Thursday, January 29, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of James Watkins
Onondaga Community College

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

Ceramicist James Watkins throws elegant miniature cups, saucers and bowls, and double-walled cauldrons and jars, some of which are close to three feet high. He comes to his art with great sensitivity of touch that gives his works immense lyrical beauty.

The Golem: Visual Visitations
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A major collective exhibit of seven world class artists titled "The Golem: Visual Visitations," inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem "El Golem." This is the third edition of a program that began in Prague in 2002 through the initiative of the Argentinean Embassy in that city, and it was introduced by the renowned poet Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic. A second version was later produced with tremendous success at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 2003, also introduced by then President of the country, Néstor Kirchner. Now the program travels to the United States for the first time to be shown exclusively at Syracuse University.

The Golem exhibit at The Point of Contact Gallery features original works especially commissioned for this exhibit, created by seven artists: from Argentina (Leandro Katz; Pedro Roth); Uruguay (Marta Chilindrón); Puerto Rico (Víctor Vázquez); Syracuse (Tom Sherman; Doug Dubois) and New York (Sarah Kipp). It combines photography, installation and video art.

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

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Needle Art and Embroidered Stone
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Needle art by members of the American Needlepoint Guild, and fine porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares.

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

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

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

Gallery reception 5:00-7:00 pm.

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

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

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

Gallery reception 5:00-7:00 pm.

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

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Special Exhibit: Shadows
Delavan Art Gallery

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

When viewing lighted objects, it's easy to overlook the shadows they create. The Delavan Art Gallery has expanded on this concept to produce a one-of-its-kind exhibit devoted entirely to shadows and featuring works by a host of noted Central New York artists.

The Shadows Exhibit was conceived with two ideas in mind: how shadows are made (by an object, a light source and a background), and Bill Delavan's special professional interest in lighting the Gallery's exhibitions, sometimes playfully turning shadows into their own art form.

Featured artists in this exhibit include Arlene Abend, Reginald Adams, Anahid Ajemian, Barbara Conte-Gaugel, Hillary Gifford, Barre Hunt, Lauren Ritchie, Jeffrey Schuessler, Andy Schuster and Matthew Vural.

Student Art Open 2008: (Un)doing Fashion
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, high school students explore art through their own experiences and style while drawing inspiration from fashion designer Jeffrey Mayer's exhibition "Marie Antoinette: Styling the 18th-Century Superstar."

Fifteen teachers from nine different schools came to hear Jeffrey Mayer's discussion on his exhibition and incorporated its themes into their lesson plans. In the next step of the Student Art Open process, students visited the Everson with their teachers and brought inspirations from the exhibits back to the classroom. Using any media they chose, students created artwork to be submitted for the Open. The teachers then selected two students' works to be on display at the museum. Come see the amazing artwork these students meticulously created for the exhibition.

The Northside Mosaic
Our Northside Community Gallery

Price: Free
Our Northside Community Gallery
745 N. Salina St., Syracuse

The Northside Mosaic is a multidisciplinary exhibit, celebrating the myriad of people, cultures and histories that compose Our Northside neighborhood. The exhibit features pieces collected throughout 2007 and 2008 and produced predominantly by people living or working in our community. Through this project, we intend to showcase the brilliant individual lives and rich cultural diversity that exist within the Northside, heighten people's awareness of the struggles and injustices that are present within our neighborhoods, help citizens develop a deeper sense of pride for and ownership of their neighborhoods, bring aesthetic beauty to the area, and catalyze relationships and future collaborative projects among diverse groups of people.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Voices of Diversity: Photographs by Lida Suchý
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

"Voices of Diversity" is a composite photographic portrait of the Syracuse Community Choir. Composed of more than 100 individual black and white images, it foregrounds the potential of art/singing as a powerful tool for fostering broad social inclusiveness and community building. This exhibit honors people who, as choir founder and director Karen Mihalyi says, seek to create a space in our community "that values all people, that sees everyone as important, that creates music... Where we find our voices, sing fully, and create beauty."

