The Kirkland Art Center in Clinton, New York is celebrating its sixtieth year! They’ve invited artists who have had exhibitions there in the past – both founding members and recent exhibitors – to be a part of their anniversary show, which runs June 8, 2021-July 8, 2021.
The art reception was today from 1-4pm. There are forty-nine artists represented, among them, my friends Penny Santy and Linda Bigness (pictured). Most of the pieces are for sale.
The Kirkland Art Center is located at 9 1/2 East Park Row, Clinton, New York 13323.
They are open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 am to 2 pm, and on Saturdays from 1 pm to 4 pm.
Call (315) 853-8871 for more information
KAC 60 years of art exhibitors –
Stephen Arnison, Constance Avery, John Bentham, Linda Bigness, Jan Burke, Howard Chaney, Edward Christiana, Karen Christiansen, Robert Cimbalo, Frank Cittadino, Sally Clark, Sylvia de Swaan, Barbara Decker, Laura Diddle, Sebastian Domenico, Kathy Donovan, Charlie Fisher, Jan Fisher, John Gardner, Frank Jacobs, Pinny Kuckel, Jessie Landecker, Gregory Lawler, Mary Gaylord Loy, John Loy, Jim McDermid, Roger Moore, Ralph Murray, Gina Murtaugh, Stephen Perrone, Vartan Poghosian, Easton Pribble, Tim Rand, Marietta Raposo,Bill Salzillo, Penny Santy, Stella Scarano, Alba Scott, Sheila Smith,Gail Strout, Joseph Trovato, Frank Viola, Frank Vlossak, Heidi von Bergen, John von Bergen, Shirley B. Waters, Rainer Maria Wehner, Doug Whitfield, Jonathan Woodward
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
I don’t give credence to evil. I believe there is goodness and lack of goodness. We create our own realities and so, perhaps unwittingly, we create sadness, doom, mayhem and what have you. The Universe/God gives you EVERYTHING you ask for without the emotion associated with positive or negative vibes.
That’s the gist of it. In this way, no outside entity or force is inserting itself into your experience. You and you alone create the life you have.
The good news is that you can control your life experience by thinking positively, by working to create a sense of goodness via happiness, joy and love. You can have a beautiful life if you choose to look at the good, that is to say to create rather than face reality.
People who argue for their limitations, who need to revisit shit-storms don’t get this. People who use the devil as a temptation scapegoat instead of taking responsibility for their actions – well, that seems a fearful way to live.
I accept that I will not be loved unconditionally by this man, because it is apparent our beliefs have divided us, and so, this so-called devil has seemingly wedged itself in the cracks of my relationship after all.
Isn’t that ironic? You get what you think about – perfectly illustrated. Imagined evil wins this round (for the sake of this article). And the moral is that you just can’t take yourself too seriously. Allow everyone to live their own truth even if it perpetuates pain rather than alleviating it. And don’t judge. Yes, that’s the trick – to love anyway, even if you don’t always agree…and to trust, trust, trust that goodness will inevitably/eventually prevail. There are always positive outcomes available to you. <3
Jerome Witkin has made a career of facing harsh realities via his large-scale figurative paintings. Art must show our times, without any holding back, showing how we are living in this time – this world . His quote operates on the assumption that everyone in this time is living crummy lives. He uses Katrin Naumann, my friend and yogini as a primary model to illustrate the dastardly manifestations of society, which is such an irony in itself. Katrin is an ethereal soul, an absolutely beautiful human person.
Witkin is proficient in rendering and paint applications. His compositions are modern visual collages shaped like temples for his angst-infused pulpit. The devil is in the details, lol.
Jerome Witkin: This Time, This World is currently on exhibit at ArtRage Gallery (505 Hawley Avenue, Syracuse, New York 13203). The art reception is tonight from 6-8 pm. The show runs through January 11, 2020 with an artist talk planned for Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 7 pm.
