Eileen Heckart Drama Competition at Ohio State and a winner in the Appalachian New Play Festival in Athens, OH. Two of her short plays were presented in “Asphalt Jungle Shorts,” a festival of site-specific works in Ontario, Canada. Most recently, Ithaca’'s Wolf’'s Mouth Theatre Collective presented her 10-minute play, “You Can'’t Be Switzerland.”

William Preston teaches English at the Manlius Pebble Hill School and lives with his family in Syacuse. His first published short story, “You Will Go to the Moon,” appeared in the July 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction and was listed among the Honorable Mentions in The Year’'s Best Science Fiction. His story “Close” appeared in the February 2007 issue of Asimov's, and his poetry and nonfiction have appeared in various publications.

The plays are presentations of works-in-progress and talkback discussions with the playwrights will follow the performances.

What the Butler Saw
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts

Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

Read a review!

From the Back of the Bus
The Media Unit

Price: Free (reservations required)
Loft Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Award-winning original show about teens and race, with drama, dance, comedy, and music. For reservations and more information, phone 315-478-8648.

Monday, May 26, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Onondaga Art Guild Spring Show

Price: Free
Hospice of Central New York
990 Seventh North St., Liverpool

For more information, phone 315-449-2240.

Labyrinths
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A life-size maze of mirrors and dreams reveals an exceptional collection of works by Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna: a fugue-like series of 25 drawings and etchings inspired by the Borgian notion of the labyrinth, with Icarus as protagonist. Twenty-three 7-foot tall mirrored panels form this massive installation that complicates and multiplies the space of the gallery, and infiltrates the observer.

Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This student-curated exhibition illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. The students, members of the Renee Crown University Honors Program taking the Spring 2008 course American Fear, felt that the theme of "invasion" underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. The exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will "understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions."

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 "Out of the Sky."

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Onondaga Art Guild Spring Show

Price: Free
Hospice of Central New York
990 Seventh North St., Liverpool

For more information, phone 315-449-2240.

The Materials of Color: Paintings by Italian artist Maria Grazia Facchinetti
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Labyrinths
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A life-size maze of mirrors and dreams reveals an exceptional collection of works by Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna: a fugue-like series of 25 drawings and etchings inspired by the Borgian notion of the labyrinth, with Icarus as protagonist. Twenty-three 7-foot tall mirrored panels form this massive installation that complicates and multiplies the space of the gallery, and infiltrates the observer.

Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This student-curated exhibition illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. The students, members of the Renee Crown University Honors Program taking the Spring 2008 course American Fear, felt that the theme of "invasion" underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. The exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will "understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions."

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 "Out of the Sky."

The Gathering
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Patrice Downes Centore: still life and landscape watercolors
Lauren Bristol: sculptural basketry
Diane Menzies: naturalistic oil paintings

Read a review!

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith
The Warehouse Gallery
Community Folk Art Center

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

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith is artist Terry Adkins' multi-media tribute to Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues. Working with a variety of materials Adkins weaves sculpture into a narrative installation that is both a tribute to and a lament for the transformative power of Smith's vocal artistry.

In an essay that accompanies the exhibition Dr. Kheli R. Willetts, academic director of CFAC and assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University writes, "Adkins' work creates an environment which challenges us to engage with Smith beyond her status as a legendary musical performer. He has resurrected her as a creative deity whose stage has now become a temple and the viewers are transformed into her devotees as they enter the space."

Smith is regarded as one of the greatest blues singers of all time. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African American recording artist before her. Yet in her adopted home of Philadelphia she remains unsung and even her grave remained unmarked until 1970.

Adkins commutes regularly from New York to Philadelphia where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition is a continued exploration of his use of figures in history whose contributions to society are overlooked, under appreciated, or just not given the stature that he believes they should have in society. Although Adkins work emanates from an activist position, it evolves from abstract forms with the intent of educating the public about historical figures through ways that are not image based or narrative-based but that challenge the viewer to think abstractly in relating to the stories of the lives of the people concerned.

Terry Adkins has been exhibiting internationally since 1980. He is Associate Professor of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania where he recently installed Darkwater: A Recital in Four Dominions, a tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Adkins has published numerous essays and has completed several significant public commissions. In addition to being a highly respected artist and sought after guest lecturer, his artworks have been placed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among other significant museums and collections. He received his B.S. from Fisk University and his M.F.A from the University of Kentucky.

