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The Nature of Being, the current exhibit at the Edgewood Gallery, has a title that suggests deep thinking, perhaps a bit of a cerebral touch. While many of the works do explore the human condition, this is a show with plenty of visual appeal. It has paintings that are both reflective and emotional, as well as provocative sculptures and artworks depicting flowers and other aspects of nature.

Voices of Diversity, currently on exhibit at ArtRage Gallery, uses more than 100 black-and-white photos to celebrate the Syracuse Community Choir, a group with a 23-year history and an extensive songbook dealing with peace, social justice and building community. In working on this exhibition, photographer Lida Suchy didn’t focus on people singing at concerts or rehearsals. Instead, she tried to create a group portrait, one arising from images of many choir members.

Pins and needles are no big deal, unless you’ve lost a limb. Amputees often feel phantom pains; even mild discomfort is a torture in that case: an itch you can’t scratch; a wrong you can’t right. Ellen Garvens’ Prosthesis show at Light Work Gallery is like that. The two bodies of her work united here probe aching absences.

New galleries and famous artists dominated the year in art

By Carl Mellor

During 2008, various trends appeared on the Syracuse art scene. There were exhibits reassessing famous artists. Several shows ventured into unfamiliar territory and succeeded very well. It was a time for exploration of memory from different artistic and personal perspectives. Finally, there was change in the roster of galleries as several new venues opened.

A Southern graveyard provides intriguing images

in Ernesto Pujol’s current exhibit

By Carl Mellor

Ernesto Pujol’s new show, Walk # 1, at Syracuse University’s Light Work Gallery, begins with a singular agenda: creating a body of work based on the artist’s reflections of meditative walks taken in Magnolia Cemetery, a Civil War-era graveyard in Charleston, S.C. Documenting the cemetery is one matter; communicating deeply felt feelings is a different task.

ArtRage opens its gallery doors with a project involving veterans of four wars

By Carl Mellor

Syracuse's newest venue, ArtRage: The Norton Putter Gallery, has announced an exhibition schedule mirroring its goals and aspirations. The new gallery, located at 505 Hawley Ave., plans to present visiting and locally originated exhibitions, to show works visually and thematically incisive, and to explore themes of community, peace and social justice. The opening lineup includes Combat Paper, Syracuse Cultural Workers Inside-Out and Voices of Diversity, a photographic portrait of the Syracuse Community Choir. 

Combat Paper, whose opening reception runs Saturday, Oct. 11, 7 to 9 p.m., was first initiated by Green Door Studio, of Burlington, Vt., along with members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Veterans transformed uniforms worn in combat into sheets of paper and artworks by beating, cooking and cutting them. The Syracuse exhibit, for example, will feature artists’ books, three-dimensional pieces and broad-side prints, among other works.

Feast your eyes on an impressive array of artworks at local galleries and museums By Carl Mellor

The 2008 art season offers a banquet with many courses. As they visit various galleries, viewers can sample fashion statements, an exhibit focusing on a famous artist, a show heading down the highway and a bevy of group exhibitions. One gallery reopens, another looks back on 25 years, and a third venue presents its very first show.

At Syracuse University, SUArt Galleries (443-4097), located on the SU Quad, is showing Michelangelo: The Man and the Myth, featuring sketches, poems and drawings by the famed artist, as well as a medal depicting him, a miniature monument honoring Michelangelo and a bronze reproduction of the “Pieta.” The show views Michelangelo from several perspectives—as an artist, poet, architect and businessman. It will appear at only four sites in the United States.

Local artists submitting work to the Everson Biennial were asked to perform some mental gymnastics. The show, juried by independent curator Edward Winkleman, was organized around the theme of The Object and Beyond. The challenge was to create art that somehow perverts everyday expectations of objects, going “beyond” them. Critics bored of asking “Is it art?” can now argue about the definition of an object.

All of us leave a legacy when we die. Wisdom, material wealth and memories get left behind. In the case of a prolific and gregarious artist like Rodger Mack, that legacy is clearly visible and worth keeping in the public eye. 

During his tenure at Syracuse University, which began in 1968, Mack made an international name for himself with his distinctive sculpture. As the first director of SU’s School of Art and Design—he held the post from 1982 to 1991—Mack was instrumental in the creation of the Comstock Art Facility. Melanoma ended his life in 2002. Teddy Aiken, director of the graduate program in Museum Studies at SU, has helped organize an exhibition of Mack’s work at Cazenovia’s Stone Quarry Hill Art Park. Other old friends and colleagues lent work to the show and even helped install it.

Made to Order 

Made in New York 2008, currently on display at Auburn’s Schweinfurth Memorial Art Gallery, continues to evolve from year to year and to operate without a set artistic agenda. The 2007 edition had many more photographs than other recent shows, and that generated some controversy. Nonetheless, that wasn’t a structural change but a one-time phenomenon. 

The new exhibition, selected by jurors John McQueen and Jen Pepper, has its own imprint, with special attention paid to landscapes. Landscapes, it should be noted, have certainly appeared in past Made in New York shows. The 2008 show, however, presents a much richer selection, done in various media and from varying perspectives. It’s possible for viewers to appreciate not only individual landscapes but also a larger discussion of the art-world favorite.