Gallery Closing Sale: December 26, 2009

We Support Art by Alice Muhlback

Come help us celebrate 46 years of The Upstairs Gallery on December 26, from noon to 5 pm.

As part of our farewell event, all artwork will be sold for 35% off. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to take home a piece of local art!

December 3 – December 19: Jenny Pope and Scott VanGaasbeck

Jenny Pope lives part time in Ithaca, NY and part time in her car traveling to art festivals around the country. Her research interests include invasive animals, global warming band-aids, bird migration myths, islands and all things extinct and endangered. She is currently working on a picture book about the history of starlings from the UK to the US and how they became an invasive animal.

Scott VanGaasbeck: In the 21st century, making clay pots by hand, using local materials, without electricity requires an explanation. I feel that the tools we use, the things we touch every day as we work and eat, can profoundly affect our relationship with the earth and with each other. I want my pottery to be a connection: between me and my land when I dig the clay I use for my glazes, between you and your food, between you and me as you support my livelihood and a tradition of fine craftsmanship. All of this, I think, is much too important to leave to machines.

Come join us for the opening of our final show!

Friday, December 4 / 5-8 PM

December 26: Final Closing Sale!

After 46 years, we will sadly be closing our doors for good on December 26, 2009. Please read our press release for more details.

On our last day, all art will be sold for 35% off. Come join us 12-5 PM for one final event.

November 13: Poetry Reading, Victoria Boynton

On Nov. 13 at 7 pm, Victoria Boynton will read poetry from Contraptions, a collaboration with Upstairs Gallery artist Marney Lieberman. This collage/poetry combo was originally published part of the High Watermark Salo[o]n Chapbook Series (volume 1, number 3).

This reading is presented as part of Victoria and Marney’s concurrent exhibit at The Upstairs Gallery. Please also join us for their opening on Friday, November 6 at 5-8 PM.

November 5 – November 28: Victoria Boynton and Marney Lieberman

Contraptions

We met once a week for a year, carved out time so that we could collaborate. We couldn’t have produced the book without the physical presence of the other. We knew it was possible to collaborate long-distance, but this book was not made that way, could not have been. On our evenings together, we talked about difficult content and responded to one another without interruption. We worked; then one of us would say “what you got?” The writing was raw, confusing, challenging for both of us. Sometimes it sounded like an argument among mean spirits. Sometimes clearer, gentler, funnier. We talked about what the words were pointing to—the nature of the mind as a contraption, how human intimacy is often at the mercy of that contraption. We laughed about the way the mind will #%*! you if you think about it.

We hauled our project and tools around with us last year: Vicki stored her spiral notebook and pencils for the raw word-work in her laptop bag, which she took wherever she went. Marney used a wooden crate to carry her work and tools, a portable workshop like a clown car. Amazing how much the crate contains: jars of glue and water, tins of pencils, scissors and brushes, baskets of paper and images from our partners’ burn piles and recycling bins.

We practiced being with each other and with the content of the project as each of us took up our tools, kept each other company as we traced our dark hearts and our light hearts and practiced welcoming whatever came. Some sessions went better than others, but we helped each other remember our rules: tell the truth no matter how it sounds, don’t give up, don’t make excuses.

Opening Reception: Friday, November 6 / 5-8 PM

October 1 – October 31: Monica Franciscus

Wife: Day to Day

Art often reflects the times and is relevant in art history. Given the present financial difficulties, it is appropriate that some of this work is on scrap wood and made with sand and pebbles that I have found and sifted. The work is uneven and rough like the times.

I aim to reveal the connectedness of people through images of common things. My laundry series started just before I had my children, as a symbol for relationships and daily life. We are alone as items of clothing but are linked by our relationships. My subject matter of towels and clothes pins on a line implies emotional connections. The line has a purpose for the laundry and pins, and the pins are useless without the line. It joins what would otherwise be separate things. In that way, we too are connected and need each other. We are free only to a certain extent (unlike birds which use the line and take off at will). Eventually, I came to focus on bras. I thought about women’s roles in society (mother, professional, housewife, etc.) and how a woman changes her role and her clothes (disheveled, professional, sportive, casual, sexy). The one constant in all of this is the underwear. The rest changes drastically, particularly the shoes. The bra is a symbol for intimacy and women’s sexuality –- a vulnerability/weakness and a strength/weapon.

Having two young children, my family life has been a large resource for my subject matter.

Opening Reception: Friday, October 2 / 5-8 PM

September 3 – September 26: Dede Hatch, Jon Reis

his and hers
An Exhibition of New Photographs by Jon Reis and Dede Hatch

For the first time ever, Jon Reis and Dede Hatch are exhibiting their work together. “Nobody ever asked!” is the response to the question “What took you so long?”

Hatch and Reis have both been working as photographers in Ithaca for well over 25 years. What some people don’t know is that for 21 of those 25 years, they have been married to each other. They have for the most part kept their work lives separate, but when they travel they are often side by side taking photographs of the same subjects. This might seem a logical starting point for a show but it just hasn’t happened, until now.

But here’s the surprise: in this show, his work and her work have nothing to do with each other. Each photographer approached this task with characteristic independence. The result is an exhibition where the works truly reflect the individuality of these 2 photographers.
Jon finds inspiration in the frenetic and visually exciting urban environment, where overlapping surfaces “blur my vision of near and far, reality and fantasy.” Taken from recent travels throughout the country, this group of vivid, abstract photographs is a distillation of his interest in juxtaposing shapes and colