The last time I was at the Onondaga Lake parkway, I fell. I was rollerblading and tripped over my own feet, lost my balance and hit the ground butt first really hard. For a minute or so, I wondered if I was paralyzed. That is, up until people surrounded me and someone said, “Are you all right?”
That is my least favorite comment in the world. It fuels the fire of humiliation and embarrassment. Somehow, I found the strength to get up and rollerblade back to the car with my fractured coccyx in tow.
That was years ago, probably close to twenty years ago – I’m fine now, but have since retired my rollerblades. They are in my sister’s garage preparing for her next yard sale. Size 8, if you want them.
Yesterday I decided to make my triumphant return to said parkway. It takes about an hour each way to walk the road adjacent to the lake. It is set up for the annual holiday event called Lights on the Lake, sponsored by Wegmans.
It doesn’t look like anything in the daylight; however, much like my students’ clay projects needed the heat of the electric kiln to transform the glaze, this place requires the night sky and electricity to come alive.
Yesterday’s hike was magnificent though. Peaceful, safe – and the bathrooms are heated! I did not make a spectacle of myself, no injuries to report, lol, and it was all free.
If you want to take a ride over there at night, you need to get your tickets in advance through their website.
Click here to see the magic that is Lights on the Lake at night.
Lights on the Lake will continue through January 14, 2022. Drive thru happens from 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm. Get your tickets here.
My 8th grade accelerated Studio in Art students created these clay face masks (with Miller #10 clay purchased from Clayscapes). We used the slab technique over a plastic face form then added clay to shape the features. I poked holes at the sides to secure a Twisteezwire to the back. They can hang on a wall – I love that!
The glaze is called Mayco Jungle Gems. It contains glass bits! So cool.
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.
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, NYChristina 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.
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, NYJohn Fitzsimmons, Syracuse, NYCharles Compo, New York, NYEmily Kenas, Geneva, NY
Julia Graziano, Manlius, NYJim Quinn, Williamson, NYKim 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, NYRobin Arnold, New Paltz, NY/Timothy Massey, Spencerport, NYCharles Compo, New York, NYCatherine Shuman Miller, Williamsville, NYAndrea Buckvold, Syracuse, NY/Patricia Bacon, Lyons, NYMary Pat Wager, East Greenbush, NYCora Jane Glasser, Brooklyn, NY,#coach #tashkovski #rebeccataylor #ragandbone
We are so lucky to have some of the most beautiful New York State parks in our area. The meromictic lake trails and glacier produced hills of Green Lakes State Park and Clark Reservation are among my favorites.
But today I decided to traipse around the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park (3883 Stone Quarry Road, Cazenovia, New York 13035) – investigating paths I had never ventured on and, really, exploring the entire park. Dorothy Riester’s legacy to Cazenovia, New York is a great gift to the public. The park is open and currently free. Everyone is on their honor to come in small family groups or alone and to steer clear of the other patrons.
There were, maybe, six other people there today. The forecast said rain but it was all bright sunshine when I arrived. It was as if someone lead me there, truly. I was inspired to go after meditating and when I arrived it was just incredibly magical.
My motto is to meditate every day, then spend time outside every day and to be grateful – to keep a gratitude journal and write down the positive aspects in my life every day. The gratitude today was pretty much over-the-top. Exploring these trails was fun in and of itself, but then there was this added bonus of stumbling upon works of art. Sculptures scattered around, both new and old familiar friends. Some meant to be temporary and others standing the test of time.
Escaping into this reality for a couple hours is the stuff of legend. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dorothy, for building this world. <3
The Erie Canal Museum (318 Erie Blvd. East, Syracuse, New York 13202) is host to a ceramics exhibition, one installed in February 2020. The museum is currently closed due to the world-wide health crisis – that makes interacting with the clay vessels (created as site-specific art) nearly impossible.
photo cred – Jocelyn Reynolds
This is an irony because the idea behind the work envelopes the scope of human life, as it interacts with the forces of nature, the forces of water and the history of the man-made canal. The humans in question are every socio-economic level of local and regional society. All races of people who, in some way, have interacted with, associated with or had some understanding of what the Erie Canal has meant in our history, as well as those who have no idea but in fact, have been, inadvertently, affected by the legendary waterway.
