Friday, December 6, 2013

In Da Window: Glasswork by Don Plouffe
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

A Syracuse native, Don received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MAT from Oswego State. He has worked in artist studios from Venice, CA, to Florence, Italy, and in art classrooms all over CNY. Each experience has had an impact on what he creates from ceramic tiles, to stained glass windows and doors, to sculptures of creatures and beasts of all sorts. He strives to create work worth spending time with and enjoys the process almost as much as the finished piece.

Robert Thurber Photographs
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Watercolors by Bill Elkins
Onondaga County Central Library

Price: Free
Onondaga County Central Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Bill Elkins has been a practicing architect in Syracuse for over 30 years. After a visit to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine in 1995, he was inspired to try his hand at watercolors. He has been painting and studying the medium ever since.

Drawing on Talent: 5th Annual Members Group Art Exhibit
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

Group art exhibit featuring work in all media by members of the Baltimore Woods member community.

Holiday Gift Gallery Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Price: Free
Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Gallery Exhibit: OCC Faculty Art & Photography Exhibition
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

A mixed media show with works from Onondaga's own faculty members.

John James Audubon and the American Landscape
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

John James Audubon and the American Landscape showcases Syracuse University's copy of the rare double elephant folio The Birds of America. Printed in London and Edinburgh between 1827 and 1838, the work is a stunning visual catalog, featuring 435 plates depicting American bird life. The enterprise consumed much of Audubon's adult life and took him from the Pennsylvania woods to the Florida Keys and the Labrador coast. To its 19th-century audience, The Birds of America was much more than an ornithological inventory. It brought the exotic American wilderness into the drawing rooms and parlors of its wealthy subscribers. In 1896, former mayor of Syracuse and Syracuse University trustee James J. Welden donated a copy to the University. Today, The Birds of America is known for its extraordinary value, fetching more than ten million dollars at auction.

The exhibition situates The Birds of America in the wider contexts of Audubon's life, 19th-century scientific knowledge, and a rapidly changing landscape that was becoming less exotic each day. Also on display are Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (1808–14), Audubon's textual companion to The Birds of America (Ornithological Biography, 1831–49), and later volumes that speak to Audubon's legacy, such as first editions of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949). Syracuse University's copy of The Birds of America is disbound, which makes it possible for visitors to the exhibition to consider several different prints at once. Some of the engravings on display include the barn owl, Swainson's hawk, and the long-billed curlew, all of which depict American avian life against the backdrop of encroaching civilization.

Shaped Clay Society Mug Sale
Syracuse University School of Art and Design

Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

The Shaped Clay Society will host its annual mug sale. Hot chocolate and coffee will be served each day.

The Shaped Clay Society is a student-run group based in the ceramics program of VPA's Department of Art. Active on campus and in the community, the group uses various fundraising activities to increase educational opportunities, such as bringing visiting artists to campus, and to support local organizations. For more information, email shapedclaysociety@gmail.com.

Metamorphosis Personified: Works by Greg Trombly
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Behold a metamorphic journey away from the representational through work aimed to capture the essence of the human form and energy through light and dark values.

Water Below, Sky Above
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diane Menzies: landscape oil paintings
Deeann vonHunke and Robert vonHunke: collaborative pieces with Robert's painting and Dee's metalwork
Wes Weiss: ceramic sculptural forms
Deeann vonHunke: jewelry
Karen Burns: oil on canvas landscape paintings

Tango
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This inaugural exhibit in Point of Contact's new gallery at The Warehouse will showcase the 20-piece grand folio art book Tango (Iris Editions 1991), a collaborative work by Argentine writer Pedro Cuperman and New York artist Nancy Graves. A significant work in Point of Contact's collection, Tango includes eight intaglio prints by Graves and thirteen pages of text by Cuperman.

Philipe Doddard: The Idea of Modernity in Haitian Contemporary Art
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Through bold brush strokes and vibrant color combinations, graphic and visual artist Philippe Dodard critically engages and empowers audiences throughout the world. Dodard, born and raised in Haiti, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Port-au-Prince and the International School of Bordeaux, France, where he explored graphic design. Although paintings are featured in this exhibition, Dodard is a diverse artist whose body of work includes metalwork, large sculptures and jewelry. Dodard's incredible talent has resulted in international recognition and creative collaborations including his most recent with fashion designer Donna Karan. Irrespective of the discipline or media, Dodard's aesthetic reflects his love for Haiti.

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28th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 children
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

It's that time of year again! The upstairs gallery of the museum has been transformed into a 1800s street scene with over 40 gingerbread creations made by professional and amateur bakers from across the region on display in storefront windows.

Inspired Tidings: Annual Holiday Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-9:00 pm, as part of Skaneateles' First Friday art walk. Please join us to celebrate the Holiday Season, meet our artists, and enjoy entertainment by Christopher Molloy with his Electric Blue Harp. Light refreshments will be served.

Neighboring Visions
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

There will be an opening reception this evening 6:00-9 pm as part of Skaneateles' First Friday art walk. Refreshments will be provided, along with entertainment by the Usual Suspects.

A group show featuring works by three Tully artists: jewelry by gallery director Sarah Panzarella, pottery by Jeremy Randall, and paintings by Grant Dolge.

Jackie Nickerson: Terrain
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Jackie Nickerson makes photographs that examine the essential nature of people and their relationship to the natural world, through personal identity and the physical and psychological condition of living and working. With "Terrain," Nickerson revisits eastern and southern Africa, focusing on how the exertions of labor leave psychic and material traces on people and the environment.

Willson Cummer: Dawn Light
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Willson Cummer is a fine-art photographer, curator and teacher who lives in Fayetteville, NY. Images from his projects have been included in national juried exhibitions. His first solo New York City show opened in December 2011 at OK Harris. Willson's work explores humanity's place in the environment. In addition to his own work, he curates and publishes the blog New Landscape Photography. Willson has taught workshops at Light Work/Community Darkrooms, Syracuse University, and Cazenovia College.

Artist's Statement:

In late July of 2012, a five-month depression unexpectedly lifted. For the first time in a long while, I was able to wake up in the morning with energy, eager to explore the day. With my camera I quickly began shooting the early morning light as it fell upon Fayetteville, NY, my hometown. I walked from my front door most times, and occasionally drove a bit further into the village. I wanted to explore the territory closest at hand.

Light is a fundamental ingredient for photography. It has also, for centuries, been used as a metaphor for healing and recovery. As a recovering depressive, I wanted to explore the dawn light on a metaphorical level. As an artist, I wanted to record the gorgeous cross- light of the early morning and the rich yellow hue of the direct light.

I was attracted to humble structures: gas stations, parking lots, aging commercial buildings. The interplay of the natural world and the built environment is a subject which continues to excite me.

Paintings by Marilyn Masters
Maxwell Memorial Library

Price: Free
Maxwell Memorial Library
14 Genesee St., Camillus

If a medium can be used for artistic expression, it's a safe bet that Marilyn Masters has worked with it. The impressionist artist, originally from Huntington, NY, is a graduate of both the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has studied acrylics, pastel, watercolors, pencil drawing, even block printing, furniture art, and textile design. An R.N. with a degree from Upstate Medical Center, Masters has combined her artistic and health careers by creating detailed medical drawings.

Snowy Splendor
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This exhibit will feature oil and watercolor paintings, photographs, drawings and prints of contemporary or vintage winter scenes of Onondaga County.

Fashion After Five
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit, Fashion After Five, curated by Syracuse University's Jeffrey Mayer, associate professor of fashion design and history and curator of the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection, will explore the history of the cocktail dress with several spectacular garments from the collections of OHA and the Sue Ann Genet Collection. Also represented in the exhibit will be the work of students from the S.U. Department of Fashion Design who will present their own creations, inspired by the vintage dresses selected for the exhibition—a perfect way to combine the past and the present for this exciting new exhibit.

Culture of the Cocktail Hour
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The story of cocktail fashions has several associations with local history. This exhibit will discover some of those people, places and events, including Syracuse's most famous cocktail lounges of days gone by. Cocktails also conjure up the exciting era of the Roaring Twenties, when speakeasies flourished during the decade of Prohibition. Displays will include the story of one of the most famous local speakeasies, located just a few hundred feet from the OH Museum, including a menu of its libations, and the tale of the police raid that shut it down. Also on exhibit, along with other documents and artifacts of the era will be an original federal court ledger listing arrests and convictions across the state for Prohibition violations and a local brewery's recipes for "near beer" and flavored sodas, which helped keep them in business through the infamous "dry" years when America famously tried unsuccessfully to eliminate intoxicating beverages from its culture.

Holiday Show
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Show features jewelry, ceramics, photography, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include Karin Bremer, Willson Cummer, Jen Gandee, Henry Gernhardt, Michael Hughes, Marie LoParco, Hannah Meredith, Laurel Moranz, Jessica Pilowa, Lily Tsay, Lucie Wellner, and Errol Willett.

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit. Many fine art and craft artists currently have work on display at the gallery shop. New holiday cards, ornaments, and many gift items fill the space.

Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Fine art and crafts handmade by local guild and independent artists. Find unique pottery, stained glass, paintings, jewelry, hand-crafted soaps and candles, and much more.

Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition presents Paul Strand's famous Mexican Portfolio, which includes photogravure impressions of people, landscapes, architecture, and religious objects that he encountered in Mexico during his travels there in 1932.

Print Making Revolution: Mexican Prints and the Taller de Grafica Popular
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

An exhibition of over 130 original prints drawn from the SU Art Collection, as well as lenders including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Library of Congress, and the Blanton Museum of Art. The exhibition features important Mexican artists and post-Mexican Revolution artwork, with emphasis on the prints produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People's Graphic Workshop), or TGP. This influential workshop advanced a variety of revolutionary ideals and causes, including the formation of organized labor, the fight for civil rights, and an active campaign against fascism.

Print Making Revolution is organized into four subjects. The first acts as precursor to the TGP, highlighting the work of artists that helped to define the Mexican print landscape early in the 20th century. These figures include José Gaudalupe Posada, Jean Charlot, and the "Big Three": Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros.

The exhibition then transitions into the artists of the TGP, with emphasis on the Taller's director Leopoldo Méndez, but also includes Ángel Bracho, Isidoro Ocampo, and Alfredo Zalce, among others.

The third part of the exhibition focuses on the linocut portfolio Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana, a vividly illustrated narration of the Mexican Revolution, published by the workshop in 1947. Shown in its entirety, the portfolio contains 84 original prints by 16 artists.

Finally, the exhibition highlights the gringos—Americans working at the TGP during the early and influential days of the prolific workshop, Angel Bracho, Victoria! Los Artistas de Taller de Grafica Popular, 1945 University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque including John Woodrow Wilson, Mariana Yampolsky and Elizabeth Catlett. The impact of the TGP reached well beyond the conventional boundaries of art making, affecting political and social movements in Mexico and the United States.

International Art from the Permanent Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Highlighting the breadth of the collections' encyclopedic holdings and exploring international artists and themes, these new displays explore the genres of photography, prints, paintings and sculpture. Two of the exhibitions on display in the Print and Photo Study Galleries will highlight the University's vast holdings of historical Japanese photographs and prints. The third exhibition will examine artwork created by international artists who have immigrated to the United States.

America's Calling, presented in the Gallery of American Art, is an exhibition of 16 works of art by 15 foreign-born artists, including Ben Shahn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Josef Albers. The artists included in the exhibition, or their families, were drawn to the United States because it offered opportunities unavailable in their homelands. A variety of media is presented in the display, including painting, ceramics, sculpture and printmaking that are handled using often innovative techniques. Cumulatively, these artists had a profound and permanent effect on the evolution of American art.

