Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Postcards to (and from!) the Past
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This exhibit is a collaboration between the Arts Branch of the YMCA's after school arts program at Salem Hyde Elementary School, the Onondaga Historical Association, and Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts. On display at the YMCA will be replications of over 100 century-old postcards mailed back and forth between students in the YMCA's program (asking questions of various historical figures from the Syracuse area), and staff members of the OHA (who responded to the students' questions in character). Sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, the kids' questions show an active engagement with their own history—and the postcards themselves are a delight to anyone interested in the area's past. The exhibit is continued across the street at the OHA, and guests are invited and encouraged to visit both galleries to see the complete show.

The Gallery as Studio: Drawings on Delirium
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A world-renowned Uruguayan artist, Ricardo Lanzarini comes from Montevideo to Syracuse to recreate the mundane and the extraordinary in his drawings on delirium made to unexpected scales. The exhibition comes to life at The Point of Contact Gallery where the space has turned into an artist's studio. The work of the exhibit is to be produced entirely on site and directly onto the walls of the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening. Lanzarini will also share this experiment with students from Syracuse University's Fine Arts Department who will join in the creative process.

Lanzarini's work balances extremes of scale, crafting an extensive abstract image from precise, miniscule characters, whose everyday activities serve as a window into a miniature world, frozen in time. These drawings sarcastically explore the two major paradigms in figurative art of the 20th century: Social and Fantastic Realism

The exhibit will last through the summer and then Lanzarini returns to Point of Contact to perform an "erasure" of the work on September 4. The book catalogue documenting the entire project will be presented at the close.

Recent works by Al Bremer and Kate Timm
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Terrain
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Sharon Gordon: Oil Paintings
John Lombardi: Works in Stone

Purple Treatment: Ceramic Works by Eunjung Shin
Community Folk Art Center

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

In "Purple Treatment," Eunjung Shin's figurative ceramic sculptures represent stories from the artist's life. Shin has taken personal memories and transformed them into three-dimensional artistic expressions. The highly detailed figures are skillfully rendered and express a range of emotions. Shin describes some of her figures as "clowns" because they hide their true selves, putting on a face to the world in order to please others. Many of the pieces prompt the viewer to look inward to reflect upon their meaning.

Organic Watermarks: Photographs by Gus Bennett, Jr.
Community Folk Art Center

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

In the exhibition "Organic Watermarks," New Orleans photographer Gus Bennett, Jr., displays portraits of New Orleans residents juxtaposed with layers of debris from Hurricane Katrina. Watermarks on concrete and other surfaces, leaves, textures, colors and remnants left behind by Katrina form layers in front of, behind and even merged onto the surface of the skin of the subjects. Together, the subjects and debris become storytellers of New Orleans post-Katrina. Shot entirely in natural light, the overall mood of the pieces is almost of an ethereal quality, with the ghost-like images of debris commingling with the subjects. According to Bennett, as many as 82 layers comprise one individual portrait. The subjects either appear draped in fabric or nude, which the artist explains is a means of eliminating social class or status: "with Katrina, everyone got left behind." With "Organic Watermarks," Bennett creates true works of beauty, proving that even in the aftermath of chaos, hope can still prevail.

PostSecret
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In November 2004, Frank Warren began a community art project by handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. Two requirements were: the secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today Warren has been mailed more than 100,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards illustrating the soulful secrets never voiced. This extraordinary project has become an international phenomenon with thousands of people participating in scheduled PostSecret events throughout the United States, and through the PostSecret website and blog.

This exhibition features 450 postcards bringing together the most powerful, poignant and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received in the past four years. In many cases, the illustrations on the cards are just as compelling as the accompanying text.

Sitting Still
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"What does the world look like from a non-violent point of view? What would happen if the youth of Syracuse city and Syracuse University joined together to explore this question?" These are the questions that led Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University and Pam McLaughlin, Everson Curator of Education and Public Programs to bring the Sitting Still contemplative video project to high school students from the Syracuse City School District. Beffel and McLaughlin worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands eight young artists, so that they could stop, look, and listen as scenes unfolded before them ranging from those that inspired awe to those that compelled participation and intervention. Within the context of four workshops at the SU Warehouse e-tags studio, students engaged in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then used their artworks as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. The workshops were at the heart of this process of opening up to environments -- both physical and social.

Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and 100 Last Names
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The two solo exhibitions, Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and Xiaowen Chen: 100 Last Names, present work from the past nine years by Chinese-born, Ithaca-based artist Chen. Having lived in the United States for the past two decades, Chen has focused his work on the space between East and West. From his many return trips to China, Chen has created digital images and video projections reflecting American and Chinese attitudes toward the 21st-century role of media and technology and identity issues. His work of overlapping the cultures of East and West addresses his search for what he called in 1993 the "manifestation of the universal and the expression of the particular."

Chen places himself in the position of both the American and the Chinese tourist. He has noted that when photographing in China he feels like a foreigner, while in the U.S. he feels like a traveler. His work addresses both China's historical transformation and his personal experience as an émigré.

Like other artists of his generation, Chen grew up under Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution and was exposed to a visual vocabulary that highlighted fragmentation and repetition. As a result, works by Xiaowen Chen evoke cultural clichés and stereotypes.

Vicktory Dogs Exhibition
The Warehouse Gallery

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

Pit bulls victimized in the notorious dog-fighting ring of former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick are the subject of the exhibition. "Vicktory Dogs" is the brainchild of Cyrus Mejia, who, along with his wife and a group of animal lovers, founded Best Friends Animal Society, the nation's largest sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals.

The exhibition features giclée prints of 22 dogs rescued by Best Friends after Vick's indictment. By depicting the dogs up close in his painting, Mejia hopes people will confront their own prejudices about pit bulls in general and will think twice about exploiting them or fearing them, or both.

Friday (and Tuesday) FLICS: The Killing of Sister George
ArtRage Gallery

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

Beryl Reid, Susannah York, Coral Browne. An aging actress's life falls apart as she loses first her job in a TV soap series and then her young lover. (Directed by Robert Aldrich, 1968)

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Gallery as Studio: Drawings on Delirium
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A world-renowned Uruguayan artist, Ricardo Lanzarini comes from Montevideo to Syracuse to recreate the mundane and the extraordinary in his drawings on delirium made to unexpected scales. The exhibition comes to life at The Point of Contact Gallery where the space has turned into an artist's studio. The work of the exhibit is to be produced entirely on site and directly onto the walls of the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening. Lanzarini will also share this experiment with students from Syracuse University's Fine Arts Department who will join in the creative process.

Lanzarini's work balances extremes of scale, crafting an extensive abstract image from precise, miniscule characters, whose everyday activities serve as a window into a miniature world, frozen in time. These drawings sarcastically explore the two major paradigms in figurative art of the 20th century: Social and Fantastic Realism

The exhibit will last through the summer and then Lanzarini returns to Point of Contact to perform an "erasure" of the work on September 4. The book catalogue documenting the entire project will be presented at the close.

Recent works by Al Bremer and Kate Timm
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Terrain
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Sharon Gordon: Oil Paintings
John Lombardi: Works in Stone

Purple Treatment: Ceramic Works by Eunjung Shin
Community Folk Art Center

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

In "Purple Treatment," Eunjung Shin's figurative ceramic sculptures represent stories from the artist's life. Shin has taken personal memories and transformed them into three-dimensional artistic expressions. The highly detailed figures are skillfully rendered and express a range of emotions. Shin describes some of her figures as "clowns" because they hide their true selves, putting on a face to the world in order to please others. Many of the pieces prompt the viewer to look inward to reflect upon their meaning.

Organic Watermarks: Photographs by Gus Bennett, Jr.
Community Folk Art Center

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

In the exhibition "Organic Watermarks," New Orleans photographer Gus Bennett, Jr., displays portraits of New Orleans residents juxtaposed with layers of debris from Hurricane Katrina. Watermarks on concrete and other surfaces, leaves, textures, colors and remnants left behind by Katrina form layers in front of, behind and even merged onto the surface of the skin of the subjects. Together, the subjects and debris become storytellers of New Orleans post-Katrina. Shot entirely in natural light, the overall mood of the pieces is almost of an ethereal quality, with the ghost-like images of debris commingling with the subjects. According to Bennett, as many as 82 layers comprise one individual portrait. The subjects either appear draped in fabric or nude, which the artist explains is a means of eliminating social class or status: "with Katrina, everyone got left behind." With "Organic Watermarks," Bennett creates true works of beauty, proving that even in the aftermath of chaos, hope can still prevail.