Read a review!

Black & White & Deb All Over
May Memorial Unitarian Society

May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A photographic exhibit by Deborah Stearns.

Movin' Out
Broadway in Syracuse

Price: $62.50, $52.50, $35.50
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Movin' Out brings 24 Billy Joel classics to electrifying new life as it tells the story of five life-long friends over two turbulent decades. It all adds up to on unforgettable Broadway musical. Five-time Grammy winner Joel and legendary director/choreographer Twyla Tharp have joined forces to create this spectacular new musical that Time Magazine declares "The #1 show of the year!" The New York calls Movin' Out "a shimmering portrait of an American generation. These tornado driven dancers and rock musicians propel the audience into delirious ovations."

Read a review!

Menopause The Musical
Syracuse Stage

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

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

Read a review!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Onondaga Art Guild Spring Show

Price: Free
Hospice of Central New York
990 Seventh North St., Liverpool

For more information, phone 315-449-2240.

The Materials of Color: Paintings by Italian artist Maria Grazia Facchinetti
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Labyrinths
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A life-size maze of mirrors and dreams reveals an exceptional collection of works by Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna: a fugue-like series of 25 drawings and etchings inspired by the Borgian notion of the labyrinth, with Icarus as protagonist. Twenty-three 7-foot tall mirrored panels form this massive installation that complicates and multiplies the space of the gallery, and infiltrates the observer.

Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This student-curated exhibition illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. The students, members of the Renee Crown University Honors Program taking the Spring 2008 course American Fear, felt that the theme of "invasion" underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. The exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will "understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions."

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 "Out of the Sky."

The Gathering
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Patrice Downes Centore: still life and landscape watercolors
Lauren Bristol: sculptural basketry
Diane Menzies: naturalistic oil paintings

Read a review!

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Exploring History With Art: Work!
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The third art exhibition in the series features occupations and places of work. Appropriately titled "Occupations & Places of Work," the exhibition showcases paintings illustrating different occupations and places of work in Onondaga County through the years.

Inside the exhibit gallery you'll see Onondaga Pottery, Comfort Tyler's Tavern, Good Shepherd Hospital, salt towers, and several others depicting the diverse places to work in Onondaga County from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Bedtime Stories
Redhouse

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

Bedtime Stories began as an exhibition focusing on the indeterminate space of the bedroom as a site for innocence, play, sexuality, deviant behavior, convalescence and death.

Artists Derrick Adams, Yasser Aggour, and Anna Tsouhlarakis explore identity and race, but not in a direct way. Each of these artists' work is more complex, more subversive, difficult, and harder at times to pin down, but it gets the job done by exposing the underpinnings of the dominant culture.

Exhibit curated by Arjan Zazueta.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith
The Warehouse Gallery
Community Folk Art Center

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

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith is artist Terry Adkins' multi-media tribute to Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues. Working with a variety of materials Adkins weaves sculpture into a narrative installation that is both a tribute to and a lament for the transformative power of Smith's vocal artistry.

In an essay that accompanies the exhibition Dr. Kheli R. Willetts, academic director of CFAC and assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University writes, "Adkins' work creates an environment which challenges us to engage with Smith beyond her status as a legendary musical performer. He has resurrected her as a creative deity whose stage has now become a temple and the viewers are transformed into her devotees as they enter the space."

Smith is regarded as one of the greatest blues singers of all time. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African American recording artist before her. Yet in her adopted home of Philadelphia she remains unsung and even her grave remained unmarked until 1970.

Adkins commutes regularly from New York to Philadelphia where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition is a continued exploration of his use of figures in history whose contributions to society are overlooked, under appreciated, or just not given the stature that he believes they should have in society. Although Adkins work emanates from an activist position, it evolves from abstract forms with the intent of educating the public about historical figures through ways that are not image based or narrative-based but that challenge the viewer to think abstractly in relating to the stories of the lives of the people concerned.

Terry Adkins has been exhibiting internationally since 1980. He is Associate Professor of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania where he recently installed Darkwater: A Recital in Four Dominions, a tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Adkins has published numerous essays and has completed several significant public commissions. In addition to being a highly respected artist and sought after guest lecturer, his artworks have been placed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among other significant museums and collections. He received his B.S. from Fisk University and his M.F.A from the University of Kentucky.

