Sunday, May 29, 2011

Closing: Faces & Figures
Szozda Gallery

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

A group show focusing solely on portraiture and figures. The six participating artists are Robert Glisson, Harry Freeman-Jones, Robert Niedzwiecki, Phil Parsons, Dona Flaherty, and Stephen Perrone.

Light & Fire
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

New works exploring the use of light and fire in the creation of pieces for the table, wall, and garden, featuring stained glass by Liz and Rich Micho and and pottery by Sallie Thompson.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Memorial Day Concert
Stan Colella Orchestra

Price: Free
Palace Theater
2384 James St., Syracuse

This special holiday concert is a poignant expression of gratitude to our troops and veterans who have served this country, and a moving tribute to our fallen heroes.

Blues, Brews, and BBQ

Price: Free
New York State Fairgrounds
581 State Fair Blvd., Syracuse

Featuring Max Weinberg, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, Coco Montoya, Fabulous Ripcords, Chris Terra Band and The Super Delinquents

Monday, May 30, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

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

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

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

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

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Works by Tina Zagyva: Themselves Has Been a Gathering
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Exhibit open by appointment.

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jenny Holzer installation
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

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

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

Read a review!

Alligator Sushi
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

Local musicians Alligator Sushi perform on the front porch on Memorial Day.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

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

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition
Community Folk Art Center

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

CFAC, in conjunction with the Syracuse chapter of The Links, Inc., will be presenting the 39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition in May. Hosted annually at CFAC, this exhibition allows students of underrepresented backgrounds in the greater Syracuse area to submit original artwork for showcase in a high quality setting. Cash prizes are awarded to winners in each category. Join us to celebrate the work of Syracuse's talented young artists.

Jewelry Expo
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Imagine will host a jewelry expo throughout May featuring works by seven contemporary silversmiths.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Works by Tina Zagyva: Themselves Has Been a Gathering
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Exhibit open by appointment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

John Freyer: The Dress Up Portrait Project
Urban Video Project

Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Freyer's series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom's high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children's mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of "dress up"--the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills--become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Your Words Today /Tus palabras de hoy
Point of Contact Gallery

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

The Point of Contact Gallery presents the first exhibition by El Punto, a new contemporary arts program for young artists, created by Point of Contact and facilitated to local youths in collaboration with the Spanish Action League (La Liga) and La Casita Cultural Center.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

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

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition
Community Folk Art Center

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

CFAC, in conjunction with the Syracuse chapter of The Links, Inc., will be presenting the 39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition in May. Hosted annually at CFAC, this exhibition allows students of underrepresented backgrounds in the greater Syracuse area to submit original artwork for showcase in a high quality setting. Cash prizes are awarded to winners in each category. Join us to celebrate the work of Syracuse's talented young artists.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Works by Tina Zagyva: Themselves Has Been a Gathering
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Exhibit open by appointment.

Annual Student Benefit Art Show
Szozda Gallery

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

This year's Benefit Art Show of young students' works features co-exhibiting schools Meachem Elementary and Seymour Dual Language Academy.

Over the years, this benefit student art show has proven to be a win-win happening that celebrates young people's talent, motivates parental involvement, delights the general public and, most importantly, strengthens the arts programs at both schools through the sale of the works displayed, in which half of proceeds goes to the student's school art program and the other half to the student.

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

Read a review!

Sarah Averill: North Side Residents
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

More than 70 of Sarah Averill's sepia-toned photographs of North Side residents will be on display.

Jaume Ferrete: four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

UVP Annual Summer Review. In "four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages" (2 min loop), Jaume Ferrete revised an existing "four strategies" text work specifically with UVP and the Syracuse Stage location in mind. While the prior version was written for ink on paper, in this version Ferrete writes for LED panel on architectural facade, investigating the technical and political structures surrounding the UVP platform. The new work continues his use of minimal and open-ended texts that imply a discursive relationship with the audience, yet remain aloof and non-prescriptive.

Lori Larson, soprano; Sar-Shalom Strong, piano
Civic Morning Musicals

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

Opera arias of Mozart, Bellini, Saint-Saens, Dvorak, and songs by Canteloube and Paladilhe.