Sitting Still
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"What does the world look like from a non-violent point of view? What would happen if the youth of Syracuse city and Syracuse University joined together to explore this question?" These are the questions that led Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University and Pam McLaughlin, Everson Curator of Education and Public Programs to bring the Sitting Still contemplative video project to high school students from the Syracuse City School District. Beffel and McLaughlin worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands eight young artists, so that they could stop, look, and listen as scenes unfolded before them ranging from those that inspired awe to those that compelled participation and intervention. Within the context of four workshops at the SU Warehouse e-tags studio, students engaged in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then used their artworks as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. The workshops were at the heart of this process of opening up to environments -- both physical and social.

PostSecret
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In November 2004, Frank Warren began a community art project by handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. Two requirements were: the secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today Warren has been mailed more than 100,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards illustrating the soulful secrets never voiced. This extraordinary project has become an international phenomenon with thousands of people participating in scheduled PostSecret events throughout the United States, and through the PostSecret website and blog.

This exhibition features 450 postcards bringing together the most powerful, poignant and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received in the past four years. In many cases, the illustrations on the cards are just as compelling as the accompanying text.

Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and 100 Last Names
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The two solo exhibitions, Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and Xiaowen Chen: 100 Last Names, present work from the past nine years by Chinese-born, Ithaca-based artist Chen. Having lived in the United States for the past two decades, Chen has focused his work on the space between East and West. From his many return trips to China, Chen has created digital images and video projections reflecting American and Chinese attitudes toward the 21st-century role of media and technology and identity issues. His work of overlapping the cultures of East and West addresses his search for what he called in 1993 the "manifestation of the universal and the expression of the particular."

Chen places himself in the position of both the American and the Chinese tourist. He has noted that when photographing in China he feels like a foreigner, while in the U.S. he feels like a traveler. His work addresses both China's historical transformation and his personal experience as an émigré.

Like other artists of his generation, Chen grew up under Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution and was exposed to a visual vocabulary that highlighted fragmentation and repetition. As a result, works by Xiaowen Chen evoke cultural clichés and stereotypes.

The Power of Revolt: Grassroots Resistance in Oaxaca
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

A powerful exhibit of photographs from the Oaxaca, Mexico resistance movement combined with original political posters from art collectives there.

In 2006, Oaxaca, Mexico came alive with a broad and diverse movement that captivated the nation and inspired communities organizing for social justice around the world. Fueled by long ignored social contradictions, what began as a teachers' strike demanding more resources for education quickly turned into a massive movement that demanded direct, participatory democracy.

Hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans raised their voices against the abuses of the state government. They participated in marches of up to 800,000 people, planned strategy at the barricades, occupied government buildings, took over radio stations, held sit-ins, and reclaimed spaces for public art and altars for assassinated activists. In the now Legendary March of Pots and Pans, 2,000 women peacefully took over and operated the state television channel for three weeks.

Jam Bones
Liverpool is the Place

Price: Free
Johnson Park
Corner of Vine and Oswego Streets, Liverpool

One of CNY's top blues-rock trios.
Rain Date: Thursday, July 2

For information on concerts or to see if a concert has been rained out, please call 315-457-3895.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

The Gallery as Studio: Drawings on Delirium
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A world-renowned Uruguayan artist, Ricardo Lanzarini comes from Montevideo to Syracuse to recreate the mundane and the extraordinary in his drawings on delirium made to unexpected scales. The exhibition comes to life at The Point of Contact Gallery where the space has turned into an artist's studio. The work of the exhibit is to be produced entirely on site and directly onto the walls of the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening. Lanzarini will also share this experiment with students from Syracuse University's Fine Arts Department who will join in the creative process.

