Monthly Archives: July 2023

clothing, Karen Tashkovski, store

300 Reasons to Smile

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If you are searching for a way to be in alignment with your source energy, then go to Skaneateles, New York.

The Skaneateles Curbstone Festival is currently underway. This is a sidewalk sale involving over forty merchants on W. Genesee, Jordan and Fennell Streets. The festival continues tomorrow, (July 21, 2023) from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm and again on Saturday, (July 22, 2023) from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Today was a wonderful day of browsing shops and chatting with vendors.

I finally got the opportunity to visit Skaneateles 300. I follow them on Instagram and absolutely love the way owner Geraldean Lantier merchandises. Each season she comes up with a theme that unifies items to create a cohesive look for the store. This coincides with current trends in fashion.

For summer, she has filled the store with silky florals and colorful embroideries as well as beaded purses with positive text messages or Greek evil eye motif alluding to an island hopping vacation vibe.

Brands include local companies as well as international designers, some of which cannot be found anywhere else in this area (Brazilian and British designers share space with Free People and Farm Rio). The boutique caters to women but she said, many mothers shop with their teenaged daughters and find things that suit their respective personal styles.

Ms. Lantier has a keen eye for fashion. I really enjoyed meeting her!

In addition to women’s apparel, the store carries home goods: soaps, candles and gifty stuff. So many beautiful things!

Skaneateles 300 is located at 2 West Genesee Street, Skaneateles, New York 13152. You can find them at www.skaneateles300.com. Currently, there is no on-line shopping experience but check back in a few months and that will change. Call (315)685-1133 for more information including hours of operation.

8th grade art, art, art education, art exhibition, art museum, art resources, Karen Tashkovski, painting

Let’s Be Frank

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Of all the art exhibits I have ever viewed, this one is the one I think my students would like the most. It is so easy to understand the complex clarity of this man as he visualizes it all on the page.

Frank Buffalo Hyde was born in 1974. His artwork reflects a Native American heritage with the modern twist of American popular culture imagery to include the ever-evolving role of modern technology as it relates to his 1980s childhood.

Primary colors, bold brushstrokes juxtaposed with more nuanced ones, figures emerging from the canvases as if they’ve been removed from a photo album of memories and planted here – all offering a sense of pride and joy.

I don’t see social (in)justice, like in the work of Jaune “Quick-to-See” Smith. Her retrospective exhibition is currently on view at the Whitney in New York City. For an art lesson, I used her paintings as reference to create mixed-media paintings using collage to link images of horses with personal message text.

Instead, Frank Buffalo Hyde’s work is autobiographical. The paintings are personal and yet, we can identify with them. I admire him for this – that he can tell this intimate story through a visual language that me and eighth graders can understand. I mean, I think we can. There is always that bit of mystery in everyone.

I want to be like Frank.

Native Americana is currently on view in galleries A and B at The Everson Museum of Art. You have plenty of time to see it. The show is up until September 10th, 2023.

401 Harrison Street
Syracuse, NY 13202
(315) 474 6064

Museum Hours
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Thursday: 11:00am – 8:00pm
Friday: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday: 10:00am – 5:00pm

furniture, Karen Tashkovski, museum

Stickley-gasm

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So, this happened today….

I sat in the Dalai Lama’s chair – the one in the photograph (above). The actual one. It is located at the Stickley Museum, 300 Orchard Street, Fayettevile, New York 13066. It’s on the second floor of the Fayetteville Free Library.

The building was the first home of the Stickley factory. The area is now mostly residential but back in the early twentieth century, it was a hub of industry due to its proximity to the Ledyard Canal.

I had no idea of this incredible history nor an idea of the amazing artifacts and furniture I would encounter today. I am a huge fan of Stickley. I have nine pieces in my personal collection.

The brothers Stickley went their separate ways. Leopold’s wife sold his company to the Audis. Mr. Audi was one of the top salesmen for the brand and was considered family. There is a photograph showing them all at a dinner party together in the late ’50s right before Leopold Stickley.’s passing.

I just love this, because it ensures a continuation of a great legacy. The Stickley name is synonymous with the Craftsman style. The Audis resurrected this style in the late ’80s, creating a Mission renaissance. The current company’s factory is down the road in adjacent Manlius, New York. There they create a diverse collection of contemporary and modern Colonial style goods, as well as continuing to make traditional Mission-style furniture (now made slightly larger to accommodate twenty-first century customers with bigger houses and more clothes to fill dressers).

