Category Archives: art museum

They Have it Made

Seventy-four New York state-based artists comprise the current MINY art exhibition at Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY, including my middle school art teacher circa the 1970s, Mrs, Joyce Homan!

Her piece, “COVID Bubbles” is a watercolor.

Gabriella Mirabelli, “Trees Reflected in Water 1”, 2022, acrylic
Hong Wu, “A Seat at the Table”, 2023, furniture and mixed media

(From the Schweinfurth website)

Jurors

Gary Sczerbaniewicz, sculptor

A New Hartford native, Gary Sczerbaniewicz currently lives and works in Buffalo. He earned degrees at Munson-Williams Proctor Institute School of Art, Alfred University, and the University at Buffalo.

“My recent sculptural work investigates the concept of cognitive dissonance as articulated through an architectural lexicon,” he says on his website. “I am drawn to create works in which an unknown, sudden, violent event has rendered a space inert, transforming it from its original intended function into a hybrid and liminal zone. A recovering child of both Catholicism and the Cold War, my works possess an acute fondness for cultural marginalia: the post-apocalyptic, the science-fictional, the Fortean, the weird and the eerie (as articulated by theorist Mark Fisher), the occult, and the many bewildering worlds of alternative history and conspiracy theory.

Sczerbaniewicz has had solo exhibits in Buffalo, Niagara, Philadephia, Connecticut, Delaware, and Florida, and has been included in group exhibitions in Toronto, New York City, Cleveland, Indiana, and Texas. His entry to Made in NY 2020 at the Schweinfurth won Best in Show award.

Theda Sandiford, mixed media artist

Based in Jersey City, NJ, Theda Sandiford creates multi-disciplinary experiences that provide a safe space to explore themes such as equity and inclusion, sustainability, and personal well-being.

“Using personal conflict as a starting point, I juxtapose various fibers with a variety of found materials using free form weaving, coiling, knotting, wrapping, and jewelry-making techniques,” Sandiford told Artwork Archive. “Meticulously collected materials, transformed by their collective memory become ‘social fabric’ weaving together contemporary issues and personal narratives.” 

Her work has been selected for Excellence in Fibers, curated by Fiber Art Now; displayed publicly in installations in New Jersey, New York, Florida, and more; and displayed in solo exhibits in New Jersey, New York City, Chicago, and more.

Kevin Larmon, painter

Kevin Larmon is a retired professor emeritus and Program Coordinator Art, Design, and Transmedia in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. He received a BFA from Harpur College at SUNY Binghamton, and currently resides in Upstate New York.

For over three decades, Kevin Larmon has received critical acclaim for creating paintings that lyrically explore the divide between abstraction and referential imagery. His work has been associated with the post-conceptualism and neo-conceptual art movements, which were prominent aspects of exhibitions of the early 80s East Village Gallery Nature Morte and with critics/curators Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo shaping the nature of painting after the rise of conceptual art.

His work is included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, and Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the recipient of an Atlantic-Pacific Fellowship and a Pollack Krasner Foundation grant.

Angela Gaffney-Smith, “A Thousand Reasons Why”, 2022, bluestone on maple
David Dorsey, “Sunny Skies, Green Furrows”, 2022, oil on linen
Joyce Hertzson, “After the (F)fall”, 2022, eco-print on rag paper

Pattern and texture is at play here. So many paintings, prints and mixed-media pieces are visually embellished with intricate segments of color, while macrame and other crafts, including crochet, embroidery and weaving adds the tactile component, which creates a cohesive bond to the exhibit. After perusing the jurors’ individual dossiers, it all makes sense.

Margery Pearl Gurnett, “Birds Sing Even After the Storm”, mixed media with resin

It is a wonderful show. The art is for sale. Made in New York 2023 opened last night and continues through May 28, 2023.

Judith Plotner, “Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down”, 2021, fiber and mixed media
Lorraine Walsh, “Marking Time”, 2021, ink on birch panel
Julia Graziano, “Perplexed”, 2021, fiber quilt
Denise Moody, “Her Trunk”, 2023, palm tree fronds

The museum is open Wednesdays-Saturdays 10:00 am – 5:00 pm and Sundays 1:00 – 5:00 pm. Visit their website for details.

David Zaggert, “Musk Portrait”, 2021, oil
Deborah Florentino, “Golden Field”, 2022, pastel
Kurt Treeby, “Atari Skies: Enduro 1”, 2021, acrylic yarn
Rebecca Taylor leather top, Alice & Olivia cotton maxi skirt, Rag & Bone boots, Coach purse

Hoop Madness

Every year about this time, I assign a sketchbook assignment called March Madness, which is a drawing of people playing basketball. Not the hoop or a ball, or an aerial view of a basketball court.