The Photo Study Room will present Visions for Sale: Photographs of Nineteenth Century Japan, an exhibition of 22 hand-colored albumen prints from the 19th century exploring the country's people, land and environment that was quickly changing due to modernization. European photographers such as Felice Beato and Baron Raimond Stillfield traveled to Japan to document the nation's exotic landscape and historically idiosyncratic jobs before they were swept away by the tide of modernism.

Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga: Japanese Woodcuts from the Syracuse University Art Collection will be installed in the Print Study Room and draws from the University's collection of over 300 examples from this important and hugely influential art movement. The prints on view date from the height of color Ukiyo-e printmaking (c1780-1868) through Japan's Meiji period (1868-1912) to 20th century impressions of the Shin Hanga movement (1915-1940s). Masters of this medium are represented, including the work of Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Hokusai, Hiroshida, Tsuchiya Koitsu and Yoshida Hiroshi. The prints exemplify the soft, painterly style that is synonymous with the Japanese woodcut, and illustrates the wide range of subjects from courtesans to Kabuki theater and the Japanese landscape.

Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, children under 10 free (combo ticket including The Art of Video Games $10, children under 10 free)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This 28th annual Syracuse area tradition features artfully decorated trees, wreaths and unique displays that create a beautiful winter wonderland. All the decorations and display items are for sale, all proceeds benefit the Everson Museum of Art. Enjoy live entertainment from local school and musical groups, and stop into the Musuem Shop to find the perfect gift.

Jordan Eagles: Red Giant
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Using blood collected from a slaughterhouse as his primary medium, the artist explores ideas about transformation, death, and rebirth. Jordan Eagles encases the blood in Plexiglas and UV resin panels; mounted on the gallery walls they create a sublime environment that envelops and engages the viewer. The exhibition title, "Red Giant," refers to a luminous giant star in its final phase of stellar evolution—what our Sun will become in five billion years—while also referencing the intense, potent color of blood. The abstract patterns and forms in the works may suggest internal organs as well as cosmological phenomena like solar storms, sunspots, craters, meteorites, and supernova explosions.

Eagles' works are in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Princeton University Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum; and the Everson Museum of Art. Recent solo shows include Causey Contemporary and Krause Gallery, New York; International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; and Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco.He has been featured in numerous publications, including Time Magazine, The New York Times, L'Uomo Vogue, Architectural Digest and Wired.

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The Art of Video Games
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors/military, $5 Everson members, $30 family (up to 2 adults & 4 children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Part of a ten-city national tour, "The Art of Video Games" is one of the first major exhibitions to explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking graphics, creative storytelling, and player interactivity. The exhibition features some of the most influential artists and designers across five eras of game development, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. Video games use player participation to tell stories and engage audiences. In the same way as film, animation and performance, video games are a compelling and influential form of narrative art.

"The Art of Video Games" focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. The exhibition features 80 video games that demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles and large prints of in-game screen shots.

New technologies allow designers to create increasingly interactive and sophisticated game environments while staying grounded in traditional game types. Five featured games, one from each era, are available in the exhibition galleries for visitors to play for a few minutes, to gain some feel for the interactivity. The playable gamesPac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and Flowershow how players interact with the virtual worlds, highlighting innovative new techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games.

Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by excerpts from selected games projected 12 feet high, accompanied by a chipmusic soundtrack by 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, including "The Art of Video Games Anthem" recorded by 8 Bit Weapon specifically for the exhibition. These multimedia elements convey the excitement and complexity of the featured video games. An interior gallery includes a series of short videos showing the range of emotional responses players have while interacting with games. Excerpts from interviews with 20 influential figures in the gaming world also are presented in the galleries.

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Syracuse Holiday Crafts Spectacular

Price: $6
New York State Fairgrounds
581 State Fair Blvd., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-380-4401, or visit craftproducers.com.

SUtura
XL Projects

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition of works by international graduate students in a variety of media, including ceramics, fibers, film, illustration, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, sculpture and video. Students exhibiting work include Renqian Yang, Yue Wang, Kejun Zhao, Jaroslava Prihodova, Sichang Yang, Laura Sanz, Ozan Atalan, Yanyu Dong, Neven Lochhead, Weigang Song, Zaoli Zhong, Alessia Cecchet, Tian Guan, Seung Huk Lee, Jila Nikpay, June Kyu Q Park, Danwen Si, and Shi Sun.

For more information, contact Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com, or phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Nourish: An Exploration of Consumption
601 Tully

Price: Free
601 Tully St.
Syracuse

With an overabundance of food, we are a culture obsessed with our next meal. The harsh reality is that much of the food produced goes to waste while others still go hungry at night. For this exhibition, the artists will explore the differing ways that people choose to nourish themselves and how it is reflective of who we are as a society and as an individual. The participating artists are Cynthia Herrera, Marisa Jahn and Steve Shada, Tattfoo Tan, various artists from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and Viviane Le Courtois.

Spoken Threads: Craftivist Fiber Art
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Spoken Threads is a collection of fiber art that takes its inspiration from the traditional women-made crafts such as quilting, knitting, weaving, sewing, and cross-stitch. It features women artists from across the USA, including Central New York, as well as those from Canada and the UK who use their art to speak wisdom on a variety of social and environmental issues. During the time of year that many consumers reach for something mass-produced off an end-cap display, this exhibition is a celebration of the handmade.

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Phil Solomon: Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Still Raining, Still Dreaming" is part of Solomon's acclaimed "In Memorium" series, a body of work shot entirely within the virtual world of the Grand Theft Auto video game, and is shown in conjunction with the Everson's exhibition of the Smithsonian traveling show The Art of Video Games.

"Still Raining, Still Dreaming," with its haunting soundtrack, will also be the debut of UVP's new outdoor sound system and new projector, a milestone for UVP that will significantly expand programming options and provide a truly spectacular experience.

The Nutcracker
Syracuse City Ballet

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Great Russian Nutcracker
Moscow Ballet

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Tickets available at the Landmark Theater box office and through Ticketmaster.

Jazz@Sitrus: Erika Lovett
CNY Jazz Arts Foundation

Price: Free
Sitrus on the Hill
Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel, Syracuse

Vocal Jazz and Broadway Selections
LeMoyne College

Price: $15 regular, $10 seniors, $5 students and LeMoyne faculty/staff
Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Two of LeMoyne College's vocal ensembles team up for an unforgettable evening of jazz classics with the Jazzuits, Broadway favorites featuring the LeMoyne College Singers, and the combined ensembles performing holiday hits.

Joanne Shenandoah Holiday Show
Folkus Project

Price: $18
May Memorial Unitarian Society
3800 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

A very special pre-holiday concert with Joanne Shenandoah, a Grammy-winning artist from right here in Central New York. Shenandoah is one of the world's top Native American songwriters and singers, with material that easily translates the customs and spirituality of her own culture to broader audiences. Says the Associated Press: "Shenandoah has become the most critically acclaimed Native American singer of her time."

An evening with Joanne Shenandoah is one of deep connection and warmth—a realm where the traditions may be different, but the heart and message of the music still perfectly fit the inherent spirituality of the season.

Holiday Specials
Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus
Stephen Gamba, conductor

Price: $15 regular, $12 seniors/students (advance); $18 regular, $15 seniors/students (at the door)
Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church
5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

To celebrate all the great music found in these holiday treats, SGLC presents a concert of music from TV holiday specials, including songs from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "The Grinch," and a number of variety shows.

Ensemble Series: Baroque Ensemble
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For most events, free and accessible concert parking is available on campus in the Q-1 lot, located behind Crouse College. Additional parking is available in Irving Garage. Campus parking availability is subject to change, so please call 315-443-2191 for current information.

Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, with Freebeer, Sassafras Jenkins
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Young Authors Academy Reading
Downtown Writer's Center

Price: Free
YMCA
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The YAA is the DWC's teen and tween creative writing program, and this is the first time we've featured them for a reading of their own. Come listen, and meet the next generation of DWC writers!

All I Want for Christmas Is...!
Covey Theatre Company

Price: $16
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Covey presents its first family production, authored by the company co-founders, Garrett Heater and Susan Blumer, and published by Drama Source, Inc. Celebrate the holidays with Madeline, Christopher, and Abigail, three youngsters who learn that what you want for Christmas is not always what you need. Filled with colorful characters like Elfis the Elf (Jimmy Wachter), Prancer the Reindeer (Darian Sundberg), and of course Santa Claus (Edward Mastin), this memorable musical is the perfect stocking-stuffer for the Season of Giving.

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Classified
Open Hand Theater
Hand in Hand Youth Theater

Price: $5
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

Join us to experience the creative original work of our outstanding student artists in this spy thriller.

Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge
Central New York Playhouse
Greg J. Hipius, director

Price: $20
CNY Playhouse
Shoppingtown Mall, Entrance No. 4 (adjacent to parking garage), Dewitt

In this departure from Dickens, young Scrooge's exclamations of "Bah, humbug!" are an undiagnosed "kind of seasonal Tourette's Syndrome," and The Ghost of Christmas Past is played by a sassy African-American woman with enough attitude to portray all three spirits (which she does). She tries to show Scrooge his past, present and future in order to change him, but her magic keeps malfunctioning in Christopher Durang's satirical version of the beloved holiday classic, and they consistently find themselves transported to the wrong time and place. She tries to take Scrooge back to see his old employers, the Fezziwigs--"always an audience favorite"--but instead she and Scrooge keep appearing in the present at the Cratchit's pathetic home. Mrs. Bob Cratchit, a minor character in the Dickens, takes center stage here. No longer loving and long suffering, Mrs. Bob is in a rage: She's sick of Tiny Tim (the goody-goody crippled child), she hates her 20 other children (most of them confined to the root cellar), including oversized Little Nell, and she wants to get drunk and jump off London Bridge. As the Ghost loses more control, the plot morphs into parodies of Oliver Twist, The Gift of the Magi, and It's a Wonderful Life. And to make matters worse, Scrooge and Mrs. Bob seem to be kindred souls falling in love. With a dénouement that is two parts Touched by an Angel and one part The Queen of Mean, Scrooge's tale of redemption and gentle grace is placed squarely on its head.

Music direction by Dan Williams.

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*SOLD OUT* The Music Man
Redhouse

Price: $30 regular, $20 members
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

An affectionate salute to Smalltown, USA, of a bygone era, the musical The Music Man follows fast-talking traveling salesman Harold Hill as he cons the people of River City, Iowa into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys' band that he vows to organize. Book, music and lyrics by Meredith Wilson, story by Meredith Wilson and Franklin Lacey. Presented in conjunction with ARC, Hillside and Elmcrest Children's Center.

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A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Peter Amster, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Charles Dickens' beloved family classic returns to Central New York after a 7-year absence in an all-new adaptation and production from Peter Amster. "He was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner." But somewhere deep inside Scrooge there remains the little boy still capable of feeling love and joy. This song-and-dance infused adaptation by Romulus Linney sticks closely to Dickens' classic tale to awaken the heart of that lost little boy.

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Saturday, December 7, 2013

In Da Window: Glasswork by Don Plouffe
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

A Syracuse native, Don received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MAT from Oswego State. He has worked in artist studios from Venice, CA, to Florence, Italy, and in art classrooms all over CNY. Each experience has had an impact on what he creates from ceramic tiles, to stained glass windows and doors, to sculptures of creatures and beasts of all sorts. He strives to create work worth spending time with and enjoys the process almost as much as the finished piece.

