Five new exhibitions fill the galleries at The Everson Museum of Art featuring local and national artists who’ve been eager to get their work in front of the public. WAER’s Arts and Culture reporter Scott Willis stopped by a recent opening reception.
The last time the Everson planned a big event to open several exhibitions was in April 2020. Well, we all know everything shut down the previous month. Museums were finally allowed to reopen later that summer, but Everson Executive Director Elizabeth Dunbar says this is the first time in about two years that the Everson felt comfortable holding an opening reception.
"For a lot of our members and long-time supporters, they are so excited to come back, reconnect with their friends, see art again as a group of people. We've been open, but being able to take in art and have a social component to it can make it such a magical experience."
The five new exhibitions cover a spectrum of art…from sculptures and cloth paintings to photographs and an auditory installation featuring dozens of secondhand guitars, mandolins, and basses suspended from the ceiling. It’s called Soundtracks for the Present Future by Charley Friedman, an interdisciplinary artist from Nebraska.
"A lot of my work deals with signs and symbols. 'Soundtracks' is the first piece that I've ever done using music or sound."
He says the Everson is the second museum to display his work, which took five years to create. It originated at an arts center in Omaha last spring and summer.
"I don't like making work that has descriptions, meaning that I want the work to speak for itself. So, I decided to make an immersive piece. When you walk through it, you will enter it whenever you want. For instance, if a note happens to plink when you're there, then you have this serendipitous feeling that it's speaking to you. I also wanted to make the piece completely non-linear. So you enter the piece, and you stay with the piece as long as you want. There's no beginning, middle or end to it."
Friedman says the exhibit will continue to travel after it wraps up its stay at the Everson April 10.
Moving from an auditory experience to a visual one, we find an exhibition called Now More Than Ever by Laura Reeder of Cazenovia. More than 2,000 inkjet photos are strung with twine row after row after row across the ceiling.
"My work comes from walking. Moving in our world as a person, a lot of stuff happens to us. When you move, you experience the world in different ways. Because I'm a walking artist...my other art is creating huge labyrinths over the earth...I started to document what I discovered along my walks. Then I started to document what I discovered when I was living my life: Eating a meal, going shopping, raising children."
Reeder says she began taking photos and printing them when digital photography was new about 15 to 20 years ago. The exhibit spans 2009 to present.
"We're standing beneath something I love. It's a closeup of colorful kernels of corn. I'm attracted to the textures of our world. There's something about getting close up, something you might walk by any day and not notice. Look at the texture of this Queen Anne's lace, or the texture of your cup of coffee if you look closely at that. You start to realize how incredibly intricate the world is."
Reeder sees it as a form of meditation…things that make you pause to look deeply at things others might not notice or appreciate. “Now More Than Ever” is the inaugural exhibition for the CNY Artist Initiative at the Everson, and it’s the first time people have seen it in person. Reeder says a previous attempt at a Massachusetts gallery was cut short by COVID.
"So I used it as a residency idea to try out the idea the space in different ways. It became an amazing hit. We were able to video it, people were locked in and starving to get out. The video version of this was so thrilling, because it helped people imagine being in another space. This is the first time people are actually walking through it.
"Now More Than Ever" continues through March 13.
Reeder's work isn’t the only local art on display. Two galleries feature the work of innovative Syracuse-based sculptor Arlene Abend, who’s now 90. The other exhibits include massive so-called “cloth paintings” by Dawn Williams Boyd, and the debut of a ceramics collection from the late Victoria Schonfeld including pieces just acquired by the Everson.
In addition to its exhibits, the Everson also offers performances, workshops, and classes. More information on all of the museum’s programming, including exhibit dates, can be found here.