In 1971, Syracuse Folklorist Dan Ward met someone (okay, it was a hitchhiker), which led to his first trip to Syracuse, New York to see James Taylor in concert at the War Memorial. Instead of acquiring tickets to that sold-out concert, he ventured across the street and was pulled through the door of the museum. Somehow he randomly became part of an elite group allowed to tour the Yoko Ono exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art, along with the artist and her husband John Lennon.
The whole thing was documented on film and in the media. Dan Ward was a teenager living a serendipitous existence. There was a waterbed on the floor that evening, positioned to offer a unique view of the spiral staircase. He thought it was unusual but gave it a try – his first time on a waterbed and with a bed-bug (a Beatle). There were other interactive ingredients as well, some have been replicated for the retrospective/new exhibition, Yoko Ono: Remembering the Future, which opened last night. Every piece cultivated to reside harmoniously within the walls of I.M. Pei’s modern architecture. This show was meant to create a dialogue between viewer and artist with the viewer creating the closure.
Yes, a stunningly beautiful Ono (according to Ward’s recollection – photographs never did her justice) and Lennon, and Ringo Starr were all there that night, as well as several of their close friends from Manhattan. It was a media circus focused on celebrity in a time when art was misunderstood and maligned.
I wish I could have been there back then, too, wish I could have been that fly on the wall – to bear witness to perceptions of the past while remembering the future….
Imagine a museum filled with objects – hammers, nails, string, ladders, piles of dirt, blue paint. Imagine a world where the viewer participates and the result is a collaboration between artist and you. Artist as conceptualist. You as executioner. You as artist too.
It is what I do as a teacher. Okay, students – here’s the lesson, here are the supplies…. It is always so gratifying and almost strange in a way. Like – do this, and they say okay.
This is the genius of Yoko Ono. It is a presence, a facilitator who loves her audience, who gives them an experience, a happening, a memory. Something to do. Museums are always a DO-NOT-TOUCH place, but here you can add string to the wall, hammer in a nail onto a piece of wood, paint part of a mural, be a part of something bigger than yourself that has no other meaning than what it is. Collective mark making. A chance to interact in a museum in a child-like manner and by that, I mean being totally present. Not thinking about anything else but the art – and not even thinking too hard about the how or the what, or the why.
Because you are a part of the experience and your existence is relevant, necessary and needed. You matter. You are loved. You are welcome. You belong.
For six decades, Yoko Ono has maintained an unwavering belief in art’s ability to transform, uplift, and inspire. Her work, typically ephemeral or participatory, occupies the porous boundaries between artistic disciplines, from music and film to sculpture, poetry, and performance art. Ono’s approach to art making is generous, and since emerging in New York’s downtown art scene in the 1950s, she has privileged collaboration over solitary authorship, inclusivity over isolation, and transience over permanence. These underlying precepts, which simultaneously undermine the capitalist structure of the art market and criticize the institutional model of the museum, also unified a postwar artistic movement known as Fluxus, of which Ono was an important contributor. For Ono, as well as later generations of artists and those currently engaged in social practice, art belongs to everyone, can be created by anyone, and has the potential to change the world.
Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. A survivor of the trauma inflicted on Japan during World War II, she moved to the United States in 1953 during a period of surging nationalism, consumerism, and anti-Japanese sentiment. During this time, Ono became a central figure within New York’s downtown scene and became close collaborators with artist George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus. Many avant-garde intellectuals, artists, composers, and writers gathered regularly at Ono’s Chambers Street loft for experimental performances by groundbreaking artists like La Monte Young, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Terry Jennings, Jackson Mac Low, Richard Maxfield, Henry Flynt, Joseph Byrd, Simone Forti, and Robert Morris. Here, Ono realized some of her earliest conceptual works that would greatly influence the trajectory of art, film, and music.