photo cred – Shane Lavelette
Artist Linda Zhang was the 2017-2018 Boghosian Fellow in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University. She came to Syracuse from Europe and knowing no one, she spent time meditating (think deep thought) on designing the curriculum for this relatively new fellowship. She proceeded to think about and create strategies for the design of her position, ideas that would ultimately catapult her educational journey to include making art and teaching electives at the college, which led to philosophical-infused artwork and the idea of making meaning in terms of one’s personal vortex. This path included an interdisciplinary union with Errol Willet, Associate Professor of Art (ceramics) and Biko Mandela Gray, Assistant Professor of American Religion.
graphic design – Im Burrow
Although Zhang is currently a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, The Story of Water pairs the artist with her SU educational cohorts. The clay vessels in this exhibition were slip cast and formatted utilizing water from the canal. There is a transformation – water crafts and the art is manipulated to create a phenomenological transcendence – art as symbolism.
Taking an idea and moving it through time, so that the result is present while encompassing a larger whole – this is incredibly interesting on so many levels. Fortunately for all, nothing is truly impossible. This exhibition can be viewed remotely. Zhang will be offering a lecture on her process via an on-line Zoom meeting. This event takes place on Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 1:00 PM.  Click on the link above to join the party or check out the same link by way of the event’s Facebook page.
The event is free, however; donations to the museum are welcome. <3
*from the Erie Canal Museum web-site
Weighlock Gallery
February 3-April 16, 2020:The Story of Water: The Erie Canal as a Site of Untold Stories
“The Story of Water” is a collaborative project between Linda Zhang, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Ryerson University, and Biko Gray, Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. This exhibit features clay vessels based on 3-D drone scans of Erie Canal structures, transformed by the introduction of Canal water before the firing process. The resulting clay models symbolize the transformative effects, positive and negative, that the Erie Canal had on the lives of those who built it, used it, and lived near it.
Join artist Linda Zhang and Syracuse University Professor Biko Gray at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 18 for a live, online talk about ‘The Story of Water,” an exhibit of abstract art that is at the Erie Canal Museum. It will be hosted on the Zoom meeting app. Click on this link to register and you will receive an email confirmation: .https://ryerson.zoom.us/meeting/register/u50vcuGsqTwsjUGXxhFl1-DgYZPFHN2lzA.
Zhang will discuss the artwork, her creative process, and what inspired her and collaborator Biko Gray to develop this exhibit. “The Story of Water” features clay vessels based on 3-D drone scans of Erie Canal structures in Central New York. The artist introduced Canal water to the pieces before the firing process, creating models that symbolize the transformative character of water and the Erie Canal.
The Museum is currently closed to the public to protect visitors, volunteers, and staff from Covid-19. We’re working diligently to serve you by offering programs by alternative means, and greatly appreciate your help. You can make a donation to the Museum through the link in the “Get Tickets” box below,
We look forward to seeing you on April 18 for this thought-provoking talk!
It started out as an experiment. How could Michael John Heagerty create an homage to artist Ji Lee, as well as manufacture a happening that transcends art and becomes a part of the bigger picture?
Answer:Â plant umbrellas.
Last summer, as co-owner of Wildflowers Armory (217 S. Salina Street, Syracuse, New York 13202), Heagerty collaborated to install a series of umbrellas in the nook next to the gallery’s former location. The event, called #colorfulcanopysyr invited patrons to visit and share their photographs on social networks, which led to a “Best Selfie Spot” award from local media.
The umbrellas lend color to otherwise dreary spaces, according to the artist, as follows:
Red is a very emotionally intense color. It enhances human metabolism, increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure & appetite. Red represents COURAGE.
Pink is intuitive and insightful, showing tenderness and kindness with its empathy and sensitivity. Pink represents HOPE.
Yellow is the most luminous of all the colors of the spectrum. It’s the color that captures our attention more than any other color. It’s the color of happiness, and optimism, of enlightenment and creativity, sunshine and spring. Yellow represents HAPPINESS.
