Mixed Media

"Spectacle Spectacular" at the Handwerker Gallery

Dawn Hunter

— whose “Spectacle Spectacular: Cautionary Tales and Other Stories” is on display at Ithaca College’s Handwerker Gallery — will give an artist’s talk in the gallery on Wednesday, Sept. 30. Free and open to the public, the event will begin at 4:30 p.m.

 

Featuring Hunter’s drawings and paintings, “Spectacle Spectacular” explores the relationship between popular culture and gendered identity.

“I’ve conducted extensive research on fashion photography in the latter part of the 20th century,” Hunter said. “I’ve been particularly struck by the persistence of one particular seductive promise: that by recognizing their bodies as malleable objects that are always capable of improvement, women can attain greater status and power, and lead richer, more exciting lives. . . . My goal is to make the myth-building work of popular culture and its various paradoxes and contradictions more visible.”

“Spectacle Spectacular” will remain on display until October 11. For more information, contact Cheryl Kramer, gallery director and assistant professor of art history, at (607) 274-3548 or ckramer@ithaca.edu.

Hurry On Sundown: The Multimedia Work of Marc Swanson

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University presents "Hurry on Sundown: The Multimedia Work of Marc Swanson," on view through October 19, 2008.

"Hurry on Sundown" features a selection of work from the last several years by the New York-based artist, including mirror-paintings, sparkling encrusted sculptures, and collages, all made out of a variety of materials--ranging from crystals and glitter to lumber and deerskin. Romanticism, mythical narratives, and musical influences are a few of the ongoing themes in Swanson's multimedia works.

"Swanson conjures up a contemporary blend of personal narrative with a meditation on social rites of passage," said Andrea Inselmann, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Johnson Museum. "Drawing inspiration from mythology and his own rural upbringing, Swanson presents visual examples of his pursuit of personal discovery as he explores complex themes of acceptance, pride, power, ritual, beauty, and sexual identity."

Included in the exhibition are two large-scale dioramic installations: Always and Nothing is based on his father's backyard in New Hampshire, while Killing Moon includes a sculpture of a yeti, which functions as a self-portrait of the artist.

Curator Inselmann will lead a free tour of the exhibition as part of the Johnson's "Art for Lunch" series on Thursday, October 9 at 12:00 noon.

The Johnson Museum has a permanent collection of over 30,000 works of art from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. The museum building was designed by I. M. Pei. Funds for the building were donated by Cornell alumnus Herbert F. Johnson, late president and chairman of S C Johnson. The building opened in 1973.

Mary Ellen Mark: The Prom Series on display at Cornell

The acclaimed American photographer Mary Ellen Mark has spent the past three prom seasons     photographing schools across the country. In June 2008, she documented her twelfth and final prom at Ithaca High School.

Mark began her project with the 2006 prom at Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, New Jersey, and continued with Cheltenham High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania; Tottenville High School in Staten Island, St. Michael Academy in Manhattan, Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York; Riverview School in Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Charlottesville High School in Charlottesville, Virginia; MacArthur High School in Houston and Westlake High School in Austin, Texas; Palisades Charter High School in Pacific Palisades and Harvard-Westlake School in North Hollywood, California. She selects the couples she wants to photograph, focusing on unusual or nontraditional pairings scouted by her staff and local interns.

This exhibition will feature thirty selections by the artist, all 20 x 24 inch black-and-white Polaroids. Mark rented one of the six existing cameras from Polaroid, made in the late 1970s and weighing 235 pounds. Polaroid stopped making the large-format film earlier this year, and Mark bought all of the remaining black-and-white stock.

Mary Ellen Mark will speak at the Johnson Museum on Thursday, September 4 at 5:15 p.m. Curator Nancy Green will give a tour of the exhibition as part of the Museum's "Art for Lunch" series on Thursday, September 11 at 12:00 noon. Both events are free and open to the public.

The exhibit is on display through October 26 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. 