Ineffable, intangible, impermanent, Ono’s art, as a body of work, defies categorization. The term Wakon yosai (“Japanese spirit, Western technology”), the national slogan of modernization in Japan during the Meji era, might best describe Ono’s approach to life and art. Her works, conceptually linked to the form of musical scores, draw on sources as diverse as the history of classical and modern Japanese art and Zen Buddhism to early black-and-white cinema and classical music. Ono’s signature text-based scores date back to the early 1950s. In 1964, she published the scores in Grapefruit, her definitive text. The scores, as Ono explained in 2016, “are a bit like music scores which exist so anyone can play the composition. What I’ve imagined are art scores. Each visitor can take them up so that their own ‘music’ can be heard in my creations.”
Throughout the 1960s, Ono had significant solo exhibitions in the United States, Japan, and in England—including the AG Gallery in New York City and the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. She performed at the 83rd Fluxus Concert: Fluxorchestra at Carnegie Hall, In 1966, Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, exhibited her work at the Judson Church, and participated in the first Destruction In Art Symposium organized by Gustav Metzger in London. Ono met John Lennon when he visited her exhibition Yoko at Indica, at the Indica Gallery in London.
Following her marriage to Lennon in 1968, Ono was catapulted onto the world’s stage of fame and wide public visibility, a position she has brilliantly coopted to further her long-standing interest in the power of the imagination, human rights, and world peace.
Forty-eight years after the Everson hosted This is Not Here, Ono’s first museum retrospective, YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE presents her enduring artistic work devoted to healing human connections and exposing social and political injustices. Spanning more than six decades from germinal early instruction pieces to recent, large-scale architectural installations, YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE traces Ono’s experimental approach to language, art, and participation as a means of contributing to a more accepting and peaceful world.
YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE is curated by DJ Hellerman, the Everson’s Curator of Art & Programs and Jon Hendricks, Ono’s long-time friend and curator in partnership with Yoko Ono, Studio One, and Susie Lim.
The operation of the Everson Museum of Art is made possible with funding from the Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman Foundation, the County of Onondaga administered by CNY Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, the Richard Mather Fund, the Everson Board of Trustees and Everson Museum of Art Members’ Council.
YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE is made possible, in part, through support from Bonnie and Gary Grossman, and Sollecito Landscaping Nursery.
Tonight was the opening reception for the summer art exhibition at The Syracuse Tech Garden gallery (235 Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York 13202). It is titled Cool August Moon. I saw my high school friend and fellow art teacher Audrey Levinson there!
Artist Steve Nyland (another Jamesville-DeWitt alum) is the curator and a participant in the show. He told me that he signed a new contract to continue with these exhibitions for at least another year. They take place in the lobby of this building, which is across the street from the Syracuse Marriott (Hotel Syracuse).
Other local artists contributing to this show –
Laura Audrey Terry Lynn Cameron Richell Castellon Fletcher Crangle Kathy Donovan Ryan Foster Larry Hoyt Lisa Ketcham James P. McCampbell Sally Stormon Rabekah Tanner Mitzie Testani Ray Trudell Kayla Cady Vaughn Ryan Wood
Massachusetts transplant Lisa Ketcham creates these kitschy assemblages and frames. They are sort of a cross between steampunk and macabre via the use of gears, timey-wimey-ies and skeletons.
Terry-Lynn Cameron brought her originals to share. I met her on Sunday at City Market where she was selling prints of these lovely acrylic paintings.
Richell Castellon Ferreira is the real deal – a painter and woodworker by trade. He comes to us from Cuba. His paintings of the Syracuse landscape would make perfect additions to any local collector’s art stash! He paints from photographs and from memory. These originals are only $175.
Ray Trudell focuses on the invisible in his black and white photographs taken of the surrounding area. He “slows time” by defining a glimpse of a moment using sharp contrast in his compositions.
The exhibit will be on display until September 20, 2019. For more information contact Steve Nyland at gallery.ttg@gmail.com. To purchase artwork, contact the artists directly. They have left business cards and also have contact information on their respective art tags.