Lanzarini's work balances extremes of scale, crafting an extensive abstract image from precise, miniscule characters, whose everyday activities serve as a window into a miniature world, frozen in time. These drawings sarcastically explore the two major paradigms in figurative art of the 20th century: Social and Fantastic Realism

The exhibit will last through the summer and then Lanzarini returns to Point of Contact to perform an "erasure" of the work on September 4. The book catalogue documenting the entire project will be presented at the close.

Recent works by Al Bremer and Kate Timm
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Healing Art Passages: A Journey of Grace -- works of Suzanne Masters
Westcott Community Center

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

Painting and collage provide examples of "working through" from Suzanne's own personal experiences and of how she takes her students through the process of self discovery.

"Through visual art we can consciously process old beliefs and 'stuck' patterns that hold us back. Through this discovery, we can see clearly and decide the paths we choose to take in our lives. As an artist and a teacher, I have learned that when we close our mouths and stop the chatter, and let colors and forms talk, we shift the process to the other side of the brain where it can speak about things we may have covered up long ago. When they come back to us this way, it is with a different sound. The journey through such an emergence is powerful and beautiful!"

Terrain
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Sharon Gordon: Oil Paintings
John Lombardi: Works in Stone

Purple Treatment: Ceramic Works by Eunjung Shin
Community Folk Art Center

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

In "Purple Treatment," Eunjung Shin's figurative ceramic sculptures represent stories from the artist's life. Shin has taken personal memories and transformed them into three-dimensional artistic expressions. The highly detailed figures are skillfully rendered and express a range of emotions. Shin describes some of her figures as "clowns" because they hide their true selves, putting on a face to the world in order to please others. Many of the pieces prompt the viewer to look inward to reflect upon their meaning.

Organic Watermarks: Photographs by Gus Bennett, Jr.
Community Folk Art Center

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

In the exhibition "Organic Watermarks," New Orleans photographer Gus Bennett, Jr., displays portraits of New Orleans residents juxtaposed with layers of debris from Hurricane Katrina. Watermarks on concrete and other surfaces, leaves, textures, colors and remnants left behind by Katrina form layers in front of, behind and even merged onto the surface of the skin of the subjects. Together, the subjects and debris become storytellers of New Orleans post-Katrina. Shot entirely in natural light, the overall mood of the pieces is almost of an ethereal quality, with the ghost-like images of debris commingling with the subjects. According to Bennett, as many as 82 layers comprise one individual portrait. The subjects either appear draped in fabric or nude, which the artist explains is a means of eliminating social class or status: "with Katrina, everyone got left behind." With "Organic Watermarks," Bennett creates true works of beauty, proving that even in the aftermath of chaos, hope can still prevail.

Reflections
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Featuring works by Marna Bell, Deborah Walsh, Mary Lou Colgin, and Carol Osborne-Ackles.

Wild Card Exhibit -- Price Check: Syracuse
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

An interactive curatorial exhibition organized by two former staffers at the Delavan, Courtney Rile and Roslyn Esperon, for a research project that examines the variations of the visual art market based upon geographic proximity to a major art center.

PostSecret
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In November 2004, Frank Warren began a community art project by handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. Two requirements were: the secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today Warren has been mailed more than 100,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards illustrating the soulful secrets never voiced. This extraordinary project has become an international phenomenon with thousands of people participating in scheduled PostSecret events throughout the United States, and through the PostSecret website and blog.

This exhibition features 450 postcards bringing together the most powerful, poignant and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received in the past four years. In many cases, the illustrations on the cards are just as compelling as the accompanying text.

Sitting Still
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"What does the world look like from a non-violent point of view? What would happen if the youth of Syracuse city and Syracuse University joined together to explore this question?" These are the questions that led Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University and Pam McLaughlin, Everson Curator of Education and Public Programs to bring the Sitting Still contemplative video project to high school students from the Syracuse City School District. Beffel and McLaughlin worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands eight young artists, so that they could stop, look, and listen as scenes unfolded before them ranging from those that inspired awe to those that compelled participation and intervention. Within the context of four workshops at the SU Warehouse e-tags studio, students engaged in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then used their artworks as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. The workshops were at the heart of this process of opening up to environments -- both physical and social.

Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and 100 Last Names
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The two solo exhibitions, Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and Xiaowen Chen: 100 Last Names, present work from the past nine years by Chinese-born, Ithaca-based artist Chen. Having lived in the United States for the past two decades, Chen has focused his work on the space between East and West. From his many return trips to China, Chen has created digital images and video projections reflecting American and Chinese attitudes toward the 21st-century role of media and technology and identity issues. His work of overlapping the cultures of East and West addresses his search for what he called in 1993 the "manifestation of the universal and the expression of the particular."

Chen places himself in the position of both the American and the Chinese tourist. He has noted that when photographing in China he feels like a foreigner, while in the U.S. he feels like a traveler. His work addresses both China's historical transformation and his personal experience as an émigré.

Like other artists of his generation, Chen grew up under Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution and was exposed to a visual vocabulary that highlighted fragmentation and repetition. As a result, works by Xiaowen Chen evoke cultural clichés and stereotypes.

The Power of Revolt: Grassroots Resistance in Oaxaca
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

A powerful exhibit of photographs from the Oaxaca, Mexico resistance movement combined with original political posters from art collectives there.

In 2006, Oaxaca, Mexico came alive with a broad and diverse movement that captivated the nation and inspired communities organizing for social justice around the world. Fueled by long ignored social contradictions, what began as a teachers' strike demanding more resources for education quickly turned into a massive movement that demanded direct, participatory democracy.

Hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans raised their voices against the abuses of the state government. They participated in marches of up to 800,000 people, planned strategy at the barricades, occupied government buildings, took over radio stations, held sit-ins, and reclaimed spaces for public art and altars for assassinated activists. In the now Legendary March of Pots and Pans, 2,000 women peacefully took over and operated the state television channel for three weeks.

Friday, July 3, 2009

The Gallery as Studio: Drawings on Delirium
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A world-renowned Uruguayan artist, Ricardo Lanzarini comes from Montevideo to Syracuse to recreate the mundane and the extraordinary in his drawings on delirium made to unexpected scales. The exhibition comes to life at The Point of Contact Gallery where the space has turned into an artist's studio. The work of the exhibit is to be produced entirely on site and directly onto the walls of the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening. Lanzarini will also share this experiment with students from Syracuse University's Fine Arts Department who will join in the creative process.

Lanzarini's work balances extremes of scale, crafting an extensive abstract image from precise, miniscule characters, whose everyday activities serve as a window into a miniature world, frozen in time. These drawings sarcastically explore the two major paradigms in figurative art of the 20th century: Social and Fantastic Realism

The exhibit will last through the summer and then Lanzarini returns to Point of Contact to perform an "erasure" of the work on September 4. The book catalogue documenting the entire project will be presented at the close.

Recent works by Al Bremer and Kate Timm
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Healing Art Passages: A Journey of Grace -- works of Suzanne Masters
Westcott Community Center

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

Painting and collage provide examples of "working through" from Suzanne's own personal experiences and of how she takes her students through the process of self discovery.

"Through visual art we can consciously process old beliefs and 'stuck' patterns that hold us back. Through this discovery, we can see clearly and decide the paths we choose to take in our lives. As an artist and a teacher, I have learned that when we close our mouths and stop the chatter, and let colors and forms talk, we shift the process to the other side of the brain where it can speak about things we may have covered up long ago. When they come back to us this way, it is with a different sound. The journey through such an emergence is powerful and beautiful!"

Terrain
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Sharon Gordon: Oil Paintings
John Lombardi: Works in Stone

Purple Treatment: Ceramic Works by Eunjung Shin
Community Folk Art Center

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

In "Purple Treatment," Eunjung Shin's figurative ceramic sculptures represent stories from the artist's life. Shin has taken personal memories and transformed them into three-dimensional artistic expressions. The highly detailed figures are skillfully rendered and express a range of emotions. Shin describes some of her figures as "clowns" because they hide their true selves, putting on a face to the world in order to please others. Many of the pieces prompt the viewer to look inward to reflect upon their meaning.

