Camaraderie, one of the paintings in my “Futura” series from 2017 and newly framed, will be on display in the upcoming exhibition at Mohawk Valley Center for the Arts, 410 Canal Place, Little Falls, New York 13365.
The exhibition is titled Women. Art. Voices.
It is scheduled for March 6, 2026 – March 27, 2026 with an opening reception on March 6, 2026 from 5:00 – 7:00 PM.
Thursday – Saturday: 12 pm – 4 pm
Sunday – Wednesday: Closed
Holidays: Closed
It started snowing at 9:00 AM and now, at 5:00 PM we have already had what I think is eighteen inches of snow. It has been relentless, but, no biggie, because we all knew it was coming.
So happy that my art studio is in my house because I’ve been working all day. I added to the crown paintings – they are almost done.
Before I did that, I heated up the beeswax-filled crockpot then placed three coats of wax on 6″ x 8″ Ampersand hardboards and then traced the tree stencils onto them.
There are twenty-four boards and each will have a different tree design. They are fresh and modern, and fun! I’m excited. I am an avid hiker. I finally realized that trees should be an important part of my encaustic iconography. Today was the day!
In fact, I had a realization about my artwork that I will share with you soon. My series of crowns, horses, fans, bungalows, hearts, targets and now trees are all connected and I hope that they can all be shared together in one (or more) large gallery in the near future.
The overlap is a bit out of control focus-wise because, let’s face it, we are all attracted to the new thing, the latest thing. I don’t want to rush the conclusion of these crowns. I may have rushed adding collage materials today – I will allow the experience to digest and look at the work again with a fresh perspective later tonight or tomorrow.
I am loving my productivity though. I think I am an Existentialist and this is my purpose. A vocation rather than a business. I trust that the business and financial element will follow because I have already secured so many shows for 2026.
In that realm, next up is the Art Haus group show with a drop off in late February and the reception scheduled for Saturday, March 7, 2026 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM. I will be at the East Syracuse Free Library during May and June 2026, the Fayetteville Free Library in July 2026, the Hazard Branch Library in August 2026 and the drop off for another group exhibition in mid August at the Edgewood Gallery. That show will be up through October 3, 2026.
While the rest of the nation watches televised weather reports indicating a snow-mageddon approaching the east coast, Penny and I just returned from a trip to Little Falls, New York (from Syracuse) via the New York State thruway, which was dry as a bone, and coupled with the sunshine, it was a glorious, albeit cold, day for a road trip!
I think the actual storm is coming later in the day tomorrow.
We both had artwork in the Christmas exhibition at the Mohawk Valley Center for the Arts (410 Canal Place, Little Falls, New York 13365) and went there to pick up our work, as the show had ended.
While in the vicinity of the gallery, we had lunch then decided to check out Showcase Antiques (375 Canal Place, Little Falls, New York 13365).
Over thirty vendors are represented in this wonderful shop! There are several aisles of items in glass cases, as well as individual booths that are curated as mini shoppes – vintage clothing, army paraphernalia, antique furniture, record collections, etc.
It is one of those places you must revisit regularly, as new “old” merchandise is always added.
I will be back for one of these crisp 1963 $2.00 bills (above). Apparently, everything in the shop is pre-1975, which means that fifty-year-old things are antiques. It is really weird to think that stuff I played with as a child is now an antique, lol.
And Pyrex bowls (above) are highly collectable these days. We had the mint green ones back in the day.
I love this desk (above).
And this oak one (above) .
So fun! Thank you, Penny!
Just when you thought you’d seen everything, you know what I mean? Derivatives of derivatives of original artwork, materials driven artwork, Abstract Expressionist wanna-bes, etc., you go the The Everson Museum of Art (401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York 13202) and this happens…
…and it is AMAZING!
Laurent Craste is exhibiting his historically accurate vessels, which have been displayed with weapons that have seemingly destroyed them. The juxtaposition of the delicate gold fleur-de-lis patterned porcelain attacked by actual baseball bats, axes, arrows and the like, is jarring. It’s just the oddest thing and yet it speaks to the anger that peasants of the past had towards their regal governments. I guess your reaction will depend on which of the two factions you associate with – are you a have or a have not???
It’s fascinating, intriguing…and beautiful!
from www.everson.org
Iconoclasts marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste’s vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.
Join us for a special artist talk with Craste on Thursday, February 5, 2026. (see the website for exact time of the lecture)
Michael Sickler and Carmel Nicoletti are the participants in “On the Edge,” the latest art exhibition at Edgewood Gallery, (216 Tecumseh Road, Syracuse, New York 13224).