Summer is a time where time doesn’t matter to me. I get up when I want. I do what I want. It is not slow or fast motion. It is pure bliss. Today was a bit wonky in that it was cloudy-ish – it rained last night and seemed like an indoor-all-day kind of day. I worked on a fun, creative project, I practiced on piano, watched some TV (I cannot get enough of Million Dollar Listings on Bravo) then I noticed that it was actually nicer out than I thought. So, I decided to go for a hike. So satisfying! When I returned, I stumbled upon information that there was going to be an art reception and I still had time to get ready to go! Can someone hashtag #ootd fast enough? Could this day get any better? Yes and yes!
I was delighted. For some reason I thought SU’s galleries went on summer hiatus but that is not the case with POC this time.
Syracuse University’s Point of Contact gallery is located in the Warehouse Building in Armory Square (350 W. Fayette Street, Syracuse, New York 13202). It is primarily a space that features latin artists, although from time-to-time they curate other exhibitions, like the annual Sum Art show.
Time Changes Everything is the current exhibition. Curated by Sara Felice, Managing Associate Director of the gallery, it features Margie Hughto, Beth Bischoff and Darcy Gerbarg with an art and video installation by Franco Andres in the back space.
It is a magnificent show! It was such a thrill to meet and speak with three of the artists. I have met Margie Hughto before but this time – OMG, her new work is breathtakingly beautiful, the kind of thing that moves me to want to make art, moves me to the tears that form the essence of joy. They are ceramic assemblages that sort of bridge the space between archeology and modernism. Each piece is fired separately then the artist uses intuitive rhythm to create movement in each piece, a swirling that truly captivates. Her inclination here is to showcase climate change.
Darcy Gerbarg blends her history as an Abstract Expressionist painter with her knowledge of digital technology. She has always been on the cutting edge in her field and these pieces are digital prints created by utilizing virtual reality software. Like a conductor wielding her baton, she executes a rhythmic flow of movement that then gets translated into digitized color on a monumental scale.
Beth Bischoff spent six years living in the Yucatan. Her photographs of this landscape are taken with a unique panoramic camera then digitally printed. The imagery created transports the viewer to a jungle habitat lost in time. Again, the sweep of rhythm thrusts mightily, albeit in black and white. It appears in tree branches and tall grass, as well as in the contrast of the stone facades.
The time changing element to this show is that feeling of having been here in the present moment and everywhere simultaneously. Time doesn’t stand still. It swirls and dances upon the landscape of photograph, painting, print and bas-relief. I feel changed for the better blessed by the momentum of art.
If you would like to view this show and find out more about the 4th artist, Franco Andres, (I did not get the opportunity to meet/speak with him), the exhibition runs through August 9, 2019. Point of Contact is open Monday – Friday 12 – 5 pm. Call (315) 443-2169 for more information or visit the POC website at www.puntopoint.org <3
***From the gallery website
TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING
MARGIE HUGHTO, BETH BISHOFF, DARCY GERBARG, FRANCO ANDRES
JULY 12 – AUGUST 9
Each artist in Time Changes Everything battles the temporality of human existence and the material world constructed around it.
Bischoff’s photography expresses a harmony of the past and present depicting the ruins left in the world’s progression. Bischoff’s Ruins series functions as a reminder of the care our planet deserves.
Ceramist Margie Hughto draws inspiration from landfills and remains left by humans in the creation of her Excavation Series. Hughto’s work embodies the transience of the human experience in a world heavily structured by transitory material objects.
Bringing together numerous modes of digital art, Gerbarg forms The Syracuse Pictures. Her artwork abstracts the world into its own heterotopia, existing in both the past and present.
Andres realizes the difficulty of authenticity for artists as he utilizes an accumulation of mediums in the formation of one’s identity. The process of his artwork becomes a depiction of time and change as his work spans from ancient processes to contemporary modes of video.