For more than 20 years, the Syracuse Community Choir has been an important voice in the Central New York community, actively promoting the ideas of social justice, peace and inclusiveness. The Choir is based on the idea that singing should be a vital part of the human experience and that everyone can sing. It is open to all people, from experienced musicians to those who have never sung. To involve all, the choir provides support such as brailling, transportation, large print words, tapes/CDs, childcare, separate teen and children's rehearsals and special help for all who want it.

Lida Suchý's photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe and published in LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO. Lida's photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and SF MoMA. Lida is a first-generation American born into a Ukrainian refugee family. She holds a BA from SUNY Albany, an MA from Syracuse University, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.

The Sound of Murder
Acme Mystery Company

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

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

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

Friday, January 30, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of James Watkins
Onondaga Community College

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

Ceramicist James Watkins throws elegant miniature cups, saucers and bowls, and double-walled cauldrons and jars, some of which are close to three feet high. He comes to his art with great sensitivity of touch that gives his works immense lyrical beauty.

The Golem: Visual Visitations
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A major collective exhibit of seven world class artists titled "The Golem: Visual Visitations," inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem "El Golem." This is the third edition of a program that began in Prague in 2002 through the initiative of the Argentinean Embassy in that city, and it was introduced by the renowned poet Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic. A second version was later produced with tremendous success at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 2003, also introduced by then President of the country, Néstor Kirchner. Now the program travels to the United States for the first time to be shown exclusively at Syracuse University.

The Golem exhibit at The Point of Contact Gallery features original works especially commissioned for this exhibit, created by seven artists: from Argentina (Leandro Katz; Pedro Roth); Uruguay (Marta Chilindrón); Puerto Rico (Víctor Vázquez); Syracuse (Tom Sherman; Doug Dubois) and New York (Sarah Kipp). It combines photography, installation and video art.

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

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Needle Art and Embroidered Stone
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Needle art by members of the American Needlepoint Guild, and fine porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares.

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Special Exhibit: Shadows
Delavan Art Gallery

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

When viewing lighted objects, it's easy to overlook the shadows they create. The Delavan Art Gallery has expanded on this concept to produce a one-of-its-kind exhibit devoted entirely to shadows and featuring works by a host of noted Central New York artists.

The Shadows Exhibit was conceived with two ideas in mind: how shadows are made (by an object, a light source and a background), and Bill Delavan's special professional interest in lighting the Gallery's exhibitions, sometimes playfully turning shadows into their own art form.

Featured artists in this exhibit include Arlene Abend, Reginald Adams, Anahid Ajemian, Barbara Conte-Gaugel, Hillary Gifford, Barre Hunt, Lauren Ritchie, Jeffrey Schuessler, Andy Schuster and Matthew Vural.

Student Art Open 2008: (Un)doing Fashion
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, high school students explore art through their own experiences and style while drawing inspiration from fashion designer Jeffrey Mayer's exhibition "Marie Antoinette: Styling the 18th-Century Superstar."

Fifteen teachers from nine different schools came to hear Jeffrey Mayer's discussion on his exhibition and incorporated its themes into their lesson plans. In the next step of the Student Art Open process, students visited the Everson with their teachers and brought inspirations from the exhibits back to the classroom. Using any media they chose, students created artwork to be submitted for the Open. The teachers then selected two students' works to be on display at the museum. Come see the amazing artwork these students meticulously created for the exhibition.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Voices of Diversity: Photographs by Lida Suchý
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

"Voices of Diversity" is a composite photographic portrait of the Syracuse Community Choir. Composed of more than 100 individual black and white images, it foregrounds the potential of art/singing as a powerful tool for fostering broad social inclusiveness and community building. This exhibit honors people who, as choir founder and director Karen Mihalyi says, seek to create a space in our community "that values all people, that sees everyone as important, that creates music... Where we find our voices, sing fully, and create beauty."

