If you need another reason to visit the Everson Museum of Art, Mara Baldwin’s work is there. But hurry, because the exhibition ends on August, 6th, 2023.
Mara Baldwin is an educator, artist and historian, studying the artwork of local female artists like Adelaide Robineau. Baldwin pays attention to the detail and intricacies of Robineau’s carvings and replicates the essence into fiber art that hovers the walls and leaps off into three-dimensional space in this tiny tucked-away-in-the-way-back gallery on the museum’s first floor.
The exhibit is part of a local artist initiative, which is a good thing, but really – why not put the museum store in that space? Tucked away would not be an issue because shoppers can sniff out a store. Everybody knows that.
It would be a shame if visitors missed this show. Mara Baldwin tackles personal and historical conundrums about life and the pursuit of goals, happiness and freedoms while weaving herself into the fiber of that history with modern aplomb.
We are all a part of that collective fabric. Just don’t blink and miss it.
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.
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.
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.
They spelled his name wrong on the wall – I just can’t wrap my head around that. Is it the negative in Positive, Negative, Shallow and Deep? This is the title of part of the dual exhibition by artist Tyrone Johnson-Neuland at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, New York. The other show is at the Cayuga Museum (also in Auburn).
I am not a fan of using positive and negative space to describe two-dimensional activity. The negative is supposed to be the voids in and around a three-dimensional sculpture. Figure and ground is my art language to describe visual depth in a painting.
Question: Shallow vs. deep – are these your emotional extremes?
Question: How do you feel about this name flub? Or was it intentionally the negative?
We can ask him the answers to these and all questions regarding this series of abstract paintings on Friday, April 7, 2023 at 5:30 pm. There is a First Friday soiree at the Schweinfurth that evening.
Tyron/Tyrone’s artwork will be on display through May 28, 2023.
(From SMAC website)
Artist’s Statement
My paintings follow very much in the long-established tradition of the Expressionists, using an intensity of color and gestural brushstrokes to portray the strength of feeling and emotion. The subject matters vary from figurative to abstract but always with an exploration of spatial, social, or self-awareness. I will use any paint medium that is at my disposal and thrive on what can be unexpected results. The process is always a battle of the chaotic vs the introspective. We all have different coping skills and those influence how we think and react to our daily trials and tribulations. My art allows me the opportunity to challenge and question myself while searching for clarity in my existence in today’s world.
About the Artist
Oswego-based artist Tyrone Johnson-Neuland has been creating art for 35-plus years. Johnson-Neuland received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1990 and a Master of Arts from SUNY Oswego in 1999. He is currently the Assistant Director of Instructional Technologies at SUNY Oswego. His work has been exhibited throughout New York, as well as in national shows in Philadelphia and Chicago. Johnson-Neuland’s expressionistic paintings are developed from personal and emotional feelings that are sparked by the day-to-day experiences of a father, husband, employee, son, and general spectator of the modern world.
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, acrylicHong Wu, “A Seat at the Table”, 2023, furniture and mixed media
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.
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 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 mapleDavid Dorsey, “Sunny Skies, Green Furrows”, 2022, oil on linenJoyce 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 mediaLorraine Walsh, “Marking Time”, 2021, ink on birch panelJulia Graziano, “Perplexed”, 2021, fiber quiltDenise 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, oilDeborah Florentino, “Golden Field”, 2022, pastelKurt Treeby, “Atari Skies: Enduro 1”, 2021, acrylic yarnRebecca Taylor leather top, Alice & Olivia cotton maxi skirt, Rag & Bone boots, Coach purse
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.
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.
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
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!