Burgundy, named for the French region of wine-making, shows unconventional thinking, a desire for being unique and self expression. It can increase your energy, like red. Burgundy represents COMFORT.
The umbrella configurations have visited several locations in the past few days. They have spent twenty-four hours each at Onondaga Park, Woodland Reservoir, Onondaga Creekwalk, Thornden Park and their present location, Willow Bay at Onondaga Lake Parkway (3858 Long Branch Road, Liverpool, New York 13090).
photo cred – Lisa Richards Kane
They are planted in the ground (curved handles removed), and to honor our current life circumstances, they are pointing towards hospitals or engaging in the six-feet-apart modality.
photo cred – Lisa Richards Kane
For the next phase, the future installments will last forty-eight hours in duration. This for those who adhere to an every-other-day walk-about, as we further distance ourselves while allowing the medical epidemic to dissipate. The installations will continue as phantom pop-ups to sustain the idea’s magic.
photo cred – Lisa Richards Kane
Heagerty is a fan of the artist Christo who, along with his wife Jeanne-Claude, created large-scale temporary installations for the purpose of fulfilling a happiness and joy credo or art for art’s sake, in addition to making the invisibility of common-place landscapes visible via “immediate aesthetic impact”.
It is this purpose Michael John Heagerty aligns with most. This is his love-letter to Syracuse, New York, suggesting that we WILL get through this mayhem with courage, hope, happiness and comfort, and above all, a caring, creative-arts zest for life. <3
photo cred – Benjamin Terry
***all other photographs not tagged are used with permission courtesy of the artist
Terry Askey-Cole was in charge today at Gallery 54 (54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles, New York 13152). She is one of the artists represented by the gallery. Fifteen years ago, Askey-Cole took courses in ceramics. Now she has her own home studio complete with kiln where she creates decorative pieces, like these whimsical floral garden sculptures (below), as well as slab and wheel thrown pottery and mosaics.
According to the gallery’s website:
Opened July 2009, Gallery 54 is an artist owned and operated gallery located in the scenic Finger Lakes village of Skaneateles. Most of our artists are local to the Finger Lakes/Central NY area and offer our customers a wide variety of high-quality and unique fine art and fine craft, including paintings, mosaics, pottery, art quilts, jewelry, photography, stained glass, handbags, scarves, and more.
In addition to the artwork our owners have on display, we also represent many additional local artists, whose mediums include paintings, jewelry, metal, glass, wood boxes, sculpture, tiles, silk wearables, ceramic clocks, illustrations and more. Be sure to visit our artist’s pages for more information about our artists and to see photographs of their work.
Askey-Cole said there are eight artist owners. Other artists may submit their work for jury – they can sell it on commission or sometimes items are purchased wholesale, so working the cash register is optional. It is an interesting model for business – and quite successful. Askey-Cole has played a part here for the past eleven years (since its inception)!
Traffic consists mainly of day trippers, like me. People from outside the Skaneateles area who venture in exploration and leave with a wooden bowl, jewelry, painted glass, knitwear and/or artwork. Gallery 54 makes use of every available space and when there are several people inside, it’s tight. There were a bunch of excuse-mes and sorrys today as I guided my way around every nook and cranny.
My friend Nella Joseph does well here. She hand-paints glassware. I am in love with the cardinal pieces (below).
Richell Castellon is the featured artist. His original paintings are cityscapes with one of the groupings done in black and white on burlap. Castellon is also currently exhibiting (until March 30, 2020) in a solo show (From Cuba to Syracuse) at the Wilson Art Gallery in the library at LeMoyne College.
Eventually I will purchase one of these amazing ceramic slab wall hangings by Peter Valenti. His work is so incredibly well-crafted. I love the Arts & Crafts feel with the ginkgo leaf and dragonfly motifs and the copper finishes. They are so distinctive in style! They are raku-fired, which is the method where the ceramics are removed from the hot kiln and placed in sawdust, salt or another smothering effect to starve the artworks of oxygen thereby affecting the glazing process. Valenti’s pieces offer rich texture and color.
Other artists represented by Gallery 54 include Lisa Maffiore, Liz and Rich Micho, Donna Smith, Sallie Thompson, Fred Weisskopf, and Judi Witkin. The gallery is open 10 AM – 5 PM daily.