Holiday Gift Gallery Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Price: Free
Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Robert Thurber Photographs
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Watercolors by Bill Elkins
Onondaga County Central Library

Price: Free
Onondaga County Central Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Bill Elkins has been a practicing architect in Syracuse for over 30 years. After a visit to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine in 1995, he was inspired to try his hand at watercolors. He has been painting and studying the medium ever since.

Drawing on Talent: 5th Annual Members Group Art Exhibit
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

Group art exhibit featuring work in all media by members of the Baltimore Woods member community.

Water Below, Sky Above
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diane Menzies: landscape oil paintings
Deeann vonHunke and Robert vonHunke: collaborative pieces with Robert's painting and Dee's metalwork
Wes Weiss: ceramic sculptural forms
Deeann vonHunke: jewelry
Karen Burns: oil on canvas landscape paintings

28th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 children
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

It's that time of year again! The upstairs gallery of the museum has been transformed into a 1800s street scene with over 40 gingerbread creations made by professional and amateur bakers from across the region on display in storefront windows.

Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, children under 10 free (combo ticket including The Art of Video Games $10, children under 10 free)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This 28th annual Syracuse area tradition features artfully decorated trees, wreaths and unique displays that create a beautiful winter wonderland. All the decorations and display items are for sale, all proceeds benefit the Everson Museum of Art. Enjoy live entertainment from local school and musical groups, and stop into the Musuem Shop to find the perfect gift.

The Art of Video Games
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors/military, $5 Everson members, $30 family (up to 2 adults & 4 children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Part of a ten-city national tour, "The Art of Video Games" is one of the first major exhibitions to explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking graphics, creative storytelling, and player interactivity. The exhibition features some of the most influential artists and designers across five eras of game development, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. Video games use player participation to tell stories and engage audiences. In the same way as film, animation and performance, video games are a compelling and influential form of narrative art.

"The Art of Video Games" focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. The exhibition features 80 video games that demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles and large prints of in-game screen shots.

New technologies allow designers to create increasingly interactive and sophisticated game environments while staying grounded in traditional game types. Five featured games, one from each era, are available in the exhibition galleries for visitors to play for a few minutes, to gain some feel for the interactivity. The playable gamesPac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and Flowershow how players interact with the virtual worlds, highlighting innovative new techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games.

Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by excerpts from selected games projected 12 feet high, accompanied by a chipmusic soundtrack by 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, including "The Art of Video Games Anthem" recorded by 8 Bit Weapon specifically for the exhibition. These multimedia elements convey the excitement and complexity of the featured video games. An interior gallery includes a series of short videos showing the range of emotional responses players have while interacting with games. Excerpts from interviews with 20 influential figures in the gaming world also are presented in the galleries.

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Jordan Eagles: Red Giant
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Using blood collected from a slaughterhouse as his primary medium, the artist explores ideas about transformation, death, and rebirth. Jordan Eagles encases the blood in Plexiglas and UV resin panels; mounted on the gallery walls they create a sublime environment that envelops and engages the viewer. The exhibition title, "Red Giant," refers to a luminous giant star in its final phase of stellar evolution—what our Sun will become in five billion years—while also referencing the intense, potent color of blood. The abstract patterns and forms in the works may suggest internal organs as well as cosmological phenomena like solar storms, sunspots, craters, meteorites, and supernova explosions.

Eagles' works are in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Princeton University Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum; and the Everson Museum of Art. Recent solo shows include Causey Contemporary and Krause Gallery, New York; International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; and Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco.He has been featured in numerous publications, including Time Magazine, The New York Times, L'Uomo Vogue, Architectural Digest and Wired.

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Inspired Tidings: Annual Holiday Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Neighboring Visions
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

A group show featuring works by three Tully artists: jewelry by gallery director Sarah Panzarella, pottery by Jeremy Randall, and paintings by Grant Dolge.

Paintings by Marilyn Masters
Maxwell Memorial Library

Price: Free
Maxwell Memorial Library
14 Genesee St., Camillus

If a medium can be used for artistic expression, it's a safe bet that Marilyn Masters has worked with it. The impressionist artist, originally from Huntington, NY, is a graduate of both the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has studied acrylics, pastel, watercolors, pencil drawing, even block printing, furniture art, and textile design. An R.N. with a degree from Upstate Medical Center, Masters has combined her artistic and health careers by creating detailed medical drawings.

Syracuse Holiday Crafts Spectacular

Price: $6
New York State Fairgrounds
581 State Fair Blvd., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-380-4401, or visit craftproducers.com.

Plowshares Craftsfair

Price: $2-$5 sliding scale; children and seniors free
Nottingham High School
3100 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Central New York's premier multicultural crafts fair, Plowshares features 120 craftspeople and community groups in a marketplace of beautifully diverse, hand made items.

Performers include:
10:30 am: Eli Thomas
11:30am Young & Talented Dance Company
12:00 pm: Full Moon Hipsters & Ionah Raqs
1:00 pm: Syracuse Community Choir
2:00 pm: One Black Voice
4:00 pm: Mark Zane

Philipe Doddard: The Idea of Modernity in Haitian Contemporary Art
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Through bold brush strokes and vibrant color combinations, graphic and visual artist Philippe Dodard critically engages and empowers audiences throughout the world. Dodard, born and raised in Haiti, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Port-au-Prince and the International School of Bordeaux, France, where he explored graphic design. Although paintings are featured in this exhibition, Dodard is a diverse artist whose body of work includes metalwork, large sculptures and jewelry. Dodard's incredible talent has resulted in international recognition and creative collaborations including his most recent with fashion designer Donna Karan. Irrespective of the discipline or media, Dodard's aesthetic reflects his love for Haiti.

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Holiday Show
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Show features jewelry, ceramics, photography, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include Karin Bremer, Willson Cummer, Jen Gandee, Henry Gernhardt, Michael Hughes, Marie LoParco, Hannah Meredith, Laurel Moranz, Jessica Pilowa, Lily Tsay, Lucie Wellner, and Errol Willett.

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit. Many fine art and craft artists currently have work on display at the gallery shop. New holiday cards, ornaments, and many gift items fill the space.

Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Fine art and crafts handmade by local guild and independent artists. Find unique pottery, stained glass, paintings, jewelry, hand-crafted soaps and candles, and much more.

Culture of the Cocktail Hour
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The story of cocktail fashions has several associations with local history. This exhibit will discover some of those people, places and events, including Syracuse's most famous cocktail lounges of days gone by. Cocktails also conjure up the exciting era of the Roaring Twenties, when speakeasies flourished during the decade of Prohibition. Displays will include the story of one of the most famous local speakeasies, located just a few hundred feet from the OH Museum, including a menu of its libations, and the tale of the police raid that shut it down. Also on exhibit, along with other documents and artifacts of the era will be an original federal court ledger listing arrests and convictions across the state for Prohibition violations and a local brewery's recipes for "near beer" and flavored sodas, which helped keep them in business through the infamous "dry" years when America famously tried unsuccessfully to eliminate intoxicating beverages from its culture.

Fashion After Five
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit, Fashion After Five, curated by Syracuse University's Jeffrey Mayer, associate professor of fashion design and history and curator of the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection, will explore the history of the cocktail dress with several spectacular garments from the collections of OHA and the Sue Ann Genet Collection. Also represented in the exhibit will be the work of students from the S.U. Department of Fashion Design who will present their own creations, inspired by the vintage dresses selected for the exhibition—a perfect way to combine the past and the present for this exciting new exhibit.

Snowy Splendor
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This exhibit will feature oil and watercolor paintings, photographs, drawings and prints of contemporary or vintage winter scenes of Onondaga County.

Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition presents Paul Strand's famous Mexican Portfolio, which includes photogravure impressions of people, landscapes, architecture, and religious objects that he encountered in Mexico during his travels there in 1932.

International Art from the Permanent Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Highlighting the breadth of the collections' encyclopedic holdings and exploring international artists and themes, these new displays explore the genres of photography, prints, paintings and sculpture. Two of the exhibitions on display in the Print and Photo Study Galleries will highlight the University's vast holdings of historical Japanese photographs and prints. The third exhibition will examine artwork created by international artists who have immigrated to the United States.

America's Calling, presented in the Gallery of American Art, is an exhibition of 16 works of art by 15 foreign-born artists, including Ben Shahn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Josef Albers. The artists included in the exhibition, or their families, were drawn to the United States because it offered opportunities unavailable in their homelands. A variety of media is presented in the display, including painting, ceramics, sculpture and printmaking that are handled using often innovative techniques. Cumulatively, these artists had a profound and permanent effect on the evolution of American art.

The Photo Study Room will present Visions for Sale: Photographs of Nineteenth Century Japan, an exhibition of 22 hand-colored albumen prints from the 19th century exploring the country's people, land and environment that was quickly changing due to modernization. European photographers such as Felice Beato and Baron Raimond Stillfield traveled to Japan to document the nation's exotic landscape and historically idiosyncratic jobs before they were swept away by the tide of modernism.

Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga: Japanese Woodcuts from the Syracuse University Art Collection will be installed in the Print Study Room and draws from the University's collection of over 300 examples from this important and hugely influential art movement. The prints on view date from the height of color Ukiyo-e printmaking (c1780-1868) through Japan's Meiji period (1868-1912) to 20th century impressions of the Shin Hanga movement (1915-1940s). Masters of this medium are represented, including the work of Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Hokusai, Hiroshida, Tsuchiya Koitsu and Yoshida Hiroshi. The prints exemplify the soft, painterly style that is synonymous with the Japanese woodcut, and illustrates the wide range of subjects from courtesans to Kabuki theater and the Japanese landscape.

Print Making Revolution: Mexican Prints and the Taller de Grafica Popular
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

An exhibition of over 130 original prints drawn from the SU Art Collection, as well as lenders including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Library of Congress, and the Blanton Museum of Art. The exhibition features important Mexican artists and post-Mexican Revolution artwork, with emphasis on the prints produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People's Graphic Workshop), or TGP. This influential workshop advanced a variety of revolutionary ideals and causes, including the formation of organized labor, the fight for civil rights, and an active campaign against fascism.

Print Making Revolution is organized into four subjects. The first acts as precursor to the TGP, highlighting the work of artists that helped to define the Mexican print landscape early in the 20th century. These figures include José Gaudalupe Posada, Jean Charlot, and the "Big Three": Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros.

The exhibition then transitions into the artists of the TGP, with emphasis on the Taller's director Leopoldo Méndez, but also includes Ángel Bracho, Isidoro Ocampo, and Alfredo Zalce, among others.

The third part of the exhibition focuses on the linocut portfolio Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana, a vividly illustrated narration of the Mexican Revolution, published by the workshop in 1947. Shown in its entirety, the portfolio contains 84 original prints by 16 artists.

Finally, the exhibition highlights the gringos—Americans working at the TGP during the early and influential days of the prolific workshop, Angel Bracho, Victoria! Los Artistas de Taller de Grafica Popular, 1945 University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque including John Woodrow Wilson, Mariana Yampolsky and Elizabeth Catlett. The impact of the TGP reached well beyond the conventional boundaries of art making, affecting political and social movements in Mexico and the United States.