These four distinct artists come together in “Time Changes Everything” to pose a larger challenge to the viewers through the ultimate tool, their artwork.
Time Changes Everything will be on view through Aug. 9th.
The year was 2006 – I started working at the middle school after another teacher retired ten years into my career. I would be teaching 8th grade Art and an 8th grade accelerated Studio in Art class, for which I had to plan a field trip to New York City.
I followed the guide left by the previous teacher using the same bus company. In addition, I planned every detail including the itinerary of visiting two museums and the cost calculations to include fees for the museums and meals from the school cafeteria. It was a lot of work, a huge responsibility on top of preparing new curriculum and all that teaching stuff. I was excited though, because I focused on all the cool things the kids would learn about art, all the amazing art and art history to see and experience, and of course the thrill of being in Manhattan. My students all kept saying they just wanted to see a real live hobo.
Finally, the day of the trip arrived. It was November 10th, the day before Veteran’s Day. Everything was going at a good clip until about five hours in when the bus started having wonky problems. It took us an extra hour to get from Macy’s in Manhattan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because the bus kept, like, shutting down-starting up again-shutting down, etc. at every stop light. We arrived, spent five wonderful hours enjoying the Met and the American Museum of Natural History. Instead of the company dispatching another bus, the driver returned with that faulty one. Start-stop-start-stop-infinity until we made it to a Mobil station where we evacuated. The bus driver put transmission fluid in then said he would drive around the block and come back for us. He left us stranded for six hours, maybe seven. We, kind of, became hobos.
Luckily, it was a warm November night. The children took it all in stride. An adventure for them – they never felt in danger or scared. Lol, I am pretty sure some of the chaperones are still traumatized to this day. A one-day trip turned into an overnight ordeal. Somehow the principal paid for us to take taxis to rendezvous with the dead bus now parked in a grocery store parking lot somewhere in the Bronx. We made it home the next day via a bus dispatched from Quebec that had smashed both headlights in a collision with two deer on its way to save us.
Those students are about twenty-five years old now! Wow, that is just so crazy. I suspect they are all doing amazing things these days and are not among the homeless faces exhibited in this art show.
San Diego artist Neil Shigley has been working on this series of prints for about as long as I have had this memory in my head. He interviews the subjects, photographs them then begins sketching their faces and transforms them into these larger than life prints.
Each one looks to use two large pieces of linoleum; they are printed on two sheets of paper and mounted with large tacks directly into the wall. The result is an in-your-face type of statement. Making the invisible visible in terms of the scope of homelessness in our society. Apparently, it is a vast and growing population in the San Diego area with people of all ages living on the streets and in parks, and just barely existing in this nomadic way.
The exhibition is titled Invisible People: Portraits of the Homeless. The art reception was tonight. It continues at Art Rage Gallery (505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse, New York) through October 27, 2018. Shigley will talk about his work on Tuesday, September 11, 2018 at 7:00 pm in the gallery. Call (315) 218-5711 for more information. Gallery hours are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 2:00 – 7:00 pm and Saturday noon – 4:00 pm.
I hosted a closing reception for Jamie Santos’ art show. The exhibition had taken place in the Chittenango Middle School library (Chittenango, New York) during May and June 2018. Since they administered the algebra regents exam in the library today, we held the party in my art classroom.
About twenty students attended this end of the year celebration. Cookies were served.
Jamie Santos is a tattoo artist. She works at Tymeless Tattoo in Baldwinsville, New York. Jamie is a 2003 graduate of Fayetteville-Manlius High school. She says drawing is an important part of her life. She gets up by 9:00 am and starts the day by sketching ideas for tattoos or paintings – she brought several notebooks full of these wonderfully executed drawings to share with the students.
Her focus lately has been on birds.