For more than 20 years, the Syracuse Community Choir has been an important voice in the Central New York community, actively promoting the ideas of social justice, peace and inclusiveness. The Choir is based on the idea that singing should be a vital part of the human experience and that everyone can sing. It is open to all people, from experienced musicians to those who have never sung. To involve all, the choir provides support such as brailling, transportation, large print words, tapes/CDs, childcare, separate teen and children's rehearsals and special help for all who want it.

Lida Suchý's photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe and published in LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO. Lida's photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and SF MoMA. Lida is a first-generation American born into a Ukrainian refugee family. She holds a BA from SUNY Albany, an MA from Syracuse University, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.

Space Quests from Finland, Art for You Truth for Me
Spark Contemporary Art Space

Spark Contemporary Art Space
1005 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

One-day art event with Finnish artists. Nonstop action whatever time you step inside. Performances, live-art, lectures, painting show supported by live jazz... The spectator has an important role in the process of creating the final forms of actions.

Artist statements:
Teemu Räsänen (born 1978 in Lappeenranta, Finland)
The definition of art is in contradiction with its ideal freedom. Freedom can be defined by its opposite 'not free' while art stays beyond duality and remains undefined. The question "what is art?" is paradoxically answering to itself. Essential is to present the question and keep asking. Within the continuous and progressive interaction between questioning and rationalizing lies the creative process where both, the process and its results have equal importance. True art does not need to carry the weight of its title.
It drives away from the firmness of what has been accepted and reasoned and moves us towards change, freedom and something else.

Pekka Ruuska (born 1983 in Jämsä, Finland)
I am a son of imitator and just continuing the show business in the family. Making money through contemporary art is the easiest thing has came up to my mind.

Inga Mustakallio (born 1980 in Helsinki)
I try to avoid the polished truth, the absolute readiness and planned, clean object. I hate to find myself hiding in my studio as a weak lonely that can´t let go. My aim is to show the process and the true moment of painting whether it talks about the inner feeling or only about the fact of making an image. Though rarely painting is only about that. More it is about the forces which are coming from the dialogue between body and space and the people who are affecting the whole intimacy on a physical or on a metaphysical level.

Art for You Truth for Me is an international videoart screening, curated by Pekka Ruuska.
This is an artist-run and non-profit initiative dedicated to exciting video works showable as a single projection. The selection is like a recent harvest: some fresh works are kept close to more accomplished ones. In spite of the variety of propositions, videos find again their initial reproductible status: the disks, with often only an handwritten title that artists exchange to share their point of view, the improvement of a special aspect of their interest, or new formal concerns. Its quite interresting to deal with that cheap aspect of video works when you know how much galleries are selling some as a unique piece whereas curators and artists has got thousand of copies on their desks. It is also a simple way to share experiences and actually more easy than if you are a painter condemned to take pictures of pictures.

Participating artists:
Jonathan & Olmo (SUI)
Patrick Tschudi (PER)
Benjamin Valenza (FRA) & Philippe Decrauzat (SUI)
Oh Eun Lee (KOR)
Adrien Missika (FRA)
Benjamin Dick (SUI)
Eero Yli-Vakkuri (FIN)
Tristan Audoeud (SUI)
Nicolas Cilins (FRA)

Classics Series: Roman Festivals
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Elmar Oliveira, violin

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

Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4, Italian
Barber Violin Concerto, Op. 14
Respighi Roman Festivals

Poet Brooks Haxton
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Author of They Lift Their Wings to Cry

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Appleseed Productions
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $15 regular; $12 students/seniors
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

All is orderly in Nurse Ratched's ward. The patients are sedated and confined into quiet dull routines. Everything is working smoothly, until Randle P. McMurphy shows up. A rebellious and charming convict, conning his way out of a lengthy prison sentence, McMurphy immediately takes over the ward and challenges authority at every turn. But McMurphy soon finds out how dangerous challenging authority can be when their power is absolute, and just how far they will go to keep it that way. By Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by Ken Kesey.