Baldwinsville Community Band
Temple Society of Concord

Price: Free (donations accepted)
Temple Society of Concord
910 Madison St., Syracuse

Come hear the Baldwinsville Community Band at an outdoor concert (weather permitting), followed by an old-fashioned ice cream social. This is the Band's second appearance at Concord, and they'll entertain with their versions of classical and modern music, as well as marches, medleys, seasonal music and show tunes. (Concert will move indoors in case of rain.)

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

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

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

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

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

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition
Community Folk Art Center

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

CFAC, in conjunction with the Syracuse chapter of The Links, Inc., will be presenting the 39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition in May. Hosted annually at CFAC, this exhibition allows students of underrepresented backgrounds in the greater Syracuse area to submit original artwork for showcase in a high quality setting. Cash prizes are awarded to winners in each category. Join us to celebrate the work of Syracuse's talented young artists.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Works by Tina Zagyva: Themselves Has Been a Gathering
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Exhibit open by appointment.

Annual Student Benefit Art Show
Szozda Gallery

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

This year's Benefit Art Show of young students' works features co-exhibiting schools Meachem Elementary and Seymour Dual Language Academy.

Over the years, this benefit student art show has proven to be a win-win happening that celebrates young people's talent, motivates parental involvement, delights the general public and, most importantly, strengthens the arts programs at both schools through the sale of the works displayed, in which half of proceeds goes to the student's school art program and the other half to the student.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Opening: Now and Then: Open Figure Drawing Group Exhibition 2011
XL Projects

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

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

New and past works created by artists from Open Figure Drawing, Syracuse's community-based drawing group for people of all abilities, are the subject of this exhibition. The Open Figure Drawing group offers an inexpensive drawing experience to members of the Syracuse community. Participants draw from unclothed models and can attend on a drop-in basis. They become part of a supportive artistic community that networks about exhibitions, workshops, grants and other related events.

For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or contact XL Projects at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Sarah Averill: North Side Residents
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

More than 70 of Sarah Averill's sepia-toned photographs of North Side residents will be on display.

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

Read a review!

Jaume Ferrete: four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

UVP Annual Summer Review. In "four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages" (2 min loop), Jaume Ferrete revised an existing "four strategies" text work specifically with UVP and the Syracuse Stage location in mind. While the prior version was written for ink on paper, in this version Ferrete writes for LED panel on architectural facade, investigating the technical and political structures surrounding the UVP platform. The new work continues his use of minimal and open-ended texts that imply a discursive relationship with the audience, yet remain aloof and non-prescriptive.

Tim Reynolds and TR3
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Die Another Death
Acme Mystery Company

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

Agent Double Y of Her Majesty's Secret Service is on another high-stakes mission. A legendary artifact called "The Alchemists' Cauldron" is set to be on display during a ceremony at the Sylvanian Consulate. Rumored to possess a supernatural power, the cauldron is sought by every bad guy around the globe. Who will get to it first? Who will die trying? The European Crime Boss? The Texas-sized American politician? The back-stabbing news reporter? Or will Double Y come to the rescue again, and keep the cauldron from falling into the wrong hands?

Preview: Psycho Beach Party
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

Gidget, Frankie, and Annette beach party epics meet Hitchcock's psychological suspense thrillers such as Spellbound and Marnie. Chicklet Forrest, a teenage tomboy, desperately wants to be part of the surf crowd on Malibu Beach in 1962. Her most dangerous alter ego is a sexually voracious vixen named Ann Bowman who has nothing less than world domination on her mind. Written by Charles Busch.

This show is intended for mature audiences only.

Read a review!

Friday, June 3, 2011

Approaches & Disclosures: Three Photographers

Price: Free
Empire State College CNY Center
6333 Route 298, East Syracuse

Approaches & Disclosures is a collection of work from three SUNY Empire State College faculty and staff members: Lee Herman, mentor at the Auburn Unit; Sue Orrell, director of academic support at the CNY Center; and Alan Stankiewicz, mentor at the CNY Center.

All three photographers approach photography from a different perspective, prompting the exhibition. The work ranges in content from urban street life, to local landscapes and constructed images of skies. As a single image or a studied series, each photograph reflects a deep rooted approach to photography based on personal experience and external influences.

The exhibition affords the Empire State College community the opportunity to view and celebrate a creative collaboration among colleagues, while broadening their own definition of photography.