Read a review!

Soring Gala: Creative Arts Academy Showcase

Price: Free
Nottingham High School
3100 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

School-wide arts showcase, featuring artwork, sculpture, photography, drama, African and South American drumming and dancing, vocal jazz, instrumental jazz, concert choir, concert band, chamber orchestra, and gospel choir.

Spring Instrumental Music Concert

Price: Free
Bishop Ludden Junior/Senior High School
815 Fay Rd., Geddes

Movin' Out
Broadway in Syracuse

Price: $62.50, $52.50, $35.50
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Movin' Out brings 24 Billy Joel classics to electrifying new life as it tells the story of five life-long friends over two turbulent decades. It all adds up to on unforgettable Broadway musical. Five-time Grammy winner Joel and legendary director/choreographer Twyla Tharp have joined forces to create this spectacular new musical that Time Magazine declares "The #1 show of the year!" The New York calls Movin' Out "a shimmering portrait of an American generation. These tornado driven dancers and rock musicians propel the audience into delirious ovations."

Read a review!

Menopause The Musical
Syracuse Stage

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

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

Read a review!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

WRAP (World Reclamation Art Project)
International Fiber Collaborative

Price: Free
2301 E. Colvin St.
(corner of Nottingham), Syracuse

Artist Jennifer Marsh and participants from all over the world have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3-foot square fiber panels that express concern about the world's extreme dependency on oil. The panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station.

For more information, visit internationalfibercollaborative.com.

Kewpie Karma/80
The Warehouse Gallery

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

What does a Kewpie doll have to offer the world? If anything has karma, why not a Kewpie doll?

Yoshiko Miki's work addresses issues of death and rebirth. The death of her mother three years ago caused Miki to search for answers as to why some people leave life at such a young age. She found that the only way to address this was to disregard the idea of life having an ending point and instead to view life as a continuation. Influenced by her Buddhist background, Miki wondered who her mother might have been re-born as: "A man? Or a woman?" and where she could be: "Here in America with me? Or back in Japan with my father and my little sister?"

In reincarnation, the karma of a person continues into the next life; no matter what form they are reborn. Miki depicts her mother's reincarnation through Kewpie dolls -- an iconic image of happiness and love, words that also describe her mother's approach to life. The subject of rebirth is reinforced by the infantile nature of the dolls and by their number. The 80 dolls signify the importance of the numbers 8 and 0 which represent endless life; when drawn out, there is no beginning or ending point for either number. Significantly, when the number 8 is rotated 90 degrees in either direction, it becomes a symbol for infinity. Kewpie Karma/80 deals with themes of death, rebirth and karma through an iconic medium.

Yoshiko Miki (1987) was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. At the age of 16 she moved to the United States and lived in Lancaster, PA and would remain there for a year before moving to Syracuse. She graduated from Manlius Pebble Hill School in DeWitt and currently is enrolled at the Pratt Institute at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica where she is studying fine arts with a concentration in sculpture.

Icons

Orange Line Gallery
106 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Artists include Father Andrew Szebenyi, digitally manipulated images; Meg Gentile, acrylic on canvas; Dustin Angell, photography; Sarah Reale, Sharpie portraits on canvas; Mick Mather, monotype, monotype with linocut, tempera with linocut, and watercolor; Eddie Colelli, photography; Kevin Lucas, acrylic on canvas; David McKenney, photography.

Onondaga Art Guild Spring Show

Price: Free
Hospice of Central New York
990 Seventh North St., Liverpool

For more information, phone 315-449-2240.

The Materials of Color: Paintings by Italian artist Maria Grazia Facchinetti
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Labyrinths
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A life-size maze of mirrors and dreams reveals an exceptional collection of works by Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna: a fugue-like series of 25 drawings and etchings inspired by the Borgian notion of the labyrinth, with Icarus as protagonist. Twenty-three 7-foot tall mirrored panels form this massive installation that complicates and multiplies the space of the gallery, and infiltrates the observer.

Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

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

This student-curated exhibition illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. The students, members of the Renee Crown University Honors Program taking the Spring 2008 course American Fear, felt that the theme of "invasion" underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. The exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will "understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions."

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan," Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 "Out of the Sky."

The Gathering
Edgewood Gallery

Price: Free
Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Patrice Downes Centore: still life and landscape watercolors
Lauren Bristol: sculptural basketry
Diane Menzies: naturalistic oil paintings

Read a review!