Read a Review!

Widow's Pique
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring Shirley Ann Fenner

Price: $20 regular, $18 students/seniors
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

One-woman showing, which draws on several works.

Read a Review!

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

Glengarry Glen Ross
Wit's End Players

Price: $20 regular; $18 students/seniors
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

1st Prize: A Cadillac
2nd Prize: A Set of Steak Knives
3rd Prize: Youre Fired!
(And you thought your job was tough?)

David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning scalding drama took Broadway and London by storm and won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony. Never has the author's ear for the rhythms of contemporary speech been more keen than in this tale of cutthroat competition among real estate salesmen. Once shocking for its unrelentingly gritty language, the play has become an American classic.

Read a Review!

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Special Exhibit: Shadows
Delavan Art Gallery

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

When viewing lighted objects, it's easy to overlook the shadows they create. The Delavan Art Gallery has expanded on this concept to produce a one-of-its-kind exhibit devoted entirely to shadows and featuring works by a host of noted Central New York artists.

The Shadows Exhibit was conceived with two ideas in mind: how shadows are made (by an object, a light source and a background), and Bill Delavan's special professional interest in lighting the Gallery's exhibitions, sometimes playfully turning shadows into their own art form.

Featured artists in this exhibit include Arlene Abend, Reginald Adams, Anahid Ajemian, Barbara Conte-Gaugel, Hillary Gifford, Barre Hunt, Lauren Ritchie, Jeffrey Schuessler, Andy Schuster and Matthew Vural.

Needle Art and Embroidered Stone
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Needle art by members of the American Needlepoint Guild, and fine porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares.

Student Art Open 2008: (Un)doing Fashion
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, high school students explore art through their own experiences and style while drawing inspiration from fashion designer Jeffrey Mayer's exhibition "Marie Antoinette: Styling the 18th-Century Superstar."

Fifteen teachers from nine different schools came to hear Jeffrey Mayer's discussion on his exhibition and incorporated its themes into their lesson plans. In the next step of the Student Art Open process, students visited the Everson with their teachers and brought inspirations from the exhibits back to the classroom. Using any media they chose, students created artwork to be submitted for the Open. The teachers then selected two students' works to be on display at the museum. Come see the amazing artwork these students meticulously created for the exhibition.

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

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

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

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

Voices of Diversity: Photographs by Lida Suchý
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

"Voices of Diversity" is a composite photographic portrait of the Syracuse Community Choir. Composed of more than 100 individual black and white images, it foregrounds the potential of art/singing as a powerful tool for fostering broad social inclusiveness and community building. This exhibit honors people who, as choir founder and director Karen Mihalyi says, seek to create a space in our community "that values all people, that sees everyone as important, that creates music... Where we find our voices, sing fully, and create beauty."

For more than 20 years, the Syracuse Community Choir has been an important voice in the Central New York community, actively promoting the ideas of social justice, peace and inclusiveness. The Choir is based on the idea that singing should be a vital part of the human experience and that everyone can sing. It is open to all people, from experienced musicians to those who have never sung. To involve all, the choir provides support such as brailling, transportation, large print words, tapes/CDs, childcare, separate teen and children's rehearsals and special help for all who want it.

Lida Suchý's photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe and published in LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO. Lida's photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and SF MoMA. Lida is a first-generation American born into a Ukrainian refugee family. She holds a BA from SUNY Albany, an MA from Syracuse University, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Spark Video
Spark Contemporary Art Space

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

"The Charlie Rose Experience"
As always, featuring local and international videos.

Documentary: Giving Voice
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

There are no auditions; in fact, you dont even have to know how to sing to join the Syracuse Community Choir. You just have to want to sing because membership is open to anyone regardless of ability. A powerful and beautiful music emerges from this unique choir that values real inclusiveness and strives to bridge societal divisions while promoting peace and justice.

