We are committed to breaking down the art world’s boundaries about who is welcome. We believe that everyone has the right to art and that art is essential to building an open, just world. Our vision for change is one that creates a community of open-minded, tolerant individuals with an appreciation for the inclusion of art in everyday life. We offer the community an experience that encourages the breakdown of boundaries so that people can see themselves in the work and then in one another. We exhibit art that cultivates critical thinking skills; leading to question the power structures that exist in our society and to imagine other ways of life.

That, we believe, is the seed of a movement for cultural and social change.

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“For centuries now, industries have been mining the globe in search of raw materials that can be converted into profitable commodities, displacing innumerable communities and leaving in their wake toxic, hazardous, and ecologically devastated environments. While consumers experiment with greener lifestyles, the majority of the globe’s population is left to deal with the ecological fallout of industrial and technological “progress”. These are inequalities that only stand to increase as climate change and the unending capitalist pursuit of natural resources produce even more precarious ecologies”.       -Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative

This exhibition is a look into the environmental devastation that plagues the earth and its beings. It is also a look into the environmental justice movement that works to correct and heal the destruction. RESOURCED is a portfolio of
hand-produced prints organized and created by the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative in 2010, focusing on resource extraction and climate issues, which will be used to help ask important questions about our environment.

At the beginning of the spring semester 2012, students from the introduction to fibers course at Syracuse University viewed images from RESOURCED. Students selected the poster of most significance to them, either for the visual content of the work or the environmental issue it addressed. Then each student created a hand-dyed textile in response to the original work, using a variety of dye techniques, relief printing techniques and methods of stitching. These techniques were both applied traditionally and adapted to suit the students’ intentions and individual visual language.

As a special addition to this exhibition, ArtRage will feature the artwork of students from Clary Middle School in our gallery windows. We have called it the Greening our Future Poster Project. The class is taught by Adam Simeon and they were mentored by teaching artist Diane Menzies. This event is made possible with public funds provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and administered through the Cultural Resources Council.

The art of the Justseeds Cooperative illustrates the transformative power of  personal expression in concert with collective action. The Cooperative is a decentralized network of 26 artists committed to making print and design work that reflects a radical social, environmental, and political stance. With members working from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Justseeds operates both as a unified collaboration of similarly minded printmakers and as a loose collection of creative individuals with unique viewpoints and working methods. For more information visit www.justseeds.org

Thanks to our exhibition sponsors:

John & Dolores Brule, Dik Cool, Nancy Dock & Donald Blair, John & Virginia Felleman, Ed & Eva Galson, Kim & Steve Linkinhoker, Peter Waack & Maggie Maurer, Jessica Maxwell, Bruce Grannon & Melinda Matzell, Yvonne Murphy, Shirley & Larry Novak, Syracuse University Education Department, Ann Tiffany & Ed Kinane, Yolanda Tooley

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IN OUR VIEW – A community perspective.

• This project is open to anyone who lives or works in the Northside/Hawley-Green neighborhood of Syracuse.
• Everyone who participates will have at least one photograph displayed in the exhibition.
• All participants will be entered in a drawing for a $100 gift certificate to Ra-Lin.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE click this link -

http://artragegallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/In_Our_View_Project_Guidelines.pdf

This exhibition is the culmination of a community art project in which ArtRage worked with community members and organizations in the Hawley-Green and Northside neighborhoods. ArtRage got cameras into the hands of neighborhood residents and asked them to capture their lives and community through documentary photography. A professional photographer and Syracuse University graduate student, Daniel Aguilera, worked with residents to guide them on the social documentary process.

Curated by a community panel, this exhibition is not only a testimony to the times in which we live, but a social-bonding experience for our diverse neighborhood; a neighborhood whose current residents include refugees
from many war-torn nations, long time city dwellers of mixed income and a population of people new to the area working to establish roots in a community of their choice – all living side-by-side as neighbors.

We were inspired to create this exhibition after exhibiting the social documentary photography of two brilliant Upstate New York artists; Buffalo’s Milton Rogovin and Syracuse’s Marjory Wilkins.

“Photography represents a universal language that communicates ideas to persons regardless of educational level, reading skills or social status and as such, is an ideal vehicle to promote understanding and good will between cultures.” -Bill Wright, Photographer

Thanks to our exhibition sponsors:
Bill Bullen & Laura Reeder, John & Dolores Brule, The Community Foundation of CNY, Dik Cool, Diana Cramer, Lynn Fallon, David Feldman, Lanny Freshman, & Rae Kramer, Diane Grafly & Paul Pearce, Linda Bogart Greenlar & Michael
Greenlar, Kim & Steve Linkinhoker, Lorene & Sundar Mudaliar, Yvonne Murphy, Deirdre Nelson, Walter Putter & Marilyn Smith, Edith Schmitz, Ann Jamison – In Memory of Sparky (Linda Mortimer), Syracuse University Education Department, Nisha Thapliyal, Ann Tiffany & Ed Kinane, Mary Traynor and Amy Zamkoff .