Spoken Threads: Craftivist Fiber Art
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Spoken Threads is a collection of fiber art that takes its inspiration from the traditional women-made crafts such as quilting, knitting, weaving, sewing, and cross-stitch. It features women artists from across the USA, including Central New York, as well as those from Canada and the UK who use their art to speak wisdom on a variety of social and environmental issues. During the time of year that many consumers reach for something mass-produced off an end-cap display, this exhibition is a celebration of the handmade.

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SUtura
XL Projects

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition of works by international graduate students in a variety of media, including ceramics, fibers, film, illustration, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, sculpture and video. Students exhibiting work include Renqian Yang, Yue Wang, Kejun Zhao, Jaroslava Prihodova, Sichang Yang, Laura Sanz, Ozan Atalan, Yanyu Dong, Neven Lochhead, Weigang Song, Zaoli Zhong, Alessia Cecchet, Tian Guan, Seung Huk Lee, Jila Nikpay, June Kyu Q Park, Danwen Si, and Shi Sun.

For more information, contact Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com, or phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Phil Solomon: Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Urban Video Project

Price: Free
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

"Still Raining, Still Dreaming" is part of Solomon's acclaimed "In Memorium" series, a body of work shot entirely within the virtual world of the Grand Theft Auto video game, and is shown in conjunction with the Everson's exhibition of the Smithsonian traveling show The Art of Video Games.

"Still Raining, Still Dreaming," with its haunting soundtrack, will also be the debut of UVP's new outdoor sound system and new projector, a milestone for UVP that will significantly expand programming options and provide a truly spectacular experience.

The Nutcracker
Syracuse City Ballet

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Once Upon A Christmas
Empire State Dance Center

Price: $10 regular, $7 seniors, $5 students with ID
Roxboro Road Middle School
Bernard St., Mattydale

For more information, phone 315-807-7555 or visit www.empirestatedancectr.org.

The Nutcracker
Syracuse City Ballet

Crouse Hinds Concert Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Once Upon A Christmas
Empire State Dance Center

Price: $10 regular, $7 seniors, $5 students with ID
Roxboro Road Middle School
Bernard St., Mattydale

For more information, phone 315-807-7555 or visit www.empirestatedancectr.org.

Lakeside Artistry Craft Fair

First Presbyterian Church of Skaneateles
97 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Fine arts and crafts, textiles, jewelry, and more.

Student Recital Series: Ashley Nichols, clarinet
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Works by Weber, Kovacs, Poulenc, Milhaud, and Lutoslawski, and featuring Meghan O'Keefe on violin.

For most events, free and accessible concert parking is available on campus in the Q-1 lot, located behind Crouse College. Additional parking is available in Irving Garage. Campus parking availability is subject to change, so please call 315-443-2191 for current information.

Winter Concert
Liverpool Community Chorus

Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Holiday Specials
Syracuse Gay and Lesbian Chorus
Stephen Gamba, conductor

Price: $15 regular, $12 seniors/students (advance); $18 regular, $15 seniors/students (at the door)
Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church
5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt

To celebrate all the great music found in these holiday treats, SGLC presents a concert of music from TV holiday specials, including songs from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "The Grinch," and a number of variety shows.

Star Mother's Youngest Child
Open Hand Theater
Theatre Figuren

Price: $8
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

A beautiful performance featuring Scandinavian music, a toy set and mesmerizing puppets. A Christmas Eve tale of friendship and sharing which for two unsuspecting characters, unveil secrets and the discovery that of all the "things" to give or receive, love is the most precious. Michelle Costa of Theatre Figuren brings us this stunning performance based on the story by Louise Moeri.

Freckleface Strawberry
Rarely Done Productions
Dormouse Theatrics
Shawn Forster, director

Price: $15 ages 13 and up, $12 ages 6-12; $10 ages 5 and under
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Freckleface Strawberry was just like every other girl—except she had bright red hair and something worse...FRECKLES!

Freckleface Strawberry, The Musical, based on the beloved New York Times best-selling book by celebrated actress Julianne Moore, is a brand new family musical. You and your family can step inside the book's pages with Freckleface and friends as they learn love the skin they're in.

Freckleface Strawberry will do anything to get rid of her freckles—from scrubbing them with soap, to caking on makeup, and even wearing a ski mask to school!

Will her schoolmates realize its her under the mask? Will Freckleface be brave enough to finally face her complexion in the mirror? With the help of her loveable schoolmates, including an amazingly talented ballerina, a cutie jock, a charming ditz, and a totally kooky teacher, Freckleface learns that everyone is different—and that's what makes everyone special.

With soaring live music, awesome dancing, and a freckleface full of laughs, your whole family will love this brand new musical for all ages...freckles or not!

Shannon Tompkins, choreographer; Michael Stephan, musical director; music and lyrics by Gary Kupper; book by Gary Kupper and Rose Caiola; based on the books written by Julianne Moore and illustrated by LeUyen Pham; conceived for the stage by Rose Caiola.

Children's Show: The Bully Games
Syracuse Stage

Price: $8
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The Bully Games is a 60-minute performance (which includes a 10-minute post-show discussion) recommended for ages 7 and up.

Performed as a highly physical clown show with striking scenery, costumes and sound, The Bully Games is an action packed adventure of four inquisitive kids and their discovery of a mysterious old classroom with a bully history. Through games of status and role-playing, it explores how bullying impacts a child's life and how to pro-actively "change the game." The Bully Games offers an extraordinary opportunity to share an important message through a rich theatrical experience.

The Bully Games is devised and directed by Lauren Unbekant, Director of Education at Syracuse Stage. Costume and scenic design is by Moria Clinton, and sound design is by Jonathan Herter. Featured in the cast are SU Drama students Dustin Kahn (The Ringleader), Danny Harris Kornfeld (The Innocent), Carly Blane (The Transformer), and Melissa Beaird (The Trickster). The Stage Manager is Joseph Trevino.

The fall tour of The Bully Games began in September and continues through early December. Approximately 5,500 children will see the production in 28 schools throughout Central New York.

20th Annual Dickens' Christmas

Price: Free
Village of Skaneateles
Skaneateles

More than 70 actors in Victorian-era apparel entertain visitors with scenes from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, along with sing-alongs, horse-drawn carriage rides, and more.

For more information, phone 315-685-0552, visit the Facebook page, or follow them on Twitter.

Snow White
Magic Circle Children's Theatre

Price: $5
Spaghetti Warehouse
689 N. Clinton St., Syracuse

Interactive retelling of the classic tale.

Children's Show: The Bully Games
Syracuse Stage

Price: $8
Storch Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

The Bully Games is a 60-minute performance (which includes a 10-minute post-show discussion) recommended for ages 7 and up.

Performed as a highly physical clown show with striking scenery, costumes and sound, The Bully Games is an action packed adventure of four inquisitive kids and their discovery of a mysterious old classroom with a bully history. Through games of status and role-playing, it explores how bullying impacts a child's life and how to pro-actively "change the game." The Bully Games offers an extraordinary opportunity to share an important message through a rich theatrical experience.

The Bully Games is devised and directed by Lauren Unbekant, Director of Education at Syracuse Stage. Costume and scenic design is by Moria Clinton, and sound design is by Jonathan Herter. Featured in the cast are SU Drama students Dustin Kahn (The Ringleader), Danny Harris Kornfeld (The Innocent), Carly Blane (The Transformer), and Melissa Beaird (The Trickster). The Stage Manager is Joseph Trevino.

The fall tour of The Bully Games began in September and continues through early December. Approximately 5,500 children will see the production in 28 schools throughout Central New York.

Freckleface Strawberry
Rarely Done Productions
Dormouse Theatrics
Shawn Forster, director

Price: $15 ages 13 and up, $12 ages 6-12; $10 ages 5 and under
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Freckleface Strawberry was just like every other girl—except she had bright red hair and something worse...FRECKLES!

Freckleface Strawberry, The Musical, based on the beloved New York Times best-selling book by celebrated actress Julianne Moore, is a brand new family musical. You and your family can step inside the book's pages with Freckleface and friends as they learn love the skin they're in.

Freckleface Strawberry will do anything to get rid of her freckles—from scrubbing them with soap, to caking on makeup, and even wearing a ski mask to school!

Will her schoolmates realize its her under the mask? Will Freckleface be brave enough to finally face her complexion in the mirror? With the help of her loveable schoolmates, including an amazingly talented ballerina, a cutie jock, a charming ditz, and a totally kooky teacher, Freckleface learns that everyone is different—and that's what makes everyone special.

With soaring live music, awesome dancing, and a freckleface full of laughs, your whole family will love this brand new musical for all ages...freckles or not!

Shannon Tompkins, choreographer; Michael Stephan, musical director; music and lyrics by Gary Kupper; book by Gary Kupper and Rose Caiola; based on the books written by Julianne Moore and illustrated by LeUyen Pham; conceived for the stage by Rose Caiola.

The Music Man
Redhouse

Price: $30 regular, $20 members
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

An affectionate salute to Smalltown, USA, of a bygone era, the musical The Music Man follows fast-talking traveling salesman Harold Hill as he cons the people of River City, Iowa into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys' band that he vows to organize. Book, music and lyrics by Meredith Wilson, story by Meredith Wilson and Franklin Lacey. Presented in conjunction with ARC, Hillside and Elmcrest Children's Center.

Read a Review!

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Peter Amster, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Charles Dickens' beloved family classic returns to Central New York after a 7-year absence in an all-new adaptation and production from Peter Amster. "He was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner." But somewhere deep inside Scrooge there remains the little boy still capable of feeling love and joy. This song-and-dance infused adaptation by Romulus Linney sticks closely to Dickens' classic tale to awaken the heart of that lost little boy.

Read a Review!

All I Want for Christmas Is...!
Covey Theatre Company

Price: $16
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Covey presents its first family production, authored by the company co-founders, Garrett Heater and Susan Blumer, and published by Drama Source, Inc. Celebrate the holidays with Madeline, Christopher, and Abigail, three youngsters who learn that what you want for Christmas is not always what you need. Filled with colorful characters like Elfis the Elf (Jimmy Wachter), Prancer the Reindeer (Darian Sundberg), and of course Santa Claus (Edward Mastin), this memorable musical is the perfect stocking-stuffer for the Season of Giving.

Read a Review!

Classified
Open Hand Theater
Hand in Hand Youth Theater

Price: $5
International Mask and Puppet Museum
518 Prospect Ave., Syracuse

Join us to experience the creative original work of our outstanding student artists in this spy thriller.

Manheim Steamroller Christmas
Broadway in Syracuse

Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Mannheim Steamroller Christmas by Chip Davis has been America's favorite holiday celebration for over 25 years. Grammy Award winner Chip Davis has created a show that features the beloved Christmas music of Mannheim Steamroller along with dazzling multimedia effects performed in an intimate setting. The spirit of the season comes alive with the signature sound of Mannheim Steamroller. Don't miss this ultimate holiday tradition from the No. 1 Christmas music artist in history!

Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge
Central New York Playhouse
Greg J. Hipius, director

Price: $34.95 dinner and show, $20 show only
CNY Playhouse
Shoppingtown Mall, Entrance No. 4 (adjacent to parking garage), Dewitt

Tonight's performance will be preceded by dinner at 6:30 pm.