The documentary film Giving Voice, by filmmaker Miao Suchy, captures the Syracuse Community Choir's challenging rehearsals, preparations and performance of their 20th Anniversary Winter Solstice Concert.

This diverse group of around 70 singers includes women, men, and children of all ages, races, and sexual orientations, some with disabilities, and a broad spectrum of religious convictions. Yet one thing brings them all together: the joy of singing. At the helm is the woman who strives to get these sometimes disparate voices to sing as one: founder and director Karen Mihalyi. To her the choir is about more than the music, it's about community. Giving Voice is a musical portrait of her quest to create "a table where there is space for everyone, not just a select few." (30 minutes)

As an added bonus, the Syracuse Community Choir will offer informal singing following the screening.

Classics Series: Roman Festivals
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Hege, conductor
Featuring Elmar Oliveira, violin

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

Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4, Italian
Barber Violin Concerto, Op. 14
Respighi Roman Festivals

Little Red Riding Hood
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive version of the children's classic.

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Appleseed Productions
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $15 regular; $12 students/seniors
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

All is orderly in Nurse Ratched's ward. The patients are sedated and confined into quiet dull routines. Everything is working smoothly, until Randle P. McMurphy shows up. A rebellious and charming convict, conning his way out of a lengthy prison sentence, McMurphy immediately takes over the ward and challenges authority at every turn. But McMurphy soon finds out how dangerous challenging authority can be when their power is absolute, and just how far they will go to keep it that way. By Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by Ken Kesey.

Read a Review!

Widow's Pique
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring Shirley Ann Fenner

Price: $20 regular, $18 students/seniors
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

One-woman showing, which draws on several works.

Read a Review!

Talking With
Simply New Theatre

Price: $30 (includes show and after-party)
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

These extraordinary monologues, written by Jane Martin, received a standing ovation at Louisville's Actors Theatre. Idiosyncratic characters amuse, move, and frighten, always speaking from the depths of their souls. They include a baton twirler, a fundamentalist snake handler, an ex-rodeo rider and an actress willing to go to any length to get a job.

The show features Nora O'Dea, Judy Schmid, Katharine Gibson, Kate Huddleston, Rosemary Palladino-Leone, Binaifer Dabu, Katheryn Guyette, Kristi Grant, Jillian Dailey, Shannon Tompkins and Moe Harrington O'Neil.

Read a Review!

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

Glengarry Glen Ross
Wit's End Players

Price: $20 regular; $18 students/seniors
Empire Theater
New York State Fairgrounds, Geddes

1st Prize: A Cadillac
2nd Prize: A Set of Steak Knives
3rd Prize: Youre Fired!
(And you thought your job was tough?)

David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning scalding drama took Broadway and London by storm and won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony. Never has the author's ear for the rhythms of contemporary speech been more keen than in this tale of cutthroat competition among real estate salesmen. Once shocking for its unrelentingly gritty language, the play has become an American classic.

Read a Review!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

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

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

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

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

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

Student Art Open 2008: (Un)doing Fashion
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In this exhibition, high school students explore art through their own experiences and style while drawing inspiration from fashion designer Jeffrey Mayer's exhibition "Marie Antoinette: Styling the 18th-Century Superstar."

Fifteen teachers from nine different schools came to hear Jeffrey Mayer's discussion on his exhibition and incorporated its themes into their lesson plans. In the next step of the Student Art Open process, students visited the Everson with their teachers and brought inspirations from the exhibits back to the classroom. Using any media they chose, students created artwork to be submitted for the Open. The teachers then selected two students' works to be on display at the museum. Come see the amazing artwork these students meticulously created for the exhibition.