For more information, contact Michael Mancini, 315-460-3176, michael.mancini@esc.edu.

Your Words Today /Tus palabras de hoy
Point of Contact Gallery

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

The Point of Contact Gallery presents the first exhibition by El Punto, a new contemporary arts program for young artists, created by Point of Contact and facilitated to local youths in collaboration with the Spanish Action League (La Liga) and La Casita Cultural Center.

Photography by Vincent Doody and Illustration by Aaron Lee
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Gallery A: Vincent Doody's photographs portraying serene country landscapes, city scenes at twilight, and reflect the desolate life of Oswego's lighthouse in winter.
Gallery B highlights Aaron Lee's selection of comic illustrations from his witty, surreal and satirical series on Wesley the robot.

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

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

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

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

When West Meets East: Works by Patricia Elliott Seitz
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

The exhibit "When West Meets East" is an impressionistic painting journey. Patricia Seitz will show a series of paintings depicting the beauty and physical differences between California and Upstate NY. Traveling from the coastal areas of California to Upstate New York's dynamic seasons and lush woods, the artist was able to share her memories through a painting journal.

Patricia Elliott Seitz was born in San Diego and spent most of her young adulthood living in Southern California. Patricia enjoys exploring subjects on an intimate level, getting to know her subject, striving to gather as much information as possible prior to beginning a painting. She gravitates to subjects which are in rich color, light is of primary focus, and the subject matter presents a degree of difficulty.

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition
Community Folk Art Center

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

CFAC, in conjunction with the Syracuse chapter of The Links, Inc., will be presenting the 39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition in May. Hosted annually at CFAC, this exhibition allows students of underrepresented backgrounds in the greater Syracuse area to submit original artwork for showcase in a high quality setting. Cash prizes are awarded to winners in each category. Join us to celebrate the work of Syracuse's talented young artists.

Opening: The Dragonfly Garden
Gallery 54

Price: Free
Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

There will be an opening reception this evening, First Friday, 6:00-9:00 pm. Meet the Artists, enter a drawing for $25 gift certificate, and enjoy delicious refreshments.

Featuring dragonfly-themed pieces for your garden and beyond by members of Gallery 54.

Opening: Georg Schwartz Exhibition
Imagine

Price: Free
Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-9:00 pm, as part of the village's First Friday celebration. Refreshments will be provided, along with entertainment by the Pond Creek Bogstompers.

Paintings by Georg Schwartz, a native of Copenhagen, Denmark now living in Johnson City, will be featured. Schwartz has had one show in New York City and several in the Southern Tier; this is his first in Onondaga County.

Schwartz began sketching for fun in 1971, exhibited in a few shows, and then took a not-so-brief hiatus, returning to painting more than 30 years later. In 2004 he was one of nine artists featured in the "Scandinavian Dreams" exhibit at the Avenue Art Gallery in Endicott -- one of the largest-ever gatherings of Scandinavian artists in the Northeast. It served as the springboard for his career. Schwartz calls his paintings "abstract" and "classic abstract," which he describes as "work with a feel of the 1920s and 1930s." He creates not only his own genre, but also his own mediums and colors.

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Works by Tina Zagyva: Themselves Has Been a Gathering
Redhouse

Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

Exhibit open by appointment.

Reception: Annual Student Benefit Art Show
Szozda Gallery

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

There will be a reception this afternoon and evening, 3:00-8:00 pm.

This year's Benefit Art Show of young students' works features co-exhibiting schools Meachem Elementary and Seymour Dual Language Academy.

Over the years, this benefit student art show has proven to be a win-win happening that celebrates young people's talent, motivates parental involvement, delights the general public and, most importantly, strengthens the arts programs at both schools through the sale of the works displayed, in which half of proceeds goes to the student's school art program and the other half to the student.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Now and Then: Open Figure Drawing Group Exhibition 2011
XL Projects

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

New and past works created by artists from Open Figure Drawing, Syracuse's community-based drawing group for people of all abilities, are the subject of this exhibition. The Open Figure Drawing group offers an inexpensive drawing experience to members of the Syracuse community. Participants draw from unclothed models and can attend on a drop-in basis. They become part of a supportive artistic community that networks about exhibitions, workshops, grants and other related events.

For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or contact XL Projects at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Sarah Averill: North Side Residents
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

More than 70 of Sarah Averill's sepia-toned photographs of North Side residents will be on display.