In this departure from Dickens, young Scrooge's exclamations of "Bah, humbug!" are an undiagnosed "kind of seasonal Tourette's Syndrome," and The Ghost of Christmas Past is played by a sassy African-American woman with enough attitude to portray all three spirits (which she does). She tries to show Scrooge his past, present and future in order to change him, but her magic keeps malfunctioning in Christopher Durang's satirical version of the beloved holiday classic, and they consistently find themselves transported to the wrong time and place. She tries to take Scrooge back to see his old employers, the Fezziwigs--"always an audience favorite"--but instead she and Scrooge keep appearing in the present at the Cratchit's pathetic home. Mrs. Bob Cratchit, a minor character in the Dickens, takes center stage here. No longer loving and long suffering, Mrs. Bob is in a rage: She's sick of Tiny Tim (the goody-goody crippled child), she hates her 20 other children (most of them confined to the root cellar), including oversized Little Nell, and she wants to get drunk and jump off London Bridge. As the Ghost loses more control, the plot morphs into parodies of Oliver Twist, The Gift of the Magi, and It's a Wonderful Life. And to make matters worse, Scrooge and Mrs. Bob seem to be kindred souls falling in love. With a dénouement that is two parts Touched by an Angel and one part The Queen of Mean, Scrooge's tale of redemption and gentle grace is placed squarely on its head.

Music direction by Dan Williams.

Read a review!

The Music Man
Redhouse

Price: $30 regular, $20 members
Former Redhouse Theater
219 S. West St., Syracuse

An affectionate salute to Smalltown, USA, of a bygone era, the musical The Music Man follows fast-talking traveling salesman Harold Hill as he cons the people of River City, Iowa into buying instruments and uniforms for a boys' band that he vows to organize. Book, music and lyrics by Meredith Wilson, story by Meredith Wilson and Franklin Lacey. Presented in conjunction with ARC, Hillside and Elmcrest Children's Center.

Read a Review!

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Peter Amster, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Charles Dickens' beloved family classic returns to Central New York after a 7-year absence in an all-new adaptation and production from Peter Amster. "He was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner." But somewhere deep inside Scrooge there remains the little boy still capable of feeling love and joy. This song-and-dance infused adaptation by Romulus Linney sticks closely to Dickens' classic tale to awaken the heart of that lost little boy.

Read a Review!

Sunday, December 8, 2013

In Da Window: Glasswork by Don Plouffe
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

A Syracuse native, Don received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MAT from Oswego State. He has worked in artist studios from Venice, CA, to Florence, Italy, and in art classrooms all over CNY. Each experience has had an impact on what he creates from ceramic tiles, to stained glass windows and doors, to sculptures of creatures and beasts of all sorts. He strives to create work worth spending time with and enjoys the process almost as much as the finished piece.

28th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 children
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

It's that time of year again! The upstairs gallery of the museum has been transformed into a 1800s street scene with over 40 gingerbread creations made by professional and amateur bakers from across the region on display in storefront windows.

Jackie Nickerson: Terrain
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Jackie Nickerson makes photographs that examine the essential nature of people and their relationship to the natural world, through personal identity and the physical and psychological condition of living and working. With "Terrain," Nickerson revisits eastern and southern Africa, focusing on how the exertions of labor leave psychic and material traces on people and the environment.

Willson Cummer: Dawn Light
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Willson Cummer is a fine-art photographer, curator and teacher who lives in Fayetteville, NY. Images from his projects have been included in national juried exhibitions. His first solo New York City show opened in December 2011 at OK Harris. Willson's work explores humanity's place in the environment. In addition to his own work, he curates and publishes the blog New Landscape Photography. Willson has taught workshops at Light Work/Community Darkrooms, Syracuse University, and Cazenovia College.

Artist's Statement:

In late July of 2012, a five-month depression unexpectedly lifted. For the first time in a long while, I was able to wake up in the morning with energy, eager to explore the day. With my camera I quickly began shooting the early morning light as it fell upon Fayetteville, NY, my hometown. I walked from my front door most times, and occasionally drove a bit further into the village. I wanted to explore the territory closest at hand.

Light is a fundamental ingredient for photography. It has also, for centuries, been used as a metaphor for healing and recovery. As a recovering depressive, I wanted to explore the dawn light on a metaphorical level. As an artist, I wanted to record the gorgeous cross- light of the early morning and the rich yellow hue of the direct light.

I was attracted to humble structures: gas stations, parking lots, aging commercial buildings. The interplay of the natural world and the built environment is a subject which continues to excite me.

Syracuse Holiday Crafts Spectacular

Price: $6
New York State Fairgrounds
581 State Fair Blvd., Syracuse

For more information, phone 315-380-4401, or visit craftproducers.com.

Inspired Tidings: Annual Holiday Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Holiday Show
Gandee Gallery

Gandee Gallery
7846 Main St., Fabius

The Holiday Show features jewelry, ceramics, photography, painting, and fiber art created by regionally and nationally recognized artists. Participating artists include Karin Bremer, Willson Cummer, Jen Gandee, Henry Gernhardt, Michael Hughes, Marie LoParco, Hannah Meredith, Laurel Moranz, Jessica Pilowa, Lily Tsay, Lucie Wellner, and Errol Willett.

The Holiday Group Show emphasizes the important role that handmade objects and fine art plays in domestic life, enriching living spaces and adorning the body. The Gandee Gallery encourages art lovers to celebrate the holidays by giving gifts that embody the creative spirit. Many fine art and craft artists currently have work on display at the gallery shop. New holiday cards, ornaments, and many gift items fill the space.

Neighboring Visions
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

A group show featuring works by three Tully artists: jewelry by gallery director Sarah Panzarella, pottery by Jeremy Randall, and paintings by Grant Dolge.

Plowshares Craftsfair

Price: $2-$5 sliding scale; children and seniors free
Nottingham High School
3100 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Central New York's premier multicultural crafts fair, Plowshares features 120 craftspeople and community groups in a marketplace of beautifully diverse, hand made items.

Performers include:
11:30 am: Savannah Juvannis
12:00 pm: Hanita Blair
1:30 pm: Harmonia
2:00 pm: Colleen & Some Guys
4:00 pm: C. Jack Production

Culture of the Cocktail Hour
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The story of cocktail fashions has several associations with local history. This exhibit will discover some of those people, places and events, including Syracuse's most famous cocktail lounges of days gone by. Cocktails also conjure up the exciting era of the Roaring Twenties, when speakeasies flourished during the decade of Prohibition. Displays will include the story of one of the most famous local speakeasies, located just a few hundred feet from the OH Museum, including a menu of its libations, and the tale of the police raid that shut it down. Also on exhibit, along with other documents and artifacts of the era will be an original federal court ledger listing arrests and convictions across the state for Prohibition violations and a local brewery's recipes for "near beer" and flavored sodas, which helped keep them in business through the infamous "dry" years when America famously tried unsuccessfully to eliminate intoxicating beverages from its culture.

Snowy Splendor
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

This exhibit will feature oil and watercolor paintings, photographs, drawings and prints of contemporary or vintage winter scenes of Onondaga County.

Fashion After Five
Onondaga Historical Association

Onondaga Historical Association
321 Montgomery St., Syracuse

The exhibit, Fashion After Five, curated by Syracuse University's Jeffrey Mayer, associate professor of fashion design and history and curator of the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection, will explore the history of the cocktail dress with several spectacular garments from the collections of OHA and the Sue Ann Genet Collection. Also represented in the exhibit will be the work of students from the S.U. Department of Fashion Design who will present their own creations, inspired by the vintage dresses selected for the exhibition—a perfect way to combine the past and the present for this exciting new exhibit.

Print Making Revolution: Mexican Prints and the Taller de Grafica Popular
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

An exhibition of over 130 original prints drawn from the SU Art Collection, as well as lenders including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Library of Congress, and the Blanton Museum of Art. The exhibition features important Mexican artists and post-Mexican Revolution artwork, with emphasis on the prints produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People's Graphic Workshop), or TGP. This influential workshop advanced a variety of revolutionary ideals and causes, including the formation of organized labor, the fight for civil rights, and an active campaign against fascism.

Print Making Revolution is organized into four subjects. The first acts as precursor to the TGP, highlighting the work of artists that helped to define the Mexican print landscape early in the 20th century. These figures include José Gaudalupe Posada, Jean Charlot, and the "Big Three": Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros.

The exhibition then transitions into the artists of the TGP, with emphasis on the Taller's director Leopoldo Méndez, but also includes Ángel Bracho, Isidoro Ocampo, and Alfredo Zalce, among others.

The third part of the exhibition focuses on the linocut portfolio Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana, a vividly illustrated narration of the Mexican Revolution, published by the workshop in 1947. Shown in its entirety, the portfolio contains 84 original prints by 16 artists.

Finally, the exhibition highlights the gringos—Americans working at the TGP during the early and influential days of the prolific workshop, Angel Bracho, Victoria! Los Artistas de Taller de Grafica Popular, 1945 University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque including John Woodrow Wilson, Mariana Yampolsky and Elizabeth Catlett. The impact of the TGP reached well beyond the conventional boundaries of art making, affecting political and social movements in Mexico and the United States.

International Art from the Permanent Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Highlighting the breadth of the collections' encyclopedic holdings and exploring international artists and themes, these new displays explore the genres of photography, prints, paintings and sculpture. Two of the exhibitions on display in the Print and Photo Study Galleries will highlight the University's vast holdings of historical Japanese photographs and prints. The third exhibition will examine artwork created by international artists who have immigrated to the United States.

America's Calling, presented in the Gallery of American Art, is an exhibition of 16 works of art by 15 foreign-born artists, including Ben Shahn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Josef Albers. The artists included in the exhibition, or their families, were drawn to the United States because it offered opportunities unavailable in their homelands. A variety of media is presented in the display, including painting, ceramics, sculpture and printmaking that are handled using often innovative techniques. Cumulatively, these artists had a profound and permanent effect on the evolution of American art.

The Photo Study Room will present Visions for Sale: Photographs of Nineteenth Century Japan, an exhibition of 22 hand-colored albumen prints from the 19th century exploring the country's people, land and environment that was quickly changing due to modernization. European photographers such as Felice Beato and Baron Raimond Stillfield traveled to Japan to document the nation's exotic landscape and historically idiosyncratic jobs before they were swept away by the tide of modernism.

Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga: Japanese Woodcuts from the Syracuse University Art Collection will be installed in the Print Study Room and draws from the University's collection of over 300 examples from this important and hugely influential art movement. The prints on view date from the height of color Ukiyo-e printmaking (c1780-1868) through Japan's Meiji period (1868-1912) to 20th century impressions of the Shin Hanga movement (1915-1940s). Masters of this medium are represented, including the work of Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Hokusai, Hiroshida, Tsuchiya Koitsu and Yoshida Hiroshi. The prints exemplify the soft, painterly style that is synonymous with the Japanese woodcut, and illustrates the wide range of subjects from courtesans to Kabuki theater and the Japanese landscape.

Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition presents Paul Strand's famous Mexican Portfolio, which includes photogravure impressions of people, landscapes, architecture, and religious objects that he encountered in Mexico during his travels there in 1932.

Spoken Threads: Craftivist Fiber Art
ArtRage Gallery

Price: Free
ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Spoken Threads is a collection of fiber art that takes its inspiration from the traditional women-made crafts such as quilting, knitting, weaving, sewing, and cross-stitch. It features women artists from across the USA, including Central New York, as well as those from Canada and the UK who use their art to speak wisdom on a variety of social and environmental issues. During the time of year that many consumers reach for something mass-produced off an end-cap display, this exhibition is a celebration of the handmade.