'Exquisite Corpus' explores the boundaries of art and the body

Bodies -- inside and outside, observed, exposed, reflected,           hacked to pieces or otherwise taken apart, deconstructed and reconstructed -- are the subject of the student-organized Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art exhibition "Exquisite Corpus: Interacting with the Fragmented Body," through June 15.

The exhibition was curated by the History of Art Majors Society as its annual showcase at the Johnson. The students also prepared an exhibition catalog, wrote essays on the artwork and brought guest artists STELARC and Vlatka Horvat to campus for public talks.

Society members Sarah Humphreville and Stef Hirsch, both fourth-year dual majors in fine arts and the history of art, led an Art for Lunch tour of the exhibition May 1.

Interaction is a key feature, with film and video, Polaroid photography, and Internet-based works among 2-D and sculptural elements.

"In contemporary art right now, there are no limits, no boundaries," Hirsch said. "We wanted to show contemporary work, and show that art can be anything, maybe even vulgar."

The title and concept refer to the Exquisite Corpse, a Surrealist exercise in which three artists independently draw a section of a body: head, torso and legs. In "Exquisite Corpus," viewers are also welcome to play.

Read the full article here.

82 and Still Painting

"We're living in a total illusion here on earth for better or worse, but whatever is beyond, that's where I'm looking... to the reality behind it all," says George Rhoads (pictured, right). He's talking about his landscape oil & acrylic paintings, his "chosen profession" as he puts it. But isn't he most famous for his huge moving sculptures, which appear at the Corning Museum of Glass, the ScienCenter in Ithaca, the Port Authority in NYC, and around the world? "In the 60's is when I started making the sculptures, and that provided me with kind of a living from then on, so I was able to paint quite a bit." Those paintings hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in the collections of Leonard Bernstein, and Lawrence Tish, among others. "Commercially, that hasn't done me a lot of good," says Rhoads. But painting is his first love. His rare solo exhibit, Landscapes of the Fingerlakes, is at Ithaca's Community School of Music and Arts through March 28.

Rhoads moved to the Ithaca area in 1970, in part because he was tired of living in New York. "I paint what's around me, and I was tired of painting the city," he says. Now his adopted home has named the month of March in his honor. In proclaiming March to be "George Rhoads Month," Ithaca mayor Carolyn Peterson cited, among other things, Rhoads' "international reputation as a painter, sculptor, and designer of kinetic art as well as being one of the first North American origami masters, and a yoga teacher." Rhoads says of the proclamation "it's rather gratifying, but strange... It's fun. I feel that I really belong here in Ithaca."

A few years back, the late Fred Rogers brought a crew to Ithaca to film an episode visiting George Rhoads' studio and looking at his fanciful rolling-ball sculptures. "That was a great day when he and his crew came to do the show, really unforgettable" says Rhoads. "Mr. Rogers was exactly as he seems on TV, a marvelous character."

The area landscapes in Rhoads' rare solo exhibition were all completed within the last three years, some of which had languished for years before being completed for this exhibit. (Pictured, left: Lake Afternoon, up for a raffle to benefit CSMA.)

He'll give an artist's talk Sunday, March 9 at 2pm at the CSMA gallery. He says he'll ask those attending what they want to know about... his career in general or the specific creation of the landscapes on display.

The exhibit's "gala opening" 5-8pm tonight (3/7) is timed to coincide with Gallery Night of Ithaca. Landscapes of the Finger Lakes runs  through March 28 at the Community School of Music and Arts, 330 E. State Street, Ithaca. Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10am - 8pm.

LISTEN AGAIN: Hear my interview with George Rhoads online.

Read an article by Peggy Haines about George Rhoads in Life in the Finger Lakes magazine.

Visit George Rhoads' website.

--Gregory Keeler
gkeeler@wskg.org

 

New exhibit at Alfred University

“Undertow: Counter Currents and Excavations” opens in Alfred University’s Fosdick-Nelson Gallery on Friday, Jan. 25 with a talk by the artists at 6 p.m. followed by a reception from 7-9 p.m. The events are open to the public free of charge.