Organic Watermarks: Photographs by Gus Bennett, Jr.
Community Folk Art Center

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

In the exhibition "Organic Watermarks," New Orleans photographer Gus Bennett, Jr., displays portraits of New Orleans residents juxtaposed with layers of debris from Hurricane Katrina. Watermarks on concrete and other surfaces, leaves, textures, colors and remnants left behind by Katrina form layers in front of, behind and even merged onto the surface of the skin of the subjects. Together, the subjects and debris become storytellers of New Orleans post-Katrina. Shot entirely in natural light, the overall mood of the pieces is almost of an ethereal quality, with the ghost-like images of debris commingling with the subjects. According to Bennett, as many as 82 layers comprise one individual portrait. The subjects either appear draped in fabric or nude, which the artist explains is a means of eliminating social class or status: "with Katrina, everyone got left behind." With "Organic Watermarks," Bennett creates true works of beauty, proving that even in the aftermath of chaos, hope can still prevail.

Reflections
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

Featuring works by Marna Bell, Deborah Walsh, Mary Lou Colgin, and Carol Osborne-Ackles.

Wild Card Exhibit -- Price Check: Syracuse
Delavan Art Gallery

Delavan Art Gallery
501 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

An interactive curatorial exhibition organized by two former staffers at the Delavan, Courtney Rile and Roslyn Esperon, for a research project that examines the variations of the visual art market based upon geographic proximity to a major art center.

Sitting Still
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"What does the world look like from a non-violent point of view? What would happen if the youth of Syracuse city and Syracuse University joined together to explore this question?" These are the questions that led Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University and Pam McLaughlin, Everson Curator of Education and Public Programs to bring the Sitting Still contemplative video project to high school students from the Syracuse City School District. Beffel and McLaughlin worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands eight young artists, so that they could stop, look, and listen as scenes unfolded before them ranging from those that inspired awe to those that compelled participation and intervention. Within the context of four workshops at the SU Warehouse e-tags studio, students engaged in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then used their artworks as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. The workshops were at the heart of this process of opening up to environments -- both physical and social.

PostSecret
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In November 2004, Frank Warren began a community art project by handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. Two requirements were: the secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today Warren has been mailed more than 100,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards illustrating the soulful secrets never voiced. This extraordinary project has become an international phenomenon with thousands of people participating in scheduled PostSecret events throughout the United States, and through the PostSecret website and blog.

This exhibition features 450 postcards bringing together the most powerful, poignant and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received in the past four years. In many cases, the illustrations on the cards are just as compelling as the accompanying text.

Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and 100 Last Names
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The two solo exhibitions, Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and Xiaowen Chen: 100 Last Names, present work from the past nine years by Chinese-born, Ithaca-based artist Chen. Having lived in the United States for the past two decades, Chen has focused his work on the space between East and West. From his many return trips to China, Chen has created digital images and video projections reflecting American and Chinese attitudes toward the 21st-century role of media and technology and identity issues. His work of overlapping the cultures of East and West addresses his search for what he called in 1993 the "manifestation of the universal and the expression of the particular."

Chen places himself in the position of both the American and the Chinese tourist. He has noted that when photographing in China he feels like a foreigner, while in the U.S. he feels like a traveler. His work addresses both China's historical transformation and his personal experience as an émigré.

Like other artists of his generation, Chen grew up under Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution and was exposed to a visual vocabulary that highlighted fragmentation and repetition. As a result, works by Xiaowen Chen evoke cultural clichés and stereotypes.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

July 4th Spectacular
Syracuse Symphony Orchestra
Ron Spigelman, conductor

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

An evening of patriotic favorites, including Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever, and much more. An exciting outdoor event the whole family can enjoy, this will be an evening of friends, fireworks, and familiar melodies.

Rain location: Center of Progress Building

Sunday, July 5, 2009

PostSecret
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In November 2004, Frank Warren began a community art project by handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. Two requirements were: the secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today Warren has been mailed more than 100,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards illustrating the soulful secrets never voiced. This extraordinary project has become an international phenomenon with thousands of people participating in scheduled PostSecret events throughout the United States, and through the PostSecret website and blog.