Blake Fitch: The Expectations of Adolescence
Light Work Gallery

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

Blake Fitch's photographs capture her sister, cousin, and friends as they have grown from children to young adults. Fitch has been able to draw on the autobiographical nature of photography by creating candid and intimate images of her family.

Exploring History With Art: Work!
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The third art exhibition in the series features occupations and places of work. Appropriately titled "Occupations & Places of Work," the exhibition showcases paintings illustrating different occupations and places of work in Onondaga County through the years.

Inside the exhibit gallery you'll see Onondaga Pottery, Comfort Tyler's Tavern, Good Shepherd Hospital, salt towers, and several others depicting the diverse places to work in Onondaga County from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Bedtime Stories
Redhouse

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

Bedtime Stories began as an exhibition focusing on the indeterminate space of the bedroom as a site for innocence, play, sexuality, deviant behavior, convalescence and death.

Artists Derrick Adams, Yasser Aggour, and Anna Tsouhlarakis explore identity and race, but not in a direct way. Each of these artists' work is more complex, more subversive, difficult, and harder at times to pin down, but it gets the job done by exposing the underpinnings of the dominant culture.

Exhibit curated by Arjan Zazueta.

Works of Kathleen Schneider, Teresa Vitale, and Dee Ann VonHunke
Skaneateles Artisans

Skaneateles Artisans
11 Fennell St., Skaneateles

Works by artists Kathleen Schneider (watercolors), Teresa Vitale (painting) and Dee Ann VonHunke (jewelry)

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith
The Warehouse Gallery
Community Folk Art Center

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

Songs of Hearth and Valor, Recital in 8 Dominions, After Bessie Smith is artist Terry Adkins' multi-media tribute to Smith, known as the Empress of the Blues. Working with a variety of materials Adkins weaves sculpture into a narrative installation that is both a tribute to and a lament for the transformative power of Smith's vocal artistry.

In an essay that accompanies the exhibition Dr. Kheli R. Willetts, academic director of CFAC and assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University writes, "Adkins' work creates an environment which challenges us to engage with Smith beyond her status as a legendary musical performer. He has resurrected her as a creative deity whose stage has now become a temple and the viewers are transformed into her devotees as they enter the space."

Smith is regarded as one of the greatest blues singers of all time. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African American recording artist before her. Yet in her adopted home of Philadelphia she remains unsung and even her grave remained unmarked until 1970.

Adkins commutes regularly from New York to Philadelphia where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition is a continued exploration of his use of figures in history whose contributions to society are overlooked, under appreciated, or just not given the stature that he believes they should have in society. Although Adkins work emanates from an activist position, it evolves from abstract forms with the intent of educating the public about historical figures through ways that are not image based or narrative-based but that challenge the viewer to think abstractly in relating to the stories of the lives of the people concerned.

Terry Adkins has been exhibiting internationally since 1980. He is Associate Professor of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania where he recently installed Darkwater: A Recital in Four Dominions, a tribute to W. E. B. Du Bois at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Adkins has published numerous essays and has completed several significant public commissions. In addition to being a highly respected artist and sought after guest lecturer, his artworks have been placed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among other significant museums and collections. He received his B.S. from Fisk University and his M.F.A from the University of Kentucky.

Read a review!

Black & White & Deb All Over
May Memorial Unitarian Society

May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A photographic exhibit by Deborah Stearns.

Spring Vocal Music Concert

Price: Free
Bishop Ludden Junior/Senior High School
815 Fay Rd., Geddes

Death Takes a Bow
Acme Mystery Company

Price: $35.95 plus tax and gratuities (includes meal and show)
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Interactive mystery dinner theater.

Movin' Out
Broadway in Syracuse

Price: $62.50, $52.50, $35.50
Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Movin' Out brings 24 Billy Joel classics to electrifying new life as it tells the story of five life-long friends over two turbulent decades. It all adds up to on unforgettable Broadway musical. Five-time Grammy winner Joel and legendary director/choreographer Twyla Tharp have joined forces to create this spectacular new musical that Time Magazine declares "The #1 show of the year!" The New York calls Movin' Out "a shimmering portrait of an American generation. These tornado driven dancers and rock musicians propel the audience into delirious ovations."

Read a review!

Menopause The Musical
Syracuse Stage

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

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

Read a review!