The large exhibition Juan Cruz: A Retrospective occupies two galleries in the Everson Museum of Art, fully exploring an artistic career that’s roughly 50 years old. The show documents Cruz’s multiple creative roles: painter, sculptor and muralist, with a timeline running from a drawing of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, completed in 1974, to a painting finished last year. And it details Cruz’s evolution as an artist. вэббанкирMost importantly, the retrospective addresses the complexity of the artworks. They are morose and exuberant, reflective and free-flowing. They reference the human condition, the impact of colonization on the Caribbean region, and Cruz’s own experiences. Cruz was born in Puerto Rico in 1941, then…
Author: Carl Mellor
Large-scale portraits more than 5 feet tall currently fill the walls of the ArtRage Gallery. Most of them depict people over age 60: writers and artists, the owner of a barbershop, a musician, and a psychoanalyst. These elders grew up at a time when they and their LGBTQ peers were regarded as deviants, criminals, undesirables. The portraits, and brief comments by those pictured in the paintings, reference both personal journeys and societal trends. Indeed, the exhibition About-Face: 50 Years After Stonewall intersects individual lives and larger changes, reflecting on the subjects of Joe Radoccia’s portraits and events of the last five decades. The show blends artworks with a mass of archival material regarding struggles for LGBTQ…
The Everson Museum of Art’s exhibit Time Returns: A Continuous Now has an ambitious agenda. Curators Judy Natal and D.J. Hellerman strive to connect diverse social movements, especially those dealing with climate change. They also assert that photographers and other artists have a special role to play in exploring and interpreting tumultuous times. To discuss such themes, the curators have fashioned a large show whose artworks come from the 1930s, 1960s and just a few years ago. Its portfolio, mostly photos, incorporates various artistic styles. And the exhibition works to connect several topics: humans’ penchant for violence, our need for…
St. David’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville has hosted “Celebration of the Arts” for nearly 50 years. But that will soon come to an end.
ArtRage Gallery’s new show features artworks bridging traditional forms and contemporary issues. On one hand, From Gods to Social Justice: Indian Folk Artists Challenging Traditions presents an array of hand-painted scrolls and Mithila paintings, media long popular in eastern India. On the other, most of the works deal with current-day issues: pollution, elders living in poverty, HIV/AIDS, dowry-related violence. There are instances in which a bride is threatened or even murdered by in-laws because they deem her family’s dowry and gifts inadequate. For example, “The Burning Bride,” by Mahalaxmi Karn and Shantau Das, has bright colors and intricate lines associated…
Robert Benjamin doesn’t alter his photos for artistic purposes or ask his subjects to write comments on the prints. He hasn’t earned a fine-arts degree or received any instruction in photography. Even though he took photos for several decades, his work wasn’t exhibited in public until 2010 when the Denver Art Museum hosted his first show. And yet River Walking, a retrospective of Benjamin’s images and poems, is being displayed in the Light Work Gallery on the Syracuse University campus. This is a space that has showcased dozens of photographers doing work ranging from documentary projects to glimpses of the…
The annual Made in New York exhibit at Auburn’s Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center carves out its own path and also connects to past editions. Like its predecessors, this is a large exhibition featuring works by 60 artists who live across our state, including Geneseo, Ithaca, Syracuse, Buffalo and Brooklyn. This time, the showcase features oil paintings, noteworthy sculptures and a range of artistic styles. For starters, the exhibit presents a quartet of interesting oils. “The Thief of the Past and Future,” by Hall Groat II, depicts a pitcher and several small objects; images of a doorway, a faint human figure…
Since 2001 the Syracuse Poster Project has produced more than 200 posters celebrating local neighborhoods, culture, architecture and encounters with nature. The posters, each of which combines a three-line poem known as a haiku with an illustration, have covered subjects ranging from lunchtime at Columbus Circle to blues festivals, from the solitude of a winter day to the joy of a young boy cuddling with a family dog, and from abolitionist Frederick Douglass to the Tipperary Hill traffic light with green in the top slot. From the very start, the nonprofit group has pursued a community-art agenda. The poets and…
The Everson Museum of Art’s new exhibit both surveys ceramists doing figurative work and pursues a larger agenda. Along the way, Key Figures: Representative Ceramics 1932–1972 displays whimsical works and sparse pieces, stylized sculptures and artworks referencing the Bible or mythology. The show doesn’t wrap up in 1972, however; it also encompasses works by several contemporary artists. “Osiris with Cat” demonstrates how artist David Gilhooly consistently worked with a sense of humor. He once created a piece in which a small frog figure is wedged into the middle of an Oreo cookie. The exhibition also documents the influence of artistic movements in Europe on ceramics in the United States. It includes “The Dancers” by…
Judith Hand’s one-woman show Spring Is on the Way, running through March 29 at the Wilson Art Gallery on the Le Moyne College campus, offers a respite from snow, ice and chilly winds. The exhibit evokes a time when the weather is much warmer and flowers are blooming. Indeed, all of the paintings and drawings depict flowers: begonias, magnolias, roses and others. The works also reflect Hand’s strategies for avoiding the same-old, same-old portrayals of flowers. She integrates geometric forms and stamp shapes into many of the pieces and uses other techniques such as repetition of imagery. “Hibiscus Coming and…
Syracuse photographer Michael Greenlar’s photo series captures intimate moments in the life of the people of Kokomville, a Canadian Algonquin community.
The Edgewood Gallery’s current show, Nature of Things, offers landscape paintings depicting scenes from Cape Cod and upstate New York, flowers by a house and, yes, lots of cows. It also presents ceramics suggesting wood surfaces and jewelry by an artist who makes necklaces, pendants and earrings. Most importantly, even though Edgewood is a small venue, the show offers a full selection of works by all four artists. For starters, the exhibition provides exposure for Rob Glisson’s oil paintings. He doesn’t do straight-up figuration, preferring instead to interpret landscapes by emphasizing colors or one aspect of a subject. He often…
During a 30-year artistic career, William Earle Williams has photographed the Oswego Harbor, the ruins of Fort Morgan at Mobile, Alabama, and slave burial grounds near Bridgetown, Barbados, in the West Indies. He’s shot cemeteries, slave cabins and Forks in the Road at Natchez, Mississippi, where there was a large slave market for much of the 19th century. In his work, he combines multiple roles: documentary photographer, researcher and visual interpreter. More than 80 images are on display at Syracuse University Art Galleries in a solo exhibit. A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African-Americans from Slavery to Freedom, 1619 to 1865 is a large show encompassing photos from three major projects. Williams has photographed sites on the Underground Railroad,…
The Everson Museum of Art’s current show begins with a roster of local artists and then heads in several directions. Indeed, the works in Re (Generation): Women Artists After 60 range from pastels to acrylics and watercolors, from ceramics to a fiber work and a digital piece. And the artists portray a bevy of subjects: wildfires, the old Central Technical High School, guns and a goddess of mercy. Along the way, the lush colors of “Stop for Autumn,” an oil by Linda Cohen, contrast with Mimi George’s “Before the Night,” a tight, sparse acrylic on board that creates a mood…
To honor the golden anniversary of the Everson Museum of Art, the venue is currently offering its own unique perspective with a celebratory exhibit. Art Within Art: Everson at 50 works with a wide-open portfolio: primary documents related to the museum’s founding, artworks from its collection, TV footage from 1968, a slew of clippings from magazines and newspapers. There’s also audio in the form of an interview with I.M. Pei, the architect who designed the Everson’s building. This array of archival material and various media is the backbone for a complex show that plays three roles. It revisits the building…