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Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, children under 10 free (combo ticket including The Art of Video Games $10, children under 10 free)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This 28th annual Syracuse area tradition features artfully decorated trees, wreaths and unique displays that create a beautiful winter wonderland. All the decorations and display items are for sale, all proceeds benefit the Everson Museum of Art. Enjoy live entertainment from local school and musical groups, and stop into the Musuem Shop to find the perfect gift.

Jordan Eagles: Red Giant
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Using blood collected from a slaughterhouse as his primary medium, the artist explores ideas about transformation, death, and rebirth. Jordan Eagles encases the blood in Plexiglas and UV resin panels; mounted on the gallery walls they create a sublime environment that envelops and engages the viewer. The exhibition title, "Red Giant," refers to a luminous giant star in its final phase of stellar evolution—what our Sun will become in five billion years—while also referencing the intense, potent color of blood. The abstract patterns and forms in the works may suggest internal organs as well as cosmological phenomena like solar storms, sunspots, craters, meteorites, and supernova explosions.

Eagles' works are in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Princeton University Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum; and the Everson Museum of Art. Recent solo shows include Causey Contemporary and Krause Gallery, New York; International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; and Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco.He has been featured in numerous publications, including Time Magazine, The New York Times, L'Uomo Vogue, Architectural Digest and Wired.

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The Art of Video Games
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors/military, $5 Everson members, $30 family (up to 2 adults & 4 children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Part of a ten-city national tour, "The Art of Video Games" is one of the first major exhibitions to explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking graphics, creative storytelling, and player interactivity. The exhibition features some of the most influential artists and designers across five eras of game development, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. Video games use player participation to tell stories and engage audiences. In the same way as film, animation and performance, video games are a compelling and influential form of narrative art.

"The Art of Video Games" focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. The exhibition features 80 video games that demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles and large prints of in-game screen shots.

New technologies allow designers to create increasingly interactive and sophisticated game environments while staying grounded in traditional game types. Five featured games, one from each era, are available in the exhibition galleries for visitors to play for a few minutes, to gain some feel for the interactivity. The playable gamesPac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and Flowershow how players interact with the virtual worlds, highlighting innovative new techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games.

Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by excerpts from selected games projected 12 feet high, accompanied by a chipmusic soundtrack by 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, including "The Art of Video Games Anthem" recorded by 8 Bit Weapon specifically for the exhibition. These multimedia elements convey the excitement and complexity of the featured video games. An interior gallery includes a series of short videos showing the range of emotional responses players have while interacting with games. Excerpts from interviews with 20 influential figures in the gaming world also are presented in the galleries.

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Robert Thurber Photographs
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

SUtura
XL Projects

Price: Free
XL Projects
307-313 S. Clinton St., Syracuse

An exhibition of works by international graduate students in a variety of media, including ceramics, fibers, film, illustration, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, sculpture and video. Students exhibiting work include Renqian Yang, Yue Wang, Kejun Zhao, Jaroslava Prihodova, Sichang Yang, Laura Sanz, Ozan Atalan, Yanyu Dong, Neven Lochhead, Weigang Song, Zaoli Zhong, Alessia Cecchet, Tian Guan, Seung Huk Lee, Jila Nikpay, June Kyu Q Park, Danwen Si, and Shi Sun.

For more information, contact Andrew Havenhand at ahavenhand@yahoo.com, or phone 315-442-2542 during gallery hours.

Film Series: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012)
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai while working as a journalist in China. Her detailed portrait provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.

Religion and Sexual Orientation in the 21th Century
University Neighbors Lecture Series
Featuring Reverend Fred Daley

Price: $10 regular, $5 with student ID
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Reverend Fred is pastor of All Saints Church on Lancaster Avenue, which on Nov. 1, 2008 was created from a merger of St. Therese and Our Lady of Solace churches. Father Fred, an openly gay, celibate priest, has been involved in social justice and peace issues throughout 38 years of ordained ministry. As a priest in Utica he helped establish a soup kitchen, a health clinic, a home for the dying, and a home for young women.

Sunday Musicale: Duo L'Adour
Fayetteville Free Library

Price: $5 suggested donation
Fayetteville Free Library
300 Orchard St., Fayetteville

Duo L'Adour features Martha Grener and Lacey Lee playing a beautiful mix of flute and harp music from classical, Celtic, to contemporary.

Messiah
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)
Syracuse University Oratorio Society
Eric Townell, conductor

Price: $35 regular, $25 senior, $10 student
St. Paul's Syracuse
220 E. Fayette St., Syracuse

Pam Igelsrud, soprano; Lorraine Yaros-Sullivan, mezzo-soprano; Matthew Valverde, tenor; Lawrence Craig, baritone.

Student Recital Series: Jamie Yavorsky, viola
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Ms. Yavorsky will be performing Bach's Violin Partita No. 2 in G minor, 2 of the 3 Pieces for Viola and Piano by Paul Coletti, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in Bb Major for Two Violas and the Passacalgia for Violin and Viola by Johann Halvorsen.

She will be joined by with Meghan O'Keefe, violin; Maria Varonko, viola; and Matt Scinto, piano

For most events, free and accessible concert parking is available on campus in the Q-1 lot, located behind Crouse College. Additional parking is available in Irving Garage. Campus parking availability is subject to change, so please call 315-443-2191 for current information.

Winter Concert
Liverpool Community Chorus

Carrier Theater, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Gail Lyons Harp Ensemble

Price: Free
Assumption Church
812 N. Salina St., Syracuse

A concert of harp and choir music.

For more information, phone 315-425-2882.

Carrie Lazarus Presents: Extraordinary Live

Price: $10
Landmark Theatre
362 S. Salina St., Syracuse

A performance by extraordinry high school singers, musicians and dancers. All proceeds support future young artists in our community to help them reach their full potential.

For more information, visit the Facebook page.

For tickets, phone 315-475-7980, or visit Ticketmaster.com

Holiday Concert
Syracuse Children's Chorus
Stephanie Mowery, conductor

Most Holy Rosary Church
111 Roberts Ave., Syracuse

Student Recital Series: Maria Varonko, viola
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For most events, free and accessible concert parking is available on campus in the Q-1 lot, located behind Crouse College. Additional parking is available in Irving Garage. Campus parking availability is subject to change, so please call 315-443-2191 for current information.

Chimemasters Holiday Concert
Syracuse Orchestra (formerly Symphoria)

Price: Free
Syracuse University Quad
Syracuse

Ring in the holidays with the sound of the Setnor chimes on your way to Holidays at Hendricks.

Holidays at Hendricks
Hendricks Chapel

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Holidays at Hendricks will feature the Hendricks Chapel Choir, SU Brass Ensemble, and University Organist Kola Owolabi. Collaborators this year include the Syracuse University Singers under the direction of Dr. John Warren; Windjammer, SU's Vocal Jazz ensemble under the direction of Jeff Welcher; and handbell ringers from SU's Setnor School of Music and Plymouth Congregational Church both under the direction of Maddie Horrell. The various groups will perform both individually and in combination.

The concert will include traditional favorites, such as "Deck the Halls" and "Jingle Bells," alongside holiday-oriented pieces from the classical repertoire, including the opening movement from J.S. Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" and a setting of "Wide Awake" by St. Olaf Choir founder F. Melius Christiansen. In keeping with Hendricks Chapel's inclusive interfaith vision, a variety of sacred and secular pieces will be offered.

The concert will close with the traditional candle lighting and singing of "Silent Night."

Those attending are asked to bring a non-perishable food item; items collected will be donated to those in need in the greater Syracuse community.

Public parking is free and available on a first-come, first-served basis in the Quad 1 lot (accessible via Crouse Drive), the Quad 3 lot (accessible via Sims Drive, with entrance between Bowne Hall and Carnegie Library), Waverly lot (accessible via Crouse Avenue) and in the Irving Garage.

Blackalicious, with Our Reality, Chaz Ultra
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

20th Annual Dickens' Christmas

Price: Free
Village of Skaneateles
Skaneateles

More than 70 actors in Victorian-era apparel entertain visitors with scenes from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, along with sing-alongs, horse-drawn carriage rides, and more.

For more information, phone 315-685-0552, visit the Facebook page, or follow them on Twitter.

Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge
Central New York Playhouse
Greg J. Hipius, director

Price: $15
CNY Playhouse
Shoppingtown Mall, Entrance No. 4 (adjacent to parking garage), Dewitt

In this departure from Dickens, young Scrooge's exclamations of "Bah, humbug!" are an undiagnosed "kind of seasonal Tourette's Syndrome," and The Ghost of Christmas Past is played by a sassy African-American woman with enough attitude to portray all three spirits (which she does). She tries to show Scrooge his past, present and future in order to change him, but her magic keeps malfunctioning in Christopher Durang's satirical version of the beloved holiday classic, and they consistently find themselves transported to the wrong time and place. She tries to take Scrooge back to see his old employers, the Fezziwigs--"always an audience favorite"--but instead she and Scrooge keep appearing in the present at the Cratchit's pathetic home. Mrs. Bob Cratchit, a minor character in the Dickens, takes center stage here. No longer loving and long suffering, Mrs. Bob is in a rage: She's sick of Tiny Tim (the goody-goody crippled child), she hates her 20 other children (most of them confined to the root cellar), including oversized Little Nell, and she wants to get drunk and jump off London Bridge. As the Ghost loses more control, the plot morphs into parodies of Oliver Twist, The Gift of the Magi, and It's a Wonderful Life. And to make matters worse, Scrooge and Mrs. Bob seem to be kindred souls falling in love. With a dénouement that is two parts Touched by an Angel and one part The Queen of Mean, Scrooge's tale of redemption and gentle grace is placed squarely on its head.

Music direction by Dan Williams.

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All I Want for Christmas Is...!
Covey Theatre Company

Price: $16
BeVard Room, Mulroy Civic Center
411 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Covey presents its first family production, authored by the company co-founders, Garrett Heater and Susan Blumer, and published by Drama Source, Inc. Celebrate the holidays with Madeline, Christopher, and Abigail, three youngsters who learn that what you want for Christmas is not always what you need. Filled with colorful characters like Elfis the Elf (Jimmy Wachter), Prancer the Reindeer (Darian Sundberg), and of course Santa Claus (Edward Mastin), this memorable musical is the perfect stocking-stuffer for the Season of Giving.

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Freckleface Strawberry
Rarely Done Productions
Dormouse Theatrics
Shawn Forster, director

Price: $15 ages 13 and up, $12 ages 6-12; $10 ages 5 and under
Atonement Lutheran Church
116 W. Glen Ave., Syracuse

Freckleface Strawberry was just like every other girl—except she had bright red hair and something worse...FRECKLES!

Freckleface Strawberry, The Musical, based on the beloved New York Times best-selling book by celebrated actress Julianne Moore, is a brand new family musical. You and your family can step inside the book's pages with Freckleface and friends as they learn love the skin they're in.

Freckleface Strawberry will do anything to get rid of her freckles—from scrubbing them with soap, to caking on makeup, and even wearing a ski mask to school!

Will her schoolmates realize its her under the mask? Will Freckleface be brave enough to finally face her complexion in the mirror? With the help of her loveable schoolmates, including an amazingly talented ballerina, a cutie jock, a charming ditz, and a totally kooky teacher, Freckleface learns that everyone is different—and that's what makes everyone special.

With soaring live music, awesome dancing, and a freckleface full of laughs, your whole family will love this brand new musical for all ages...freckles or not!