But that is pretty much what I get. So frustrating. Basketball isn’t a successful theme for art.

As per this art exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art, I can only surmise that the curator thought – give the city what it loves, and for Syracuse, that is basketball. Art as secondary to the sport. Basketball players posing as contemporary artists.

Shoelaces as art. Basketballs as art. Sneakers as art. Trading cards as art.

And a room of basketball hoops and balls to actually play the game.

I wish I could be positive and open minded about this. Like in the vortex happy. But I was all – this is dumb.

Hoop Dreams: Basketball and Contemporary Art continues through May 21, 2023. Not sure if it is open today because of the blizzard, but you can make your own judgment during regular museum hours listed below.

Everson Museum of Art

401 Harrison Street
Syracuse, NY 13202
Tel (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

The Harmony in Dissonance

Raymon Elozua: Structure/Dissonance is currently on view at the Everson Museum of Art, 401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York 13202. The show continues through December 31, 2022.

These are large additive sculptures featuring ceramics, glass, steel and found objects, which culminate in an explosion of color and beautiful junk that satisfies the artist’s intellectual philosophy of “decaying industrial landscapes.”

This is not just a new series of work that takes a theme and runs with it. It is more like a half-century career retrospective. The bauble-rich sculptures make more sense in multiple because they sort of announce the concern of global waste.

Included in this show is Elozua’s personal collection of rusty enamelware. This is the part of the experience I loved best because I spent my entire summer doing something that was in the making for about seventeen years.

I bought a metal detector and searched the yard of my 1900s era home. There was so much there. The videos are on my YouTube channel. Now I just need to intellectualize these finds and incorporate them into art. The meaning? Unearthing the treasures that are right beneath you on your path. Most of it was garbage because back in the early 20th century people buried their trash in their own backyards. Isn’t that ironic?

We are always burying our hearts under the mask of reality. Making art is about building dreams. I want to build mine with all that garbage. And so does Elozua with his. I’d say that is harmony, not dissonance.

Big Bulbous Thingys

Experimenting with a technique has its rewards, just ask Rebecca Hutchinson. And you can ask her yourself tomorrow – Saturday, September 10, 2022 during her gallery walk (the work is in the Robineau and Malzman Galleries) from 11:00 am – noon at the Everson Museum of Art, 401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York 13202.

I met her last night at the art reception and I was delighted to make the acquaintance of such a spirited human being. She spoke of developing a technique where her large scale vessels are hand built upside-down using a series of paper strips dipped in clay slip, which is surprisingly strong. The pieces are not kiln fired and yet ,not fragile, which is intriguing.

Some of these enormous pods are decorated in botanical gestural paintings and drawings, like those on the long strips of rice paper located in the adjacent gallery. They are meant to represent the ebb and flow resilience of nature. This mark-making is what elevates this work from experimentally friendly bulbous thingys to big bulbous thingys with a meaningful message.

So cool!

Professor Hutchinson teaches ceramics at the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth in addition to her role as a working professional artist and all-around art trailblazer .

Rebecca Hutchinson – Regeneration will be up through December 31, 2022. There will also be a workshop scheduled to learn her techniques. Call the Everson at (315) 474-6064 for more information or visit their web-site. www.everson.org

The Thirty Dollar Ridlon

Jim Ridlon has donated these amazing prints to the Everson Museum of Art. They are located in the museum gift shoppe – for sale – and they are priced between $30 and $50. They are embossed. I’m not sure if this is true but the young man at the sales desk said he’d created them when he was a student and since he is not known for etchings or prints he decided to price them low.

I mean, they are a steal, really. They are created on a thick archival paper, probably Arches, not sure. You’d have to get them framed, but wow!

This is incredibly cool.

In Scale

I’ve been reminiscing about Dawn Dolls. They were manufactured for only three years in the early ’70s by Topper. Dawn, Angie, Gary, and company. they were only six-and-a-half inches tall, so they were incompatible with Barbies because they were so small. But they were so pretty with silky long hair and “real” eyelashes, and of course, with very awesome 1970s fashions. I loved them and I love them still.

I’ve been stalking them on the Internet – Ebay, Etsy and Mercari mainly. I don’t really want to buy them, do I? I want to be the Dawn doll. Haven’t I always? So funny that my hair resembles hers now. All I need is an Alice & Olivia dress and I am good to go.

What struck me as I viewed Sharif Bey’s art exhibit at the Everson Museum of Art is that he too seems to be enamored with doll collections albeit his are quite large scale especially the necklaces!

Like Vanessa German’s work and Vanessa Johnson’s too, Bey has added his take on the African experience by way of the doll.