Students had a lot of questions about the tattooing process – does it hurt? How long does it take to finish a tattoo? Do people bring snacks? ( Lol, love that one <3 )
Jamie was very honest about the process, the time commitment, the pain. She explained how the needle works, how it vibrates when you hold it, how the artist gets better with every job.
She used to work every day and now she books clients only four days a week, devoting the rest of her time to creating art in her studio. Designing her own unique look, her own motifs are crucial to her success and she takes pride in the fact that her work ethic has truly improved her skill.
I asked how many of these eleven to fourteen-year-old students think that they want to get tattoos when they are older and the majority of hands flew up! Should I be surprised by that? I guess not.
The students absolutely loved her! She is amazing. Thank you, Jamie Santos, for being such an inspirational voice for your profession.
A thousand thank-yous, as well, goes to my fabulous colleague, Katy Conden, for working with me to make these art talks happen. They are no fun without you!
If you would like to see more of her work, Jamie will be exhibiting in a show of tattoo artists at the Everson Museum of Art.
EMBRACING THE UNDERGROUND: THE ART OF TATTOOING
June 30–August 5, 2018
Embracing the Underground explores the rich and diverse culture of modern day tattooing. This exhibition is the second presented through the Everson’s Community Exhibition Program, which provides opportunities for Central New York organizations to present the work of area artists.
Eye Studio is in a brand new location! It is around the corner from me at 712 W. Manlius Street in East Syracuse, New York (13057). The space is welcoming with a gift shop in front, office space, a kitchen for culinary classes and an immense studio space for creating art where wine and paint nights for adults take place, as well as ceramics classes, glass fusing and other art courses for all.
In addition, there is gallery space. Proprietor Ilene Layow is currently exhibiting her Green Lakes series of drawings, paintings, and glass works. Yesterday she offered me a show for next month! I will display Futura, my series of twenty-four angel encaustics.
Yes!!!! They have found a temporary home from their current location on my dining room table. I am beyond excited right now! The space is really a perfect location for this artwork. A match made in heaven!
We have scheduled a closing reception for Friday, October 27, 2017 from 6:00-8:00 pm. There will be wine and food, and a musical guest to be announced. Save the date. It would be just over-the-top amazing to see you all there. I am so grateful for all of the support I have received throughout the years. You are such amazing friends!
The great thing about a closing reception is the cash and carry aspect. You can buy the art and take it right off the wall and home with you immediately. The show goes up on October 2nd and will be available to view during normal business hours and by appointment. Contact Ilene at iteachart.twcny.rr.com or call (315) 345-4576 for that information. The hours of operation are changing for the fall season. They will be up on their website soon.
I am quite certain you will fall in love with this place then receive the impulse to take art classes. Art is the absolute best medicine for a happier you. <3
Coach baseball cap, Halston Heritage dress, Karl Lagerfeld Paris boots
The closing reception for Art & Baseball, my watercolor show at Half Moon Bakery & Bistro, was sooooo much fun! The baseball cupcakes were so cute, and delicious too. I had a lemon one – yum!
I have such an amazing support system of love from my immediate family. My sister Kathy and my mom were there and my dad stopped in after a long morning of tilling his vegetable garden. My friend Penny was doing the same at her place in Sylvan Beach before coming! I have the best friends and I know how fortunate I am to have them in my life.
Proprietor Debbe Titus said exactly that – “you have the best friends supporting you”.
After the reception and take down, my friend Kim and I drove over to her hair salon, Kimberly’s Salon at 2520 James Street in Eastwood (Syracuse, New York). We hung the paintings there. So that is the answer to the questions, when and where is your next show? They will be up indefinitely and are available for sale in a cash & carry. I will just replace them with more art.
Kimberly’s Salon hours of operation are as follows: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 am – 6 pm, Wednesdays & Fridays 9:00 am – 6:00 pm, and Saturdays 9:00 am – 2:00 pm. Call (315) 463-2735 for more information.
I do have the very best friends a girl could ever ask for. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Today was such an amazing day in my universe.