This exhibition features 450 postcards bringing together the most powerful, poignant and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received in the past four years. In many cases, the illustrations on the cards are just as compelling as the accompanying text.

Sitting Still
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"What does the world look like from a non-violent point of view? What would happen if the youth of Syracuse city and Syracuse University joined together to explore this question?" These are the questions that led Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University and Pam McLaughlin, Everson Curator of Education and Public Programs to bring the Sitting Still contemplative video project to high school students from the Syracuse City School District. Beffel and McLaughlin worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands eight young artists, so that they could stop, look, and listen as scenes unfolded before them ranging from those that inspired awe to those that compelled participation and intervention. Within the context of four workshops at the SU Warehouse e-tags studio, students engaged in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then used their artworks as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. The workshops were at the heart of this process of opening up to environments -- both physical and social.

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Gallery as Studio: Drawings on Delirium
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A world-renowned Uruguayan artist, Ricardo Lanzarini comes from Montevideo to Syracuse to recreate the mundane and the extraordinary in his drawings on delirium made to unexpected scales. The exhibition comes to life at The Point of Contact Gallery where the space has turned into an artist's studio. The work of the exhibit is to be produced entirely on site and directly onto the walls of the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening. Lanzarini will also share this experiment with students from Syracuse University's Fine Arts Department who will join in the creative process.

Lanzarini's work balances extremes of scale, crafting an extensive abstract image from precise, miniscule characters, whose everyday activities serve as a window into a miniature world, frozen in time. These drawings sarcastically explore the two major paradigms in figurative art of the 20th century: Social and Fantastic Realism

The exhibit will last through the summer and then Lanzarini returns to Point of Contact to perform an "erasure" of the work on September 4. The book catalogue documenting the entire project will be presented at the close.

Healing Art Passages: A Journey of Grace -- works of Suzanne Masters
Westcott Community Center

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

Painting and collage provide examples of "working through" from Suzanne's own personal experiences and of how she takes her students through the process of self discovery.

"Through visual art we can consciously process old beliefs and 'stuck' patterns that hold us back. Through this discovery, we can see clearly and decide the paths we choose to take in our lives. As an artist and a teacher, I have learned that when we close our mouths and stop the chatter, and let colors and forms talk, we shift the process to the other side of the brain where it can speak about things we may have covered up long ago. When they come back to us this way, it is with a different sound. The journey through such an emergence is powerful and beautiful!"

Fritz's Polka Band
Liverpool is the Place

Price: Free
Johnson Park
Corner of Vine and Oswego Streets, Liverpool

Verona-based band playing modern polkas, country, waltzes and more.
NOTE: NO RAIN DATE for this concert.

For information on concerts or to see if a concert has been rained out, please call 315-457-3895.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The Gallery as Studio: Drawings on Delirium
Point of Contact Gallery

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

A world-renowned Uruguayan artist, Ricardo Lanzarini comes from Montevideo to Syracuse to recreate the mundane and the extraordinary in his drawings on delirium made to unexpected scales. The exhibition comes to life at The Point of Contact Gallery where the space has turned into an artist's studio. The work of the exhibit is to be produced entirely on site and directly onto the walls of the gallery in the weeks leading up to the opening. Lanzarini will also share this experiment with students from Syracuse University's Fine Arts Department who will join in the creative process.

Lanzarini's work balances extremes of scale, crafting an extensive abstract image from precise, miniscule characters, whose everyday activities serve as a window into a miniature world, frozen in time. These drawings sarcastically explore the two major paradigms in figurative art of the 20th century: Social and Fantastic Realism

The exhibit will last through the summer and then Lanzarini returns to Point of Contact to perform an "erasure" of the work on September 4. The book catalogue documenting the entire project will be presented at the close.

Recent works by Al Bremer and Kate Timm
SUNY Oswego Metro Center at the Atrium

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

Healing Art Passages: A Journey of Grace -- works of Suzanne Masters
Westcott Community Center

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

Painting and collage provide examples of "working through" from Suzanne's own personal experiences and of how she takes her students through the process of self discovery.