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PosterWorks at the ArtRage gallery is devoted to providing income for the operation of the gallery space. Every purchase from our large stock of posters, cards, T-shirts, DVD’s and books helps us pay for exhibits, rent and utilities! Located inside the gallery, at 505 Hawley Avenue, PosterWorks carries over 100 posters in stock and offers a selection of exhibit related materials for sale. Come and see the largest viewable collection of Syracuse Cultural Workers posters available anywhere in the U.S! Framed versions, at very reasonable prices, are also available for many posters.

CHECK OUT OUR POSTER OF THE MONTH!

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The Nakba (catastrophe) is the uprooting and displacement of 750,000 Palestinians as the state of Israel was created in 1947-48, a process which has continued ever since. We will gather to remember and commit ourselves to working for justice for the Palestinians and all who live in the region.

We will have two speakers: one in person and one via skype:

Lana Hijazi, a native of the Gaza Strip, is a journalist, filmmaker and activist currently studying at Syracuse University. She will speak about her father’s experiences with the Nakba.

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian activist and intellectual, will join us via skype.

Free and Open to the Public.

Organized by CNY Working for a Just Peace in Palestine and Israel, a project of the Syracuse Peace Council.
(315) 472-5478, www.peacecouncil.net/pal-is

A Hmong grandmother with sacred strings of good will

An award-winning photographer for the Syracuse Post-Standard, Mike Greenlar traveled 10 times to a remote mountain region of Laos to document the effects of cluster bombing on the Hmong people. The US covert bombing campaign, between 1964 and 1973, gave Laos the distinction of being the most bombed country in the history of warfare — over two million tons of ordnance was dropped.

Mike documented life in two resettlement villages where the Hmong continue to farm land rife with unexploded cluster bombs and other munitions. His work shows the resourcefulness of a people who rely on each other, and on those very bombs, for their livelihood.

The result is a stunning collection of documentary photographs. Remnants of a Secret War, also the title of his recently published book, displays both some of the collection found in the book and some never before published. The legacy of the “secret” bombings of Laos takes many forms and offers many stories. In this collection of painfully yet beautifully rendered black & white photographs, he shares some of them with us.

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Video Installation by Sandra Stephens
Opening Reception – Saturday, March 23, 2013 7-9pm

Sandra Stephens, Digital Image Appropriation (2012) of

Sandra Stephens’ work takes an in-depth look at how culture and those around us contribute to our construction of identities.

Pieces will look at race, class, gender and sexuality. She will explore the influence of war on simplifying the view of the “other,” visual culture and its effects on identity, and how these both affect the lives and identities of children. Her work will also touch on stereotyping, with newer and older work that takes different approaches. She is interested in how and why we stereotype, and in how stereotyping contributes to historic and current-day events.

Employing technologies of interactivity and projection, the pieces will pull the viewer in and play with perceptions of the projected image and its blurred relationship to reality. Although the work will touch on disturbing themes, hope will also be expressed through the innocence of children, who are shown to be in many ways much more enlightened than adults.

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Paintings by Patrick Fiore
Opening Reception – Saturday, January 12, 2013 7-9pm

Resist © Patrick Fiore

Utica-native Patrick Fiore has created a series of paintings inspired by Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States 1492 – Present.”

Introduction of the artist by the late historian Howard Zinn (c. 2009): “What attracts me to [Patrick’s] work is his profound understanding of the connection between art and social struggle. When the artist consciously joins that struggle, as Patrick Fiore does in his paintings, he or she is defying the warnings of those who say: stick to your art, don’t meddle in the affairs of the world. The artist is declaring: “I am not just an artist, I am a citizen, I am a human being, and in fact my work as an artist is secondary to my existence as a thinking, feeling member of the human race.

Patrick does not conceal his intention. He wants, by putting the people and events of the “People’s History” into graphic, startling form, to draw attention to the history of our nation, to the stories omitted, the heroes of dissent missing from the pages of the textbooks. He wants to reach people by his paintings and to inspire them to think for themselves about our society, to tell them about the way people through the centuries have behaved with compassion and kindness, against all odds, have thought for themselves, have organized and agitated, and refused obedience to laws and practices that offend common decency.

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The Collage Art of Deborah Faye Lawrence
Opening Reception – Saturday, November 10, 2012 7-9pm

Blind Execution © Deborah Lawrence

A sharp pair of scissors is a powerful tool for Seattle-based artist, Deborah Faye Lawrence.

Since the mid 1990’s she has been creating intricately detailed collages that explore themes such as war, nationalism, sexism and corporate globalization, all with great wit and satire. Lawrence writes, “I flatter myself that I am appropriating and recontextualizing pictures and text in the spirit of masters like Hannah Hoch, Romare Bearden, and Max Ernst: politically detached and bemused; passionately outraged and invigorated.”

She has gone so far as to create an activist alter-ego, known as Dee-Dee Lorenzo, who appears in her art. Dee-Dee stands up for justice and the oppressed as she attends demonstrations such as the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle or supports the dumping of four tons of manure on the World Bank in Washington DC.

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