The Robineau Gallery at The Everson Museum of Art, adorned with ceramic and mixed-media sculptures, tells the story of Sana Musasama’s artistic journey through a personal and global history of art/architecture and toys.
This is the fourth time I’ve viewed an African-heritage artist use dolls to commemorate their artistic journey. I am feeling inspired to incorporate the idea in my own work. I have already gone the houses route.
These six-inch slab dolls are so unique. I love the way the legs are connected separately. The beads are attached with pipe cleaners. If the dolls didn’t have boobs, they would make a great sample/inspiration for a second grade clay project.
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.
On Wednesday, June 21, 2023, I attended Gala for the Arts at the Everson. I blondified for the occasion. Thank you, Amanda LoSecco!
The event was organized by CITI Arts in Education and was intended as a celebration of art education honoring students, teachers, administrators and friends of the arts.
We dressed in formal attire as we viewed student artwork, listened to student musical medleys and noshed on light hors d’oeuvres from The Red Sun Fire Roasting Company.
LeMoyne College has started a Visual & Performing Arts program. They were both sponsors and honorees.
I believe this was a first-timey event. Not sure if it will become an annual thingy. Would be nice!
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!