“Undertow” is an exhibition of sculpture and installations by emerging artists from Brooklyn and Chicago — Ben Fain, Hope Hilton, Scott Lawrence, Andrew Scott Ross — running through Wednesday, Feb. 20.

The show is curated by Sharon McConnell, Fosdick-Nelson Gallery director.

Fein, artist/sculptor, defines his work at in the “experimental mode.” Hilton, from Brooklyn, says as an artist she “curates, collaborates, designs, writes and walks.” Lawrence is a ceramic artist who describes his “method” as “to apply paint and wipe it off, partially or fully, and repaint repeatedly.” Ross, of Brooklyn, is a painter/sculptor.

The Fosdick-Nelson Gallery is located in Harder Hall in the School of Art & Design; open hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, 1 to 3 p.m. weekends; the Gallery is closed University holidays. For more information, contact McConnell at 607.871.2149, or at mcconnells@alfred.edu.

AIDS Memorial Quilt on display in Ithaca

Panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be displayed in the Emerson Suites at Ithaca College November 26–28. Viewing times will be from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday. The display will conclude on Wednesday with a panel discussion, “Faces of AIDS,” and the ceremonial closing of the quilt. Sponsored by the Ithaca College Action for AIDS group, the events are free and open to the public.

A poignant memorial and powerful tool for education as well as a work of art, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was started in San Francisco in 1987 by the NAMES Project Foundation to increase public awareness of AIDS and provide a creative means for healing. Each of the quilt’s panels was sewn and decorated by friends and loved ones in commemoration of a person whose life was lost to AIDS. The quilt has been visited by over 15 million people in displays worldwide. It currently has more than 46,000 panels and 91,000 names, including those of actor Rock Hudson, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, clothing designer Tina Chow, singer Freddie Mercury and NASCAR driver Tim Richmond.

In addition to the public viewing, classes and other groups can schedule a facilitated viewing of the quilt by trained volunteers. To make arrangements, contact Russell Martin, assistant director of the Center for Student Leadership and Involvement, at 607-274-3222 or rjmartin@ithaca.edu. 

Video surveillance as art at Cornell

Visitors who came to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art to watch monks creating a sand mandala for the recent visit of the Dalai Lama were themselves part of a new art form translating movement into sound.

As they clustered around to view the mandala or moved in or out of the room, cameras in the ceiling tracked their movements. The behavior of the crowd triggered subtle changes in the background sounds playing in the room.

The sounds were created by professional sound designer Ron Riddle, who combined monastery chants, Tibetan bowls, bells, chimes, piano and guitar, and created different tracks to reflect different audience behaviors. In some cases, as when people entered, a heartbeat sound was overlaid.

Read the full article here.

"Earth Pattern" exhibit at Cornell

The Mann Library Gallery's November/December exhibit, "Earth Pattern," features what Trumansburg artist Jay Hart calls "terrain art." Starting with GIS (geographical information system) elevation data, Hart creates sharply detailed images of places both exotic and familiar, including polar landscapes and deserts, low-relief terrain and major ranges, and the scatter of mankind's markings, sometimes adding color to emphasize changes in elevation or overlaying satellite imagery. The results are rendered as large-format inkjet prints showing areas of the Earth's surface ranging from 100 to 1,500 kilometers across.

The exhibit is on display through January 10th in the gallery on the second floor of the Mann Library.  A reception with refreshments will be held Tuesday, Nov. 13, 5-6 p.m. The exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public. For further information, call 607-255-5406.

GIS Day celebration

In connection with its Earth Pattern exhibit, Mann Library will hold a GIS Day celebration Wednesday, Nov. 14, 1-3 p.m., during National Geographic Society's Geography Awareness Week (Nov. 11-17). Campus organizations and departments using GIS will present displays about their work; at 3 p.m. keynote speaker Jonnell Allen will describe her work as community geographer in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Read the full article here.