Baroque Reflections
Arts Alive in Liverpool

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

Music for oboe, trumpet and harpsichord, with Chris and Ron Stewart, and Cynthia Skafidas

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Appleseed Productions
Dustin M. Czarny, director

Price: $15 regular; $12 students/seniors
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

All is orderly in Nurse Ratched's ward. The patients are sedated and confined into quiet dull routines. Everything is working smoothly, until Randle P. McMurphy shows up. A rebellious and charming convict, conning his way out of a lengthy prison sentence, McMurphy immediately takes over the ward and challenges authority at every turn. But McMurphy soon finds out how dangerous challenging authority can be when their power is absolute, and just how far they will go to keep it that way. By Dale Wasserman, based on the novel by Ken Kesey.

Read a Review!

Widow's Pique
Salt City Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring Shirley Ann Fenner

Price: $20 regular, $18 students/seniors
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

One-woman showing, which draws on several works.

Read a Review!

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of James Watkins
Onondaga Community College

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

Ceramicist James Watkins throws elegant miniature cups, saucers and bowls, and double-walled cauldrons and jars, some of which are close to three feet high. He comes to his art with great sensitivity of touch that gives his works immense lyrical beauty.

The Golem: Visual Visitations
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A major collective exhibit of seven world class artists titled "The Golem: Visual Visitations," inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem "El Golem." This is the third edition of a program that began in Prague in 2002 through the initiative of the Argentinean Embassy in that city, and it was introduced by the renowned poet Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic. A second version was later produced with tremendous success at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 2003, also introduced by then President of the country, Néstor Kirchner. Now the program travels to the United States for the first time to be shown exclusively at Syracuse University.

The Golem exhibit at The Point of Contact Gallery features original works especially commissioned for this exhibit, created by seven artists: from Argentina (Leandro Katz; Pedro Roth); Uruguay (Marta Chilindrón); Puerto Rico (Víctor Vázquez); Syracuse (Tom Sherman; Doug Dubois) and New York (Sarah Kipp). It combines photography, installation and video art.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of James Watkins
Onondaga Community College

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

Ceramicist James Watkins throws elegant miniature cups, saucers and bowls, and double-walled cauldrons and jars, some of which are close to three feet high. He comes to his art with great sensitivity of touch that gives his works immense lyrical beauty.

The Golem: Visual Visitations
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A major collective exhibit of seven world class artists titled "The Golem: Visual Visitations," inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem "El Golem." This is the third edition of a program that began in Prague in 2002 through the initiative of the Argentinean Embassy in that city, and it was introduced by the renowned poet Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic. A second version was later produced with tremendous success at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 2003, also introduced by then President of the country, Néstor Kirchner. Now the program travels to the United States for the first time to be shown exclusively at Syracuse University.

The Golem exhibit at The Point of Contact Gallery features original works especially commissioned for this exhibit, created by seven artists: from Argentina (Leandro Katz; Pedro Roth); Uruguay (Marta Chilindrón); Puerto Rico (Víctor Vázquez); Syracuse (Tom Sherman; Doug Dubois) and New York (Sarah Kipp). It combines photography, installation and video art.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Needle Art and Embroidered Stone
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Needle art by members of the American Needlepoint Guild, and fine porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares.

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Winter
LeMoyne College
Le Moyne College Chamber Orchestra
Featuring Todd Reynolds, electric violin; Bob Allen, tenor; Bill Ryan, guest composer

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

Guest violinist Todd Reynolds will be featured in Vivaldi's Winter and his own Outerboroughs for violin and laptop with video by Bill Morrison. Guest composer Bill Ryan will have his works Blurred and Drive performed. Tenor Bob Allen sings three of Schubert's Winterreise. Also on the bill are excerpts from Tschaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Piazzolla's Invierno Porteno.