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

Read a review!

Jaume Ferrete: four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

UVP Annual Summer Review. In "four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages" (2 min loop), Jaume Ferrete revised an existing "four strategies" text work specifically with UVP and the Syracuse Stage location in mind. While the prior version was written for ink on paper, in this version Ferrete writes for LED panel on architectural facade, investigating the technical and political structures surrounding the UVP platform. The new work continues his use of minimal and open-ended texts that imply a discursive relationship with the audience, yet remain aloof and non-prescriptive.

Taste of Syracuse

Price: Free
Clinton Square
Downtown, Syracuse

Main Stage
12:00 pm: Kim Monroe and Chris Eves
1:15 pm: Silent Fury
2:30 pm: Mike McKay
3:45 pm: Syracuse Academy of Science Atom Band
5:30 pm: Square Pegs
7:00 pm: Gridley Paige
8:15 pm: Radio Fever
9:30 pm: Under the Gun

Clinton Square Stage
12:00 pm: Just Joe (SOLO)
1:45 pm: The Wannabes
3:00 pm: Colin Aberdeen
4:15 pm: The Fabulous Ripcords
5:30 pm: The Barndogs
7:20 pm: The Nasty Truth
9:00 pm: The Goonies

Champion Stage
4:00 pm: Catastrophe Me!
4:45 pm: White Picket Fence
5:30 pm: Black Lockets
6:15 pm: The Failed States
7:00 pm: Reckless Drivin'
8:45 pm: Prime Time

Kyla Town, Mike Petrosillo, and Mary Gardner
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

At First Sight
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

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

Written by Anne Pié.

Psycho Beach Party
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

Price: $25
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Gidget, Frankie, and Annette beach party epics meet Hitchcock's psychological suspense thrillers such as Spellbound and Marnie. Chicklet Forrest, a teenage tomboy, desperately wants to be part of the surf crowd on Malibu Beach in 1962. Her most dangerous alter ego is a sexually voracious vixen named Ann Bowman who has nothing less than world domination on her mind. Written by Charles Busch.

This show is intended for mature audiences only.

Read a review!

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Three Form Expression
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Linda Bigness- Abstract oil paintings from her urbanscape and musical notes series
Tom Huff- Soapstone and alabaster sculpture
Jerome Durr- Freestanding glass sculpture

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

The Dragonfly Garden
Gallery 54

Price: Free
Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Featuring dragonfly-themed pieces for your garden and beyond by members of Gallery 54.

Georg Schwartz Exhibition
Imagine

Price: Free
Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Paintings by Georg Schwartz, a native of Copenhagen, Denmark now living in Johnson City, will be featured. Schwartz has had one show in New York City and several in the Southern Tier; this is his first in Onondaga County.

Schwartz began sketching for fun in 1971, exhibited in a few shows, and then took a not-so-brief hiatus, returning to painting more than 30 years later. In 2004 he was one of nine artists featured in the "Scandinavian Dreams" exhibit at the Avenue Art Gallery in Endicott -- one of the largest-ever gatherings of Scandinavian artists in the Northeast. It served as the springboard for his career. Schwartz calls his paintings "abstract" and "classic abstract," which he describes as "work with a feel of the 1920s and 1930s." He creates not only his own genre, but also his own mediums and colors.

East Meets West: Works by Nikolay Mikushkin and Robert Glisson
Limestone Art and Framing Gallery

Limestone Art and Framing Gallery
105 Brooklea Dr., Fayetteville

Robert Glisson begins his oil paintings en plein air, and completes the work in his studio, utilizing the "push and pull" technique by incorporating color with distinct to dissolved forms. The artist also is known for turning a painting upside down to push further into abstracting the composition. The time Glisson spends working in the studio allows for a less literal and more emotive interpretation of the spirit of the Central New York landscape.

Nikolay Mikushkin, born in Kazakhstan, is a classically trained landscape painter in the style of Russian Realism that he learned while attending the St. Petersburg Academy of Painting in Russia. After moving to Syracuse from New York City following 9/11, Mikushkin found an abundance of inspiration throughout the Central New York landscape in which to continue his plein air painting style. The works in this exhibition were created from his time as artist-in-residence at Saltonstall in Ithaca, NY and at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Mikushkin also works as a scenic artist for the United Scenic Artists Union, working on movies and stage productions in New York City.