Included in this museum are original items owned by Gustav Stickley including those formerly and famously owned by Barbara Streisand, some of which were photographed for the cover of one of her record albums.

I gasped when I first entered the space. I had been photographing the room on the first floor, which is filled with Stickley furniture and used as a gaming center, in addition to quiet reading. Four women were there playing Mahjong and there was a sign for a sewing club. I thought that was the museum until I saw the sign to take the elevator up to the second floor. And…wow.

There I was greeted by Amanda L. Clifford. She’s the director of the museum. She is a Syracuse University graduate with a degree in Art History and a devoted employee of the Stickley organization. Ms. Clifford has a wealth of information at her fingertips regarding the craftsmanship of the furniture and how it has evolved through the century. Her knowledge of each of the Stickley brothers’ individual and group/partnered trajectories and of Harvey Ellis, the architect who was employed briefly by Gustav, was just so informative.

*The Harvey Ellis furniture is identified by iconic floral inlays. He died before he saw any of his beautiful designs put into production! So tragic.

The museum is open Tuesday from 9:00 am-5:00 pm and Saturdays from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm or by appointment. There is also a Stickley factory tour you can take (1 Stickley Drive, Manlius, New York 13104). Visit their website at www.stickleymuseum.com or call (315) 682-5500. <3

Karen Tashkovski

Lucky Me

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I found another penny! Eighty-one cents so far this year! <3

art, art museum, Karen Tashkovski, painting

Problem Solved

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The Partridge Family’s debut was in 1970 on Fridays on ABC. That was about the time I first visited The Everson Museum of Art. We’ve had topsy-turvy weather so far this summer in Syracuse, New York – some air quality issues due to Canadian wildfires then rainy days followed by ninety-three degree heat-wavy stuff.

Currently, Amazon Prime has The Partridge Family series in its entirety available to stream. The weather made me do it. I’ve been inside watching it and now I am at the tail end of it. Some episodes are very memorable, like the one with the Albuquerque runaway, and others not so much (part of the 4th season with a four-year-old guest singer is pretty excruciating). But I am sticking with it. The jokes are so much funnier from my adult perspective. In some respects, the show is dated, specifically as they are handling issues such as women’s rights and race relations. But in other ways, such as Danny’s behavior issues – wow! And the maxi skirt for day looks worn by Shirley and Laurie are timeless perfection. Nostalgia timey-wimey at its finest.

The Everson has offered me something similar. Many of the paintings hanging in the Off the Rack exhibition housed in galleries C and D were hanging on the museum’s walls in the 1970s.

Now the old are juxtaposed with newer pieces, all harmonizing well via color and proportion just as the set decoration and costumes worn by the Partridges had a mix and matchy thing. Although, truth-be-told, David Cassidy and Shirley Jones were the only harmonious singers of the flock. The rest were just posers.

There is no reason to harvest a collection of visual valuables if you don’t take the time to look at them. The Everson Museum of Art has created this salon style cacophony of artwork to solve a storage issue. They are renovating the storage space. Off the Rack is a walk-in closet posing as an art show. But so what? It’s still pretty great!

And what do you know? It’s Friday, it’s cloudy and the museum is open until 5:00pm. It’s a timeless time-traveler’s dream.

art exhibition, art museum, Karen Tashkovski, photography, portraits

Muir-ing

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You can find Coming Home, a photography collection by Doug Muir, in the Robineau Gallery (first floor) at the Everson Museum of Art. Muir passed away in 2016 just as the San Francisco Museum had aquired several dozens of his work for their permanent collection.

Muir grew up in Syracuse but spent his adult life in California. The photographs depict images taken on both coasts, some of family and others not, but all articulating the American slice-of-life experience through the decades.

His daughter helped curate this show, sorting through journals documenting the artist’s journey, some of which are displayed alongside images from newspaper clippings and baseball-style trading cards (showcasing photographers), and other paraphernalia that helps us discover the inner dialogue of this new-to-me photographer.

His nephew took this iPhone photo of me, because these days we are all photographers. Doug Muir’s equipment was more the Brownie ilk.

Doug Muir – Coming Home will be on display through September 3, 2023. Visit the Everson’s web-site for more information including hours of operation.

https://www.localsyr.com/community/the-conversation/the-conversation-david-and-heather-muir/