Shannon Tompkins, choreographer; Michael Stephan, musical director; music and lyrics by Gary Kupper; book by Gary Kupper and Rose Caiola; based on the books written by Julianne Moore and illustrated by LeUyen Pham; conceived for the stage by Rose Caiola.

A Christmas Carol
Syracuse Stage
Syracuse University Drama Department
Peter Amster, director

Archbold Theater, Syracuse Stage
820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Charles Dickens' beloved family classic returns to Central New York after a 7-year absence in an all-new adaptation and production from Peter Amster. "He was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner." But somewhere deep inside Scrooge there remains the little boy still capable of feeling love and joy. This song-and-dance infused adaptation by Romulus Linney sticks closely to Dickens' classic tale to awaken the heart of that lost little boy.

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Monday, December 9, 2013

In Da Window: Glasswork by Don Plouffe
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

A Syracuse native, Don received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MAT from Oswego State. He has worked in artist studios from Venice, CA, to Florence, Italy, and in art classrooms all over CNY. Each experience has had an impact on what he creates from ceramic tiles, to stained glass windows and doors, to sculptures of creatures and beasts of all sorts. He strives to create work worth spending time with and enjoys the process almost as much as the finished piece.

Robert Thurber Photographs
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Watercolors by Bill Elkins
Onondaga County Central Library

Price: Free
Onondaga County Central Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Bill Elkins has been a practicing architect in Syracuse for over 30 years. After a visit to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine in 1995, he was inspired to try his hand at watercolors. He has been painting and studying the medium ever since.

Drawing on Talent: 5th Annual Members Group Art Exhibit
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

Group art exhibit featuring work in all media by members of the Baltimore Woods member community.

Gallery Exhibit: OCC Faculty Art & Photography Exhibition
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

A mixed media show with works from Onondaga's own faculty members.

John James Audubon and the American Landscape
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

John James Audubon and the American Landscape showcases Syracuse University's copy of the rare double elephant folio The Birds of America. Printed in London and Edinburgh between 1827 and 1838, the work is a stunning visual catalog, featuring 435 plates depicting American bird life. The enterprise consumed much of Audubon's adult life and took him from the Pennsylvania woods to the Florida Keys and the Labrador coast. To its 19th-century audience, The Birds of America was much more than an ornithological inventory. It brought the exotic American wilderness into the drawing rooms and parlors of its wealthy subscribers. In 1896, former mayor of Syracuse and Syracuse University trustee James J. Welden donated a copy to the University. Today, The Birds of America is known for its extraordinary value, fetching more than ten million dollars at auction.

The exhibition situates The Birds of America in the wider contexts of Audubon's life, 19th-century scientific knowledge, and a rapidly changing landscape that was becoming less exotic each day. Also on display are Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (1808–14), Audubon's textual companion to The Birds of America (Ornithological Biography, 1831–49), and later volumes that speak to Audubon's legacy, such as first editions of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949). Syracuse University's copy of The Birds of America is disbound, which makes it possible for visitors to the exhibition to consider several different prints at once. Some of the engravings on display include the barn owl, Swainson's hawk, and the long-billed curlew, all of which depict American avian life against the backdrop of encroaching civilization.

Metamorphosis Personified: Works by Greg Trombly
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Behold a metamorphic journey away from the representational through work aimed to capture the essence of the human form and energy through light and dark values.

Tango
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This inaugural exhibit in Point of Contact's new gallery at The Warehouse will showcase the 20-piece grand folio art book Tango (Iris Editions 1991), a collaborative work by Argentine writer Pedro Cuperman and New York artist Nancy Graves. A significant work in Point of Contact's collection, Tango includes eight intaglio prints by Graves and thirteen pages of text by Cuperman.

28th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 children
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

It's that time of year again! The upstairs gallery of the museum has been transformed into a 1800s street scene with over 40 gingerbread creations made by professional and amateur bakers from across the region on display in storefront windows.

Inspired Tidings: Annual Holiday Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Neighboring Visions
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

A group show featuring works by three Tully artists: jewelry by gallery director Sarah Panzarella, pottery by Jeremy Randall, and paintings by Grant Dolge.

Jackie Nickerson: Terrain
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Jackie Nickerson makes photographs that examine the essential nature of people and their relationship to the natural world, through personal identity and the physical and psychological condition of living and working. With "Terrain," Nickerson revisits eastern and southern Africa, focusing on how the exertions of labor leave psychic and material traces on people and the environment.

Willson Cummer: Dawn Light
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Willson Cummer is a fine-art photographer, curator and teacher who lives in Fayetteville, NY. Images from his projects have been included in national juried exhibitions. His first solo New York City show opened in December 2011 at OK Harris. Willson's work explores humanity's place in the environment. In addition to his own work, he curates and publishes the blog New Landscape Photography. Willson has taught workshops at Light Work/Community Darkrooms, Syracuse University, and Cazenovia College.

Artist's Statement:

In late July of 2012, a five-month depression unexpectedly lifted. For the first time in a long while, I was able to wake up in the morning with energy, eager to explore the day. With my camera I quickly began shooting the early morning light as it fell upon Fayetteville, NY, my hometown. I walked from my front door most times, and occasionally drove a bit further into the village. I wanted to explore the territory closest at hand.

Light is a fundamental ingredient for photography. It has also, for centuries, been used as a metaphor for healing and recovery. As a recovering depressive, I wanted to explore the dawn light on a metaphorical level. As an artist, I wanted to record the gorgeous cross- light of the early morning and the rich yellow hue of the direct light.

I was attracted to humble structures: gas stations, parking lots, aging commercial buildings. The interplay of the natural world and the built environment is a subject which continues to excite me.

Paintings by Marilyn Masters
Maxwell Memorial Library

Price: Free
Maxwell Memorial Library
14 Genesee St., Camillus

If a medium can be used for artistic expression, it's a safe bet that Marilyn Masters has worked with it. The impressionist artist, originally from Huntington, NY, is a graduate of both the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has studied acrylics, pastel, watercolors, pencil drawing, even block printing, furniture art, and textile design. An R.N. with a degree from Upstate Medical Center, Masters has combined her artistic and health careers by creating detailed medical drawings.

Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Fine art and crafts handmade by local guild and independent artists. Find unique pottery, stained glass, paintings, jewelry, hand-crafted soaps and candles, and much more.

Student Recital Series: Nate Larsen, violin
Syracuse University Setnor School of Music

Price: Free
Hendricks Chapel
Syracuse University, Syracuse

For most events, free and accessible concert parking is available on campus in the Q-1 lot, located behind Crouse College. Additional parking is available in Irving Garage. Campus parking availability is subject to change, so please call 315-443-2191 for current information.

Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees presents Men of the Strip
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

In Da Window: Glasswork by Don Plouffe
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

A Syracuse native, Don received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MAT from Oswego State. He has worked in artist studios from Venice, CA, to Florence, Italy, and in art classrooms all over CNY. Each experience has had an impact on what he creates from ceramic tiles, to stained glass windows and doors, to sculptures of creatures and beasts of all sorts. He strives to create work worth spending time with and enjoys the process almost as much as the finished piece.

Robert Thurber Photographs
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Watercolors by Bill Elkins
Onondaga County Central Library

Price: Free
Onondaga County Central Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Bill Elkins has been a practicing architect in Syracuse for over 30 years. After a visit to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine in 1995, he was inspired to try his hand at watercolors. He has been painting and studying the medium ever since.

Drawing on Talent: 5th Annual Members Group Art Exhibit
Baltimore Woods Weeks Art Gallery

Price: Free
Baltimore Woods Nature Center
4007 Bishop Hill Rd., Marcellus

Group art exhibit featuring work in all media by members of the Baltimore Woods member community.

Holiday Gift Gallery Show
Clayscapes Pottery Gallery

Price: Free
Clayscapes Pottery Studio
1003 W. Fayette St., Suite L1, Syracuse

Gallery Exhibit: OCC Faculty Art & Photography Exhibition
Onondaga Community College

Price: Free
Ann Felton Multicultural Center and Gallery
Onondaga Community College, Syracuse

A mixed media show with works from Onondaga's own faculty members.

John James Audubon and the American Landscape
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

John James Audubon and the American Landscape showcases Syracuse University's copy of the rare double elephant folio The Birds of America. Printed in London and Edinburgh between 1827 and 1838, the work is a stunning visual catalog, featuring 435 plates depicting American bird life. The enterprise consumed much of Audubon's adult life and took him from the Pennsylvania woods to the Florida Keys and the Labrador coast. To its 19th-century audience, The Birds of America was much more than an ornithological inventory. It brought the exotic American wilderness into the drawing rooms and parlors of its wealthy subscribers. In 1896, former mayor of Syracuse and Syracuse University trustee James J. Welden donated a copy to the University. Today, The Birds of America is known for its extraordinary value, fetching more than ten million dollars at auction.

The exhibition situates The Birds of America in the wider contexts of Audubon's life, 19th-century scientific knowledge, and a rapidly changing landscape that was becoming less exotic each day. Also on display are Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (1808–14), Audubon's textual companion to The Birds of America (Ornithological Biography, 1831–49), and later volumes that speak to Audubon's legacy, such as first editions of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949). Syracuse University's copy of The Birds of America is disbound, which makes it possible for visitors to the exhibition to consider several different prints at once. Some of the engravings on display include the barn owl, Swainson's hawk, and the long-billed curlew, all of which depict American avian life against the backdrop of encroaching civilization.

Metamorphosis Personified: Works by Greg Trombly
Westcott Community Art Gallery

Price: Free
Westcott Community Center
Corner of Euclid Ave. and Westcott St., Syracuse

Behold a metamorphic journey away from the representational through work aimed to capture the essence of the human form and energy through light and dark values.

Water Below, Sky Above
Edgewood Gallery

Edgewood Gallery
216 Tecumseh Rd., Syracuse

Diane Menzies: landscape oil paintings
Deeann vonHunke and Robert vonHunke: collaborative pieces with Robert's painting and Dee's metalwork
Wes Weiss: ceramic sculptural forms
Deeann vonHunke: jewelry
Karen Burns: oil on canvas landscape paintings

Tango
Point of Contact Gallery

Price: Free
Point of Contact Gallery
350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse

This inaugural exhibit in Point of Contact's new gallery at The Warehouse will showcase the 20-piece grand folio art book Tango (Iris Editions 1991), a collaborative work by Argentine writer Pedro Cuperman and New York artist Nancy Graves. A significant work in Point of Contact's collection, Tango includes eight intaglio prints by Graves and thirteen pages of text by Cuperman.

Philipe Doddard: The Idea of Modernity in Haitian Contemporary Art
Community Folk Art Center

Community Folk Art Center
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Through bold brush strokes and vibrant color combinations, graphic and visual artist Philippe Dodard critically engages and empowers audiences throughout the world. Dodard, born and raised in Haiti, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Port-au-Prince and the International School of Bordeaux, France, where he explored graphic design. Although paintings are featured in this exhibition, Dodard is a diverse artist whose body of work includes metalwork, large sculptures and jewelry. Dodard's incredible talent has resulted in international recognition and creative collaborations including his most recent with fashion designer Donna Karan. Irrespective of the discipline or media, Dodard's aesthetic reflects his love for Haiti.

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28th Annual Gingerbread Gallery
Erie Canal Museum

Price: $5 regular, $4 seniors, $2 children
Erie Canal Museum
318 Erie Blvd. E., Syracuse

It's that time of year again! The upstairs gallery of the museum has been transformed into a 1800s street scene with over 40 gingerbread creations made by professional and amateur bakers from across the region on display in storefront windows.