Funky Flea

Price: Free
Marcellus & Wyoming Streets
Near Westside, Syracuse

An outdoor bazaar of bric-a-brac, what-nots, gizmos, thingamabobs, and gadgets; an urban shopping experience of retro collectibles, vintage wares, antiques, handmade items, artwork, bicycles, records and more; featuring 40+ vendors with live music and refreshments.

Annual Student Benefit Art Show
Szozda Gallery

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

This year's Benefit Art Show of young students' works features co-exhibiting schools Meachem Elementary and Seymour Dual Language Academy.

Over the years, this benefit student art show has proven to be a win-win happening that celebrates young people's talent, motivates parental involvement, delights the general public and, most importantly, strengthens the arts programs at both schools through the sale of the works displayed, in which half of proceeds goes to the student's school art program and the other half to the student.

Westcott Art Trail Sale
Westcott Community Center

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

This art fair has grown to one of the finest arts & craft offerings in Syracuse. This year we are having 60+ artists, of extraordinary quality, in 25+ locations around the neighborhood. The locations include artists' homes and studios that stretch from Meadowbrook to Berkley and from Broad to Avondale and beyond. Local artists work in a range of mediums, including ceramics, glass, jewelry, fibers, painting, and sculpture. Many artists will be demonstrating their craft in mediums including silk painting, henna, watercolor, ceramic wheel throwing and firing, oil painting, origami, jewelry making techniques, and others.

A PDF of the Art Trail map is available here.

Closing: 39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition
Community Folk Art Center

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

A closing reception and awards presentation will be held this afternoon 3:00-5:00 p.m.

CFAC, in conjunction with the Syracuse chapter of The Links, Inc., will be presenting the 39th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition in May. Hosted annually at CFAC, this exhibition allows students of underrepresented backgrounds in the greater Syracuse area to submit original artwork for showcase in a high quality setting. Cash prizes are awarded to winners in each category. Join us to celebrate the work of Syracuse's talented young artists.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

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

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

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

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

Sarah Averill: North Side Residents
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

More than 70 of Sarah Averill's sepia-toned photographs of North Side residents will be on display.

CNY Pride Families: Works by Ellen Blalock
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

This exhibit is a portrait of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) families in Central New York communities. Through it, we seek to challenge and change damaging myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people and their families. We hope to contribute to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance. The photographs display positive images and first person accounts which relay the stories of LGBTQ people and their families here in the Central New York area.

In 2007, Ellen M. Blalock collaborated with Light Work and LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University on a campus exhibition of CNY Pride Families. Some families only included domestic partners, some included children, ex-partners, grandparents and pets. Some writings were done by children explaining what it is like to have two moms. Some partners included the vows from their union ceremony. The process of making these portraits turned into a celebration of families, to show and share their love, their strength and their togetherness. The ArtRage exhibit includes more families, more diversity, video, and audio.

Read a review!

Now and Then: Open Figure Drawing Group Exhibition 2011
XL Projects

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

New and past works created by artists from Open Figure Drawing, Syracuse's community-based drawing group for people of all abilities, are the subject of this exhibition. The Open Figure Drawing group offers an inexpensive drawing experience to members of the Syracuse community. Participants draw from unclothed models and can attend on a drop-in basis. They become part of a supportive artistic community that networks about exhibitions, workshops, grants and other related events.

For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or contact XL Projects at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Opening Reception When West Meets East: Works by Patricia Elliott Seitz
Westcott Community Art Gallery

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

The exhibit "When West Meets East" is an impressionistic painting journey. Patricia Seitz will show a series of paintings depicting the beauty and physical differences between California and Upstate NY. Traveling from the coastal areas of California to Upstate New York's dynamic seasons and lush woods, the artist was able to share her memories through a painting journal.

Patricia Elliott Seitz was born in San Diego and spent most of her young adulthood living in Southern California. Patricia enjoys exploring subjects on an intimate level, getting to know her subject, striving to gather as much information as possible prior to beginning a painting. She gravitates to subjects which are in rich color, light is of primary focus, and the subject matter presents a degree of difficulty.