"Through visual art we can consciously process old beliefs and 'stuck' patterns that hold us back. Through this discovery, we can see clearly and decide the paths we choose to take in our lives. As an artist and a teacher, I have learned that when we close our mouths and stop the chatter, and let colors and forms talk, we shift the process to the other side of the brain where it can speak about things we may have covered up long ago. When they come back to us this way, it is with a different sound. The journey through such an emergence is powerful and beautiful!"

Terrain
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Sharon Gordon: Oil Paintings
John Lombardi: Works in Stone

Purple Treatment: Ceramic Works by Eunjung Shin
Community Folk Art Center

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

In "Purple Treatment," Eunjung Shin's figurative ceramic sculptures represent stories from the artist's life. Shin has taken personal memories and transformed them into three-dimensional artistic expressions. The highly detailed figures are skillfully rendered and express a range of emotions. Shin describes some of her figures as "clowns" because they hide their true selves, putting on a face to the world in order to please others. Many of the pieces prompt the viewer to look inward to reflect upon their meaning.

Organic Watermarks: Photographs by Gus Bennett, Jr.
Community Folk Art Center

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

In the exhibition "Organic Watermarks," New Orleans photographer Gus Bennett, Jr., displays portraits of New Orleans residents juxtaposed with layers of debris from Hurricane Katrina. Watermarks on concrete and other surfaces, leaves, textures, colors and remnants left behind by Katrina form layers in front of, behind and even merged onto the surface of the skin of the subjects. Together, the subjects and debris become storytellers of New Orleans post-Katrina. Shot entirely in natural light, the overall mood of the pieces is almost of an ethereal quality, with the ghost-like images of debris commingling with the subjects. According to Bennett, as many as 82 layers comprise one individual portrait. The subjects either appear draped in fabric or nude, which the artist explains is a means of eliminating social class or status: "with Katrina, everyone got left behind." With "Organic Watermarks," Bennett creates true works of beauty, proving that even in the aftermath of chaos, hope can still prevail.

Sitting Still
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"What does the world look like from a non-violent point of view? What would happen if the youth of Syracuse city and Syracuse University joined together to explore this question?" These are the questions that led Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University and Pam McLaughlin, Everson Curator of Education and Public Programs to bring the Sitting Still contemplative video project to high school students from the Syracuse City School District. Beffel and McLaughlin worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands eight young artists, so that they could stop, look, and listen as scenes unfolded before them ranging from those that inspired awe to those that compelled participation and intervention. Within the context of four workshops at the SU Warehouse e-tags studio, students engaged in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then used their artworks as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. The workshops were at the heart of this process of opening up to environments -- both physical and social.

PostSecret
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

In November 2004, Frank Warren began a community art project by handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Each self-addressed card invited people to anonymously share a secret. Two requirements were: the secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been told to another person. Today Warren has been mailed more than 100,000 highly personal and artfully decorated postcards illustrating the soulful secrets never voiced. This extraordinary project has become an international phenomenon with thousands of people participating in scheduled PostSecret events throughout the United States, and through the PostSecret website and blog.

This exhibition features 450 postcards bringing together the most powerful, poignant and beautifully intimate secrets Warren has received in the past four years. In many cases, the illustrations on the cards are just as compelling as the accompanying text.

Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and 100 Last Names
The Warehouse Gallery

The Warehouse Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

The two solo exhibitions, Xiaowen Chen: Spectacle and Xiaowen Chen: 100 Last Names, present work from the past nine years by Chinese-born, Ithaca-based artist Chen. Having lived in the United States for the past two decades, Chen has focused his work on the space between East and West. From his many return trips to China, Chen has created digital images and video projections reflecting American and Chinese attitudes toward the 21st-century role of media and technology and identity issues. His work of overlapping the cultures of East and West addresses his search for what he called in 1993 the "manifestation of the universal and the expression of the particular."

Chen places himself in the position of both the American and the Chinese tourist. He has noted that when photographing in China he feels like a foreigner, while in the U.S. he feels like a traveler. His work addresses both China's historical transformation and his personal experience as an émigré.

Like other artists of his generation, Chen grew up under Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution and was exposed to a visual vocabulary that highlighted fragmentation and repetition. As a result, works by Xiaowen Chen evoke cultural clichés and stereotypes.