This show is housed in two of the four upstairs galleries and spans the artist’s thirty-year career. I mean, he’s only forty-eight, which indicates that some of the pieces in this collection of works were created when he was only eighteen. It is a lot of work – from functional ceramics to these large figurative pieces and finally the accessory wall. It is incredibly impressive for sure.

These necklaces in particular are really something. In the accompanying pamphlet prepared for a Junteenth visitation, it is revealed that he used toilet paper over glaze in the kiln to manifest the charred pattern on the “beadwork”. It is genius.

The scale speaks volumes about who this man is as an artist and as a human. It is a combo of continued visual exploration and ethnic pride coupled with a desire to both learn and teach.

Bey is a professor at Syracuse University in the Art Education department. The brochure professes to take children on a journey to discover themselves as he serves to explore ideas to carry him on his own path.

The exhibition is titled “Facets”. It works so well here because the Everson has always been first and foremost a ceramics museum. Knowing that these massive pieces are also fragile lends itself well to that idea that we are all fragile beings in a way, always seeking that strength of character in our true identities while harboring thoughts of doubt, worry and stupid fears that can easily break our spirits.

I wonder if that thought crossed his mind? No matter what doll one identifies with – big or small, black or white, etc., etc., we are all that creative spirit looking for a way to connect and feel that blessed feeling of validation as we develop our crafts/psyches in order to continue the ascent through life.

The Everson Museum of Art is located at 401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, NY, 13202. Call (315) 474-6064 for more information or find them at www.everson.org.

Sharif Bey: Facets continues through August 14, 2022.

Norman

There is an art exhibition of original paintings, posters and magazine covers representing the career of illustrator Norman Rockwell at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, 310 Genesee Street, Utica, NY 13502. This show was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

All of the Saturday Evening Post covers are represented here! It is amazing to see them all together like this – they hold court in two of the three gallery rooms on the second floor of the museum.

I won tickets to see this show. Thank you, Sullivan Library, Chittenango, NY for this wonderful gift. And thank you, Penny, for accompanying me on this wonderful summer art excursion. So fun!

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute is open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 AM -5:00 PM and Sunday noon-5:00 PM. They have guided tours of the exhibit – call (315) 797-0000 for more information.

P.S. They are having an arts festival through Sunday, July 17, 2022. There are outdoor events including a music stage, local art display and food trucks!

Marisol @ Warhol

The Andy Warhol Museum is located at 117 Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. Jessica Beck, the museum’s Milton Fine curator of art, has organized an amazing exhibition pairing Warhol and Marisol Escobar (1930-2016). The show is titled Marisol and Warhol Take New York.

It is a trip down memory lane, a story of two artists navigating the Pop Art world of NYC circa the 1960s. Marisol’s sculptures are an exquisite marriage between geometric wood blocks and proficient rendering skill. These three-dimensional portraits depict social values and popular culture tomes with whimsy and bold panache. I just love her work.

My friend Joyce and her family took a trip there last weekend. On Saturday, October 23, 2021, Jessica Beck will lead a tour of the show, complete with art making and sketching activities from noon to 4:00 pm.

The exhibition continues through February 14, 2022. In April, it will travel to the Perez Art Museum, Miami FL. Contact the museum for more info – (412) 237-8300.

Artsy In New York

Lee Hoag, Rochester, NY
Mary Begley, Buffalo, NY

Every year the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center does a Made in New York (MINY) juried exhibition. This year’s show – what can I say? A lot of eggs and phallic symbols, am I right? OMG – round circular objects with the center piece sculpture filled with actual eggs. And every other sculpture is sporting the dildo-esqueness of a you-know-what.

LOL, so great! I wonder if this was the intent, or am I being fresh?

Sixty-nine artists were selected….

Shari Werner, New York, NY
Christina Bang, Pittsford, NY

Actually, the great thing about this exhibition is that artists must produce new work for it and everything looks very fresh in that sense of the word. It is all so colorful and curvy, clean, linear, firm and innocently provocative.

It’s a great show!

Jean K. Stephens, Honeoye, NY

MINY will be on display through August 7, 2021. Check out videos of the artists sharing their respective visions here.

Jurors for this year’s exhibition:

(from the Schweinfurth website)

Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, advocate for artists, editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books, and the Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution. Louden’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Weisman Art Museum, National Gallery of Art and held in major public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, Yale University Art Gallery, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.