Jaume Ferrete: four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

UVP Annual Summer Review. In "four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages" (2 min loop), Jaume Ferrete revised an existing "four strategies" text work specifically with UVP and the Syracuse Stage location in mind. While the prior version was written for ink on paper, in this version Ferrete writes for LED panel on architectural facade, investigating the technical and political structures surrounding the UVP platform. The new work continues his use of minimal and open-ended texts that imply a discursive relationship with the audience, yet remain aloof and non-prescriptive.

Taste of Syracuse

Price: Free
Clinton Square
Downtown, Syracuse

Main Stage
1:00 pm: South Bay
2:15 pm: Shakedown
3:30 pm: Miss 3
4:45 pm: Just Joe & the Janglers
6:00 pm: Kane
7:15 pm: Super 400
9:00 pm: Gregg Alman

Clinton Square Stage
11:00 am: No Xcuses
12:00 pm: Fab Cats
1:15 pm: Professional Victims
2:30 pm: Pale Green Stars
3:45 pm: House on a Spring
5:00 pm: The Reissues
6:15 pm: The Flashcubes
7:45 pm: 3 Inch Fury
9:15 pm: One Hard Krank

Champion Stage
12:00-5:00 pm: Champion Local Talent Showcase
6:00 pm: Soul Risin
7:15 pm: Stroke
9:00 pm: Custom Taylor Band

Silenced Voices, Quiet Voices
Redhouse

Price: $10 regular, $8 student/senior/veteram
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A documentary revealing the intimate and often emotional reflections of the parents of eight soldiers who were killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Produced by local resident Tad Fundalinski.

Happy Together
ArtRage Gallery

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

Stranded in Argentina, a gay couple from Hong Kong clings to notions of love even as their relationship falls apart. So original that it "makes us reconsider how stories can be told on film" (SF Chronicle). Cannes Film Festival: Best Director. Arizona Film Festival: Most Popular Film. Independent Spirit Award: Best Foreign Film. (Directed by Kai War Wong, 1997)

Silenced Voices, Quiet Voices
Redhouse

Price: $10 regular, $8 student/senior/veteram
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

A documentary revealing the intimate and often emotional reflections of the parents of eight soldiers who were killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Produced by local resident Tad Fundalinski.

Give My Regards to Broadway! Cabaret
Syracuse Chorale
Warren Ottey, conductor

Blessed Sacrament School
3127 James St., Syracuse

Featuring selections from Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, South Pacific, Wicked, West Side Story, Brigadoon, The Sound of Music, and many, many more.

Hope Road: A Tribute to Bob Marley & The Wailers
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Snow White
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

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

Interactive retelling of the classic children's story.

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type
Gifford Family Theatre

Price: $15 adults, $10 children
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

The musical based on the award-winning book by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. Tickets may be reserved by calling 315-445-4523.

Read a review!

At First Sight
Baldwinsville Theatre Guild
Jon J. Barden, director

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

Written by Anne Pié.

Psycho Beach Party
Rarely Done Productions
Dan Tursi, director

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

Gidget, Frankie, and Annette beach party epics meet Hitchcock's psychological suspense thrillers such as Spellbound and Marnie. Chicklet Forrest, a teenage tomboy, desperately wants to be part of the surf crowd on Malibu Beach in 1962. Her most dangerous alter ego is a sexually voracious vixen named Ann Bowman who has nothing less than world domination on her mind. Written by Charles Busch.

This show is intended for mature audiences only.

Read a review!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Jeffrey Henson Scales: That Year of Living
Light Work Gallery

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

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

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

Annual Student Benefit Art Show
Szozda Gallery

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

This year's Benefit Art Show of young students' works features co-exhibiting schools Meachem Elementary and Seymour Dual Language Academy.

Over the years, this benefit student art show has proven to be a win-win happening that celebrates young people's talent, motivates parental involvement, delights the general public and, most importantly, strengthens the arts programs at both schools through the sale of the works displayed, in which half of proceeds goes to the student's school art program and the other half to the student.

The Dragonfly Garden
Gallery 54

Price: Free
Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Featuring dragonfly-themed pieces for your garden and beyond by members of Gallery 54.

In the Garden
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

In the Garden presents an eclectic mix of styles and art media, which all celebrate the joys of the garden. The paintings and photography in the show depict floral motifs and backyard vistas. Ceramic planters and sculptural forms complement and enhance any outdoor space. The jewelry and wearable pieces reflect the colors, patterns, and styles inspired by the gorgeous flowers that make us THINK SPRING!