The Concerto Grosso: Bach to Bloch
Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music

Price: $10 adult, $5 student, $20 family pass
Lincoln Middle School
1613 James St., Syracuse

In his magnificent Brandenburg Concerti, Johann Sebastian Bach combines string orchestra with various solo instruments -- violin, flute, oboe, and harpsichord. Hear members of the Syracuse Symphony and others perform these gems of contrapuntal music. The tuneful work by Ernest Block shows that this favorite Baroque form continues to inspire more contemporary composers.

Ibert Deux Interludes
Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major
Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major
Bloch Concerto Grosso No. 1 for Strings with Piano Obligato

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of James Watkins
Onondaga Community College

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

Ceramicist James Watkins throws elegant miniature cups, saucers and bowls, and double-walled cauldrons and jars, some of which are close to three feet high. He comes to his art with great sensitivity of touch that gives his works immense lyrical beauty.

The Golem: Visual Visitations
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A major collective exhibit of seven world class artists titled "The Golem: Visual Visitations," inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem "El Golem." This is the third edition of a program that began in Prague in 2002 through the initiative of the Argentinean Embassy in that city, and it was introduced by the renowned poet Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic. A second version was later produced with tremendous success at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 2003, also introduced by then President of the country, Néstor Kirchner. Now the program travels to the United States for the first time to be shown exclusively at Syracuse University.

The Golem exhibit at The Point of Contact Gallery features original works especially commissioned for this exhibit, created by seven artists: from Argentina (Leandro Katz; Pedro Roth); Uruguay (Marta Chilindrón); Puerto Rico (Víctor Vázquez); Syracuse (Tom Sherman; Doug Dubois) and New York (Sarah Kipp). It combines photography, installation and video art.

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Needle Art and Embroidered Stone
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Needle art by members of the American Needlepoint Guild, and fine porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares.

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

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

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

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

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Voices of Diversity: Photographs by Lida Suchý
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

"Voices of Diversity" is a composite photographic portrait of the Syracuse Community Choir. Composed of more than 100 individual black and white images, it foregrounds the potential of art/singing as a powerful tool for fostering broad social inclusiveness and community building. This exhibit honors people who, as choir founder and director Karen Mihalyi says, seek to create a space in our community "that values all people, that sees everyone as important, that creates music... Where we find our voices, sing fully, and create beauty."

For more than 20 years, the Syracuse Community Choir has been an important voice in the Central New York community, actively promoting the ideas of social justice, peace and inclusiveness. The Choir is based on the idea that singing should be a vital part of the human experience and that everyone can sing. It is open to all people, from experienced musicians to those who have never sung. To involve all, the choir provides support such as brailling, transportation, large print words, tapes/CDs, childcare, separate teen and children's rehearsals and special help for all who want it.

Lida Suchý's photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe and published in LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO. Lida's photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and SF MoMA. Lida is a first-generation American born into a Ukrainian refugee family. She holds a BA from SUNY Albany, an MA from Syracuse University, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.

Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America
Featuring Joan Shelley Rubin

Curtin Auditorium, Onondaga County Public Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse

A professor of history at the University of Rochester, Joan Shelley Rubin is an American cultural and intellectual historian with a special interest in the history of books, reading and literary culture between 1880 and 1960. She is author of The Making of Middlebrow Culture (1992) and Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America (2007).

Sponsored by CNY READS and Syracuse University's Department of English.

Civic Morning Musicals
Kevin Moore and Katharine Ciarelli, piano four-hands

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

Works by Schubert, Brahms, and others.

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Gallery Exhibition: Works of James Watkins
Onondaga Community College

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

Ceramicist James Watkins throws elegant miniature cups, saucers and bowls, and double-walled cauldrons and jars, some of which are close to three feet high. He comes to his art with great sensitivity of touch that gives his works immense lyrical beauty.

The Golem: Visual Visitations
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A major collective exhibit of seven world class artists titled "The Golem: Visual Visitations," inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem "El Golem." This is the third edition of a program that began in Prague in 2002 through the initiative of the Argentinean Embassy in that city, and it was introduced by the renowned poet Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic. A second version was later produced with tremendous success at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 2003, also introduced by then President of the country, Néstor Kirchner. Now the program travels to the United States for the first time to be shown exclusively at Syracuse University.