Sickler’s mixed media collage pieces dominate the walls. Nicoletti is doing double duty as jeweler with hand made copper items – necklaces, earrings and rings in the jewelry case – and glass sculptures on the shelves.
Nicoletti is an art professor at Syracuse University. Sickler is a former art professor. They worked together in the ’90s.
The show will continue through February 27, 2026.
Joyce Kozloff’s exhibition at The Everson Museum of Art (401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York) maps her significant career as an artist. It is a global view of society as seen through the veil of decorative pattern.
There is a distinct femininity about the work due to the color palette and the meticulousness of possibly holding a tiny paper between tweezers, laying it atop an old map that may have been located via browsing flea markets or antique shops then applying it to the artwork with glues, precision and painstaking patience, adding drawing, colored pencil and other media – and then multiplying that effect by all the pieces presented in this show that were created over forty years.
The dedication to this process and the willingness to continue to both work and present the epic conclusion not as a retrospective but as a rest stop on the road to the next and the next addition to her travels is truly inspiring.
I am in awe of the beauty of this showcase. The way the three dimensional pieces mimic the ideals of the collages, the way the vintage, current and even celestial maps are layered to become something other, as though Kozloff has created a new world that is truly breathtaking – it’s soooo good.
I stood inside the sphere in the center of the second gallery – a sort of echo chamber that allowed me to pretend I was Jodie Foster in the movie “Contact”, an explorer heading to another realm. One could spend hours in there inspecting all the detail.
I guarantee students would love this and I encourage local art teachers to plan a field trip soon.
The Joyce Kozloff: Contested Territories (1983-2023) exhibition runs through April 5, 2026.
Oh, and this thing (above) spins!
Joyce Kozloff (b. 1942) is a major figure in both the Pattern and Decoration and the Feminist art movements of the 1970s. In 1979, she began to focus on public art, increasing the scale of her installations and expanding the accessibility of her art to reach a wider audience. Kozloff has since executed a number of major commissions in public spaces across the globe, most recently Memory and Time at the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. United States Courthouse in Greenville, South Carolina. Since the early 1990s, Kozloff has utilized mapping as a device for consolidating her enduring interests in history, culture, and the decorative and popular arts. Her work is in public collections across the country including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Kozloff received a BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA in 1964 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1967.
Today I visited The Everson Museum of Art (401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York 13202) for the Steffi Chappell-led art talk. It was a Lesson in Geometry.
As Director of Curatorial Affairs, Chappell curated this exhibition from the Everson archives. Currently, the museum’s finest collection of non-representational paintings and sculptures are housed in two of the upstairs galleries. Works from Sol Lewitt, Susan Roth, and many other American artists are on view through March 29, 2026. Some of the pieces are recent acquisitions.
When discussing geometric forms, we are talking about measured shapes. Drawing a circle free-hand is not geometry. These pieces utilized rulers, protractors, right triangles and compasses. Many were conceptualized to appear machine made with very smooth brushstrokes and precise edges (I mean – you can totally tell those artists used masking tape in order to eradicate the humanity – so that was a bit of an unsuccessful desire).
Steffi Chappell spoke of the historical significance of the abstract art movement in the United States specifically, and how it sort of separated into factions with Abstract Expressionism dominating after World War II. Geometric Abstraction sprouted from a need to break free of emotional trappings.
Even though many of these pieces were created when I was a child (kind of a long time ago), it was refreshing in that Star Trekkian way to do away with all the emotion and volatility of social justice art, mental illness art, low frequency vibes and the like, at least for the afternoon. This work, in essence, is art for art’s sake. It is about using the elements of art to establish the principles of art in a structured instead of intuitive way.
The result: the viewer responds to color, rhythm, line quality, etc. and appreciates its boldness in size or serenity in shape. Many artists experimented with canvas shape, new materials, and/or optical illusion.
It’s the kind of abstract art that kids will hesitate to say – I could do that – because the underlying geometric structures and measuring techniques were clearly time consuming, lol.
Lessons in Geometry traces the evolution of hard-edged abstraction in the United States as artists sought to use pure geometric forms to create works with balance, harmony, and order. For these artists, shape, line, and color took precedence over representational compositions. The Everson’s collection reflects the wildly varied ways that artists have used geometry to serve their personal expression, from the analytical formulations of Robert Swain to the shaped canvases of Harmony Hammond and the spatial illusions of Tony King.
I have eighteen of twenty-four angel paintings left. Made in 2017 of encaustic & collage mounted on chalkboard, the series is called “Futura”.
I framed them and reevaluated some of the collage items because they were weighty.
I am in love with their new and improved look. Hoping to get them into another gallery. I showed them at the defunct Eye Studio in 2017 and since then they’ve been in storage. Stay tuned! <3