Participating artists include: Jenny Pope, Lucie Wellner, Nancy Kramer, Rodger DeMuth, Zach Dunn, Melissa Montgomery, Kathy Barry, Jen Gandee. Sarah Panzarella, Lynn Yenkey, Lorna Meaden, Ron DeRutte, Lori Hawk, Amy Francher, and Errol Willett.?

Georg Schwartz Exhibition
Imagine

Price: Free
Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Paintings by Georg Schwartz, a native of Copenhagen, Denmark now living in Johnson City, will be featured. Schwartz has had one show in New York City and several in the Southern Tier; this is his first in Onondaga County.

Schwartz began sketching for fun in 1971, exhibited in a few shows, and then took a not-so-brief hiatus, returning to painting more than 30 years later. In 2004 he was one of nine artists featured in the "Scandinavian Dreams" exhibit at the Avenue Art Gallery in Endicott -- one of the largest-ever gatherings of Scandinavian artists in the Northeast. It served as the springboard for his career. Schwartz calls his paintings "abstract" and "classic abstract," which he describes as "work with a feel of the 1920s and 1930s." He creates not only his own genre, but also his own mediums and colors.

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

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

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

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

Ah Leon: Memories of Elementary School
Everson Museum of Art

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

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

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

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

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

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

Read a review!

Westcott Art Trail Sale
Westcott Community Center

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

This art fair has grown to one of the finest arts & craft offerings in Syracuse. This year we are having 60+ artists, of extraordinary quality, in 25+ locations around the neighborhood. The locations include artists' homes and studios that stretch from Meadowbrook to Berkley and from Broad to Avondale and beyond. Local artists work in a range of mediums, including ceramics, glass, jewelry, fibers, painting, and sculpture. Many artists will be demonstrating their craft in mediums including silk painting, henna, watercolor, ceramic wheel throwing and firing, oil painting, origami, jewelry making techniques, and others.

A PDF of the Art Trail map is available here.

Now and Then: Open Figure Drawing Group Exhibition 2011
XL Projects

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

New and past works created by artists from Open Figure Drawing, Syracuse's community-based drawing group for people of all abilities, are the subject of this exhibition. The Open Figure Drawing group offers an inexpensive drawing experience to members of the Syracuse community. Participants draw from unclothed models and can attend on a drop-in basis. They become part of a supportive artistic community that networks about exhibitions, workshops, grants and other related events.

For more information, visit www.openfiguredrawing.com or contact XL Projects at 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Jaume Ferrete: four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages
Urban Video Project

Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

UVP Annual Summer Review. In "four strategies, an idea, a text and two messages" (2 min loop), Jaume Ferrete revised an existing "four strategies" text work specifically with UVP and the Syracuse Stage location in mind. While the prior version was written for ink on paper, in this version Ferrete writes for LED panel on architectural facade, investigating the technical and political structures surrounding the UVP platform. The new work continues his use of minimal and open-ended texts that imply a discursive relationship with the audience, yet remain aloof and non-prescriptive.

Sunday Musicale: Sara and Jeremy Mastrangelo, violins
Fayetteville Free Library

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

A program of violin duets.

Give My Regards to Broadway! Cabaret
Syracuse Chorale
Warren Ottey, conductor

Blessed Sacrament School
3127 James St., Syracuse

Featuring selections from Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, South Pacific, Wicked, West Side Story, Brigadoon, The Sound of Music, and many, many more.

Jazz Vespers: Welcome the Spirit
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation
Featuring Julie Falatico

Price: Free (donations accepted)
Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church
5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

Jazz Vespers is a combination of inspirational and meditative readings, homily, and jazz played by members of the CNY Jazz Orchestra and various guest vocalists. The jazz selections are drawn from secular and sacred sources, representing a wide range of composers as varied as Duke Ellington, Chick Corea, Cole Porter, and Stephen Foster, and well-known hymns in jazz settings for all to enjoy, singing as they wish. The service is open to those of all faiths.

Robin Trower, with Mark Doyle and the Maniacs
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type
Gifford Family Theatre

Price: $15 adults, $10 children
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

The musical based on the award-winning book by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. Tickets may be reserved by calling 315-445-4523.

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