Inspired Tidings: Annual Holiday Show
Gallery 54

Gallery 54
54 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

Neighboring Visions
Imagine

Imagine
38 E. Genesee St., Skaneateles

A group show featuring works by three Tully artists: jewelry by gallery director Sarah Panzarella, pottery by Jeremy Randall, and paintings by Grant Dolge.

Jackie Nickerson: Terrain
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Jackie Nickerson makes photographs that examine the essential nature of people and their relationship to the natural world, through personal identity and the physical and psychological condition of living and working. With "Terrain," Nickerson revisits eastern and southern Africa, focusing on how the exertions of labor leave psychic and material traces on people and the environment.

Willson Cummer: Dawn Light
Light Work Gallery

Price: Free
Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Willson Cummer is a fine-art photographer, curator and teacher who lives in Fayetteville, NY. Images from his projects have been included in national juried exhibitions. His first solo New York City show opened in December 2011 at OK Harris. Willson's work explores humanity's place in the environment. In addition to his own work, he curates and publishes the blog New Landscape Photography. Willson has taught workshops at Light Work/Community Darkrooms, Syracuse University, and Cazenovia College.

Artist's Statement:

In late July of 2012, a five-month depression unexpectedly lifted. For the first time in a long while, I was able to wake up in the morning with energy, eager to explore the day. With my camera I quickly began shooting the early morning light as it fell upon Fayetteville, NY, my hometown. I walked from my front door most times, and occasionally drove a bit further into the village. I wanted to explore the territory closest at hand.

Light is a fundamental ingredient for photography. It has also, for centuries, been used as a metaphor for healing and recovery. As a recovering depressive, I wanted to explore the dawn light on a metaphorical level. As an artist, I wanted to record the gorgeous cross- light of the early morning and the rich yellow hue of the direct light.

I was attracted to humble structures: gas stations, parking lots, aging commercial buildings. The interplay of the natural world and the built environment is a subject which continues to excite me.

Paintings by Marilyn Masters
Maxwell Memorial Library

Price: Free
Maxwell Memorial Library
14 Genesee St., Camillus

If a medium can be used for artistic expression, it's a safe bet that Marilyn Masters has worked with it. The impressionist artist, originally from Huntington, NY, is a graduate of both the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has studied acrylics, pastel, watercolors, pencil drawing, even block printing, furniture art, and textile design. An R.N. with a degree from Upstate Medical Center, Masters has combined her artistic and health careers by creating detailed medical drawings.

Art Mart
Syracuse Allied Arts

City Hall Commons Atrium
201 East Washington St., Syracuse

Fine art and crafts handmade by local guild and independent artists. Find unique pottery, stained glass, paintings, jewelry, hand-crafted soaps and candles, and much more.

Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

This exhibition presents Paul Strand's famous Mexican Portfolio, which includes photogravure impressions of people, landscapes, architecture, and religious objects that he encountered in Mexico during his travels there in 1932.

International Art from the Permanent Collection
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Highlighting the breadth of the collections' encyclopedic holdings and exploring international artists and themes, these new displays explore the genres of photography, prints, paintings and sculpture. Two of the exhibitions on display in the Print and Photo Study Galleries will highlight the University's vast holdings of historical Japanese photographs and prints. The third exhibition will examine artwork created by international artists who have immigrated to the United States.

America's Calling, presented in the Gallery of American Art, is an exhibition of 16 works of art by 15 foreign-born artists, including Ben Shahn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Josef Albers. The artists included in the exhibition, or their families, were drawn to the United States because it offered opportunities unavailable in their homelands. A variety of media is presented in the display, including painting, ceramics, sculpture and printmaking that are handled using often innovative techniques. Cumulatively, these artists had a profound and permanent effect on the evolution of American art.

The Photo Study Room will present Visions for Sale: Photographs of Nineteenth Century Japan, an exhibition of 22 hand-colored albumen prints from the 19th century exploring the country's people, land and environment that was quickly changing due to modernization. European photographers such as Felice Beato and Baron Raimond Stillfield traveled to Japan to document the nation's exotic landscape and historically idiosyncratic jobs before they were swept away by the tide of modernism.

Ukiyo-e to Shin Hanga: Japanese Woodcuts from the Syracuse University Art Collection will be installed in the Print Study Room and draws from the University's collection of over 300 examples from this important and hugely influential art movement. The prints on view date from the height of color Ukiyo-e printmaking (c1780-1868) through Japan's Meiji period (1868-1912) to 20th century impressions of the Shin Hanga movement (1915-1940s). Masters of this medium are represented, including the work of Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Hokusai, Hiroshida, Tsuchiya Koitsu and Yoshida Hiroshi. The prints exemplify the soft, painterly style that is synonymous with the Japanese woodcut, and illustrates the wide range of subjects from courtesans to Kabuki theater and the Japanese landscape.

Print Making Revolution: Mexican Prints and the Taller de Grafica Popular
Syracuse University Art Museum

Price: Free
Syracuse University Art Museum, Shaffer Art Building
Syracuse University, Syracuse

An exhibition of over 130 original prints drawn from the SU Art Collection, as well as lenders including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Library of Congress, and the Blanton Museum of Art. The exhibition features important Mexican artists and post-Mexican Revolution artwork, with emphasis on the prints produced at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People's Graphic Workshop), or TGP. This influential workshop advanced a variety of revolutionary ideals and causes, including the formation of organized labor, the fight for civil rights, and an active campaign against fascism.

Print Making Revolution is organized into four subjects. The first acts as precursor to the TGP, highlighting the work of artists that helped to define the Mexican print landscape early in the 20th century. These figures include José Gaudalupe Posada, Jean Charlot, and the "Big Three": Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros.

The exhibition then transitions into the artists of the TGP, with emphasis on the Taller's director Leopoldo Méndez, but also includes Ángel Bracho, Isidoro Ocampo, and Alfredo Zalce, among others.

The third part of the exhibition focuses on the linocut portfolio Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana, a vividly illustrated narration of the Mexican Revolution, published by the workshop in 1947. Shown in its entirety, the portfolio contains 84 original prints by 16 artists.

Finally, the exhibition highlights the gringos—Americans working at the TGP during the early and influential days of the prolific workshop, Angel Bracho, Victoria! Los Artistas de Taller de Grafica Popular, 1945 University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque including John Woodrow Wilson, Mariana Yampolsky and Elizabeth Catlett. The impact of the TGP reached well beyond the conventional boundaries of art making, affecting political and social movements in Mexico and the United States.

The Art of Video Games
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $10 regular, $8 students/seniors/military, $5 Everson members, $30 family (up to 2 adults & 4 children)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Part of a ten-city national tour, "The Art of Video Games" is one of the first major exhibitions to explore the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking graphics, creative storytelling, and player interactivity. The exhibition features some of the most influential artists and designers across five eras of game development, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. Video games use player participation to tell stories and engage audiences. In the same way as film, animation and performance, video games are a compelling and influential form of narrative art.

"The Art of Video Games" focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. The exhibition features 80 video games that demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles and large prints of in-game screen shots.

New technologies allow designers to create increasingly interactive and sophisticated game environments while staying grounded in traditional game types. Five featured games, one from each era, are available in the exhibition galleries for visitors to play for a few minutes, to gain some feel for the interactivity. The playable gamesPac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and Flowershow how players interact with the virtual worlds, highlighting innovative new techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games.

Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by excerpts from selected games projected 12 feet high, accompanied by a chipmusic soundtrack by 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, including "The Art of Video Games Anthem" recorded by 8 Bit Weapon specifically for the exhibition. These multimedia elements convey the excitement and complexity of the featured video games. An interior gallery includes a series of short videos showing the range of emotional responses players have while interacting with games. Excerpts from interviews with 20 influential figures in the gaming world also are presented in the galleries.

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Jordan Eagles: Red Giant
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 suggested donation
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Using blood collected from a slaughterhouse as his primary medium, the artist explores ideas about transformation, death, and rebirth. Jordan Eagles encases the blood in Plexiglas and UV resin panels; mounted on the gallery walls they create a sublime environment that envelops and engages the viewer. The exhibition title, "Red Giant," refers to a luminous giant star in its final phase of stellar evolution—what our Sun will become in five billion years—while also referencing the intense, potent color of blood. The abstract patterns and forms in the works may suggest internal organs as well as cosmological phenomena like solar storms, sunspots, craters, meteorites, and supernova explosions.

Eagles' works are in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Princeton University Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum; and the Everson Museum of Art. Recent solo shows include Causey Contemporary and Krause Gallery, New York; International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; and Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco.He has been featured in numerous publications, including Time Magazine, The New York Times, L'Uomo Vogue, Architectural Digest and Wired.

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Festival of Trees
Everson Museum of Art

Price: $5 regular, children under 10 free (combo ticket including The Art of Video Games $10, children under 10 free)
Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

This 28th annual Syracuse area tradition features artfully decorated trees, wreaths and unique displays that create a beautiful winter wonderland. All the decorations and display items are for sale, all proceeds benefit the Everson Museum of Art. Enjoy live entertainment from local school and musical groups, and stop into the Musuem Shop to find the perfect gift.

Sponge / Spacehog, with Lionize, Trapper Schoepp & The Shades
Westcott Theater

Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse

Creative Arts Academy Fall Showcase
Community Folk Art Center

Price: Free (donations accepted)
CFAC Black Box Theater
805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse

Students from Community Folk Art Center's afterschool arts academy, Creative Arts Academy (CAA), will present their work. The evening will include performances and presentations by students in the Academy's three disciplines: visual art, dance and theatre. Students will present work they have produced and developed over the course of the semester.

Holiday Cabaret
Rarely Done Productions

Price: $25
Jazz Central
441 E. Washington St., Syracuse

Join us in celebrating the holiday season! We have an evening full of beautiful music, lots of laughs and delicious desserts planned for you.

Dana Sovocool and Shawn Forster are your Masters of Ceremony, and performers include Julia Berger, Katie Lemos Brown, Karis Wiggins, Karl Sperber, Anne Fitzgerald ,Colleen Wager, Steve Smith, Garrett Heater, Sunny Hernandez, Dan Williams, David Cotter, Ryan Santiago, Laura Pavlus, Sue Borenstein, Lzay Whalen, Ben Wells, Derek Potacki, Peter Irwin, Jason Timothy, Ceara Windhausen, Liam Fitzpatrick, Patrick St. Thomas, Kate Crawford, Linh Nyguen, Scott Duell, Jennifer Rafferty, Robert Dumas, Dana Sovocool, Shawn Forster, Hannah Weiler, Sara Weiler

For more information or to reserve tickets, phone 315-546-3224.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

In Da Window: Glasswork by Don Plouffe
Echo

745 N. Salina St. (formerly Craft Chemistry)
Syracuse

A Syracuse native, Don received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MAT from Oswego State. He has worked in artist studios from Venice, CA, to Florence, Italy, and in art classrooms all over CNY. Each experience has had an impact on what he creates from ceramic tiles, to stained glass windows and doors, to sculptures of creatures and beasts of all sorts. He strives to create work worth spending time with and enjoys the process almost as much as the finished piece.

Robert Thurber Photographs
LeMoyne College

Price: Free
Wilson Art Gallery, Noreen Reale Falcone Library
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Watercolors by Bill Elkins
Onondaga County Central Library

Price: Free
Onondaga County Central Library
The Galleries of Syracuse, 447 S. Salina St., Syracuse