The Golem exhibit at The Point of Contact Gallery features original works especially commissioned for this exhibit, created by seven artists: from Argentina (Leandro Katz; Pedro Roth); Uruguay (Marta Chilindrón); Puerto Rico (Víctor Vázquez); Syracuse (Tom Sherman; Doug Dubois) and New York (Sarah Kipp). It combines photography, installation and video art.

Arena Art Group Exhibit
Syracuse Technology Garden Gallery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works by Phil DeMocker and Ann Milner

Needle Art and Embroidered Stone
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Needle art by members of the American Needlepoint Guild, and fine porcelain and stoneware by Sue Canizares.

Contemporary Craft Masters
Community Folk Art Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transmedia Photography Annual
Light Work Gallery

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

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

Thinkin' 'bout Lincoln
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

A Local Black History Exhibit
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

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

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

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Paintings from OHA's permanent collection

Inishlacken: the last parish
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opening reception 5:00–7:00 pm.

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

Stone Canoe III
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Landscapes and Interiors: Works of Kianga Ford
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

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

Voices of Diversity: Photographs by Lida Suchý
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

"Voices of Diversity" is a composite photographic portrait of the Syracuse Community Choir. Composed of more than 100 individual black and white images, it foregrounds the potential of art/singing as a powerful tool for fostering broad social inclusiveness and community building. This exhibit honors people who, as choir founder and director Karen Mihalyi says, seek to create a space in our community "that values all people, that sees everyone as important, that creates music... Where we find our voices, sing fully, and create beauty."

For more than 20 years, the Syracuse Community Choir has been an important voice in the Central New York community, actively promoting the ideas of social justice, peace and inclusiveness. The Choir is based on the idea that singing should be a vital part of the human experience and that everyone can sing. It is open to all people, from experienced musicians to those who have never sung. To involve all, the choir provides support such as brailling, transportation, large print words, tapes/CDs, childcare, separate teen and children's rehearsals and special help for all who want it.

Lida Suchý's photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe and published in LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO. Lida's photographs are in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and SF MoMA. Lida is a first-generation American born into a Ukrainian refugee family. She holds a BA from SUNY Albany, an MA from Syracuse University, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.

Piano at the Panasci
LeMoyne College
Featuring Jennifer Hayghe, piano

Price: $15 regular, $10 seniors, students free$15 regular, $10 seniors, free for students and the LeMoyne community
Panasci Family Chapel
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Ithaca College faculty member Jennifer Hayghe will perform alongside Pebble Trio members Susan Waterbury, violin, and Elizabeth Simkin, cello, in an evening of beloved chamber music repertoire.

LeMoyne College
LeMoyne College Jazz Ensemble
Featuring Sam Newsome, saxophone

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

Join the Jazz Ensemble for a celebration of African-American History Month with guest soloist Sam Newsome, one of the world's great soprano saxophonists. Mr. Newsome will join the band on several numbers, and will also treat the audience to some of his own solo compositions.

The Sound of Murder
Acme Mystery Company

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

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

Jesus Christ Superstar
Broadway in Syracuse
Featuring Ted Neeley

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Putting It Together
Syracuse Stage
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, director

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

Conceived by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie as a musical review, Putting It Together showcases 30 of Sondheim's most beloved songs from such musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and others. A swanky Manhattan cocktail party provides the setting for a cast of five who use Sondheim's exquisite songs to examine the ups and downs of two relationships. The stellar cast of Broadway performers includes Tony Award-winners Lillias White and Chuck Cooper (Best Actress and Best Actor in The Life, 1997), Tyler Hanes (Broadway's A Chorus Line, Sweet Charity and Hairspray), Andre Ward (Xanadu, The Producers) and Stephanie Youell (Curtains).

Read a Review!