George Afedzi Hughes is originally from Ghana and studied painting at The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, College of Art, Kumasi, Ghana, where he earned a BA in Art: Painting and Drawing (1989) and an MA in Art Education (1991).  He later received an MFA in Painting and Drawing (2001) from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, U.S.A. His paintings, performances, and installations have been featured in several museum exhibitions: Perez Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Football Museum, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and Museum voor Zuid-en Noord-Beveland. The following museums have collections of his work: Royal Museum of Ontario, Harn Museum of Art, Iwalewahaus and the Ghana National Museum.

Hannah Frieser is the Executive Director for the Center for Photography at Woodstock, an arts organization that features exhibitions, residencies and other artist-oriented programming. With over twenty years of leadership experience in the visual arts, she has curated countless solo and group exhibitions with contemporary photographers, including Suzanne Opton, Adam Magyar and Barry Anderson. Her essays have been featured in monographs and publications, such as Contact Sheet, Exposure, and Nueva Luz. Prior to joining CPW, she was Director of Light Work in Syracuse, NY. 

Lauren Bristol, Syracuse, NY
John Fitzsimmons, Syracuse, NY
Charles Compo, New York, NY
Emily Kenas, Geneva, NY

MINY Artists

Carolyn Abrams
Liz Alderman
Robin Arnold
Patricia Bacon
Christina Bang
Howard Bartle
Madeline Bartley
Mary Begley
Marna Bell
Tammy Renée Brackett
Paul Brandwein
Lauren Bristol
Andrea Buckvold
Susan Byrnes
Carlos Caballero-Perez
Nancy Callahan
Eva Capobianco
Stephen Carlson
Kevin Carr
Tara Charles
Sage Churchill-Foster
Fernando Colón-González
Charles Compo
Cynthia Cratsley
Carole D’Inverno
Lisa DeLoria Weinblatt
KP Devlin
Lisa Donneson
Audrey Dowling
Robert Doyle
Sharon Draghi
Leonard Eichler
John Fitzsimmons
Faithanne Flesher
John Galt
Jacq Germanow
Cora Jane Glasser
Julia Graziano
Raechelle Hajduk
Barbara Hart
Laural Hartman
David Higgins
Lee Hoag
George Hrycun
Bob Ievers
Emily Kenas
Dale Klein
Tom Kredo
Timothy Massey
Becky McNeill
Valerie Patterson
Beth Pedersen
Judith Plotner
Rose Popper
Jim Quinn
Steve Rossi
Amy Schnitzer
Catherine Shuman Miller
James Skvarch
Jason Smith
Jean K. Stephens
Susan Stuart
Jane Verostek
Kim Waale
Mary Pat Wager
Shari Werner
Katharine Wood
Hope Zaccagni
Leah Zinder

Julia Graziano, Manlius, NY
Jim Quinn, Williamson, NY
Kim Waale, Manlius, NY/Nancy Callahan, Gilbertsville, NY

The Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center is located at 205 Genesee Street, Auburn, New York 13021. For more information, including hours of operation, call (315) 255-1553 or visit their website here.

Paul Brandwein, Rochester, NY
Robin Arnold, New Paltz, NY/Timothy Massey, Spencerport, NY
Charles Compo, New York, NY
Catherine Shuman Miller, Williamsville, NY
Andrea Buckvold, Syracuse, NY/Patricia Bacon, Lyons, NY
Mary Pat Wager, East Greenbush, NY
Cora Jane Glasser, Brooklyn, NY,
#coach #tashkovski #rebeccataylor #ragandbone

Every Second Sunday

I visited City Market at the Everson Museum of Art on Sunday. Walked around before it rained and met some new-to-me vendors, as well as old friends.

Randy Casciano of Salt City Salvage creates tables from vintage filing cabinets and bird houses with wine crates, among other repurposed items. He does not have a website yet (working on it) but his email is Randy@SaltCitySalvage.com. I love his work. I want everyone of these birdhouses, especially the copper roof one!

Barbara Floch had a beautiful display of her papier-mache crafted jars, sea shells and jewelry. She has a space at the Delavan Center and calls her company Gypsy Girl Designs. Find her at www.gypsygirldesignsandcreations.com.

Ken Nichols and his lovely wife Kris sold his handmade ceramic bowls and mugs. When I stopped by, they had a large crowd of fans gathered around. Ken is at this event every second Sunday, of the month 10:00 am-5:00pm, May through October 2021.

Goodies Mediterranean Grill & Cuisine was represented with to-go versions of their delicacies. As the sign indicates, they are located at 3605 James Street. Call (315) 433-1003 for more information.

David McKenney of GBD Studio (glass by Dave) presented his glassworks. He can be reached at (315)373-3078 if you would like to make a purchase.

Jane Zell was the musical guest. She is FABULOUS! This video is on my http://www.youtube.com channel. Yes, I have one! <3