The four upstairs galleries at the Everson Museum of Art (401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York 13202) are filled with treasures, some of which I have seen many times over the decades – but not like this. Elizabeth Dunbar, director and CEO, has a way of pairing paintings and ceramics with a keen eye that makes everything come alive and feel fresh again.
It is this new perspective that breathes love into the exhibition, A Legacy of Firsts: The Everson Collects. It showcases the museums over one hundred year history, presenting the cohesion via an American thread. The exhibition honors the museum’s legacy and in turn reveres the decisions made by previous curators and directors. I love this credence to respect. It feels welcoming. It feels like family. It feels like home. As she says in her message in the winter 2020 Everson Bulletin, [the museum is] “For artists. For community. For everyone.”
This is an historical trek that begins at the top of the spiral staircase with pieces purchased around 1911 when the museum was known as the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts – impressionistic landscapes, portraits and still-lifes displayed in ornate golden frames coupled with the ceramic pieces of the day. Adelaide Alsop Robineau was a local potter who corresponded with and met the museum’s director at that time, Fernando Carter, as she frequented the facility back then – her intricately carved vessels were the first pieces purchased for what became a premier ceramics collection.
There are over 11,000 items in the Everson’s collection! As the show progresses into the second chamber, you are jolted by bold colors. This room is filled with large-scale abstractions and colorful pottery to mix and match. Lee Krasner’s painting is displayed above her husband’s, an early Jackson Pollack. I love the similarity in their styles.
There is a display of transmedia here as well, but the videos don’t translate well in a photograph.
The next gallery is familiar in that the museum purchased pieces from exhibitions from their recent past. This (below) is a piece by Vanessa German.
The fourth gallery space is heaviest on the ceramic collection. It is such a bold move to see these pieces sans glass or other protective shielding, but that is what makes them so compelling. Textural items created to be touched that one must not touch within reach – when I visited the museum as a child, all the ceramics were under glass in the do not touch space, as though they came to the museum to die, lol. Now they are sooooo alive!
This show is visual candy. I love the angles of the presentations, the way pieces connect, that flow, rhythm and the sheer beauty of the artwork. It’s a wonderful journey through yesteryear and beyond. <3
A Legacy of Firsts:Â The Everson Collects continues through March 22, 2020.
The Everson Museum of Art is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Hours of operation: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday noon – 5 PM, Thursdays noon – 8 PM and Saturdays 10 AM – 5 PM. There is a sliding scale admission fee (free for members). Visit their web-site for the deets.  www.everson.org
Just returned home from another wonderful art reception. This time I was around the corner from home, at SUNY Empire State College (6333 State Route 298, Suite 300, East Syracuse, New York 13057) for the Independent Potters’ Association exhibition, Surface Decorations on Ceramics.
I spoke with Alan Stankiewicz (above), the mastermind of this show, as he is curator and exhibitor, as well as an educator at the college. He used horsehair as a surface decoration on his piece – the horsehair is placed on hot-from-the-raku-kiln-fired pottery. It is allowed to burn away leaving fine lines resembling the look of a gestural charcoal drawing. I’d never seen this technique before.
This is the beauty of the exhibition. The whole thing is a teachable moment. This group of potters share their expertise with each other and now, here, with the students of this college and you, the public. There is such a sense of positivity in their camaraderie.
The exhibit is nicely linked via tiles with explanations of individual techniques and literature that tells the story of this vernacular. It is really so amazing how many ways pottery can be decorated and, of course, multiply that times the combined techniques variations and you have madness! I honestly don’t know how the artists settle on a particular style. It has to be inspired action.
Many SUNY Empire employees joined the artists for the reception in the Central Arts Gallery. They had a marvelous spread of munchies. It is on the third floor of the building on the left after entering the college facility. I was here once before for Maria Rizzo’s thesis exhibition.
Surface Decoration on Ceramics will remain on display through February 28, 2020. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 9 AM-5 PM. I highly recommend this to any high school ceramics art teachers in the area who are contemplating a field trip. It is a really informative show. So many cool ideas! Thank you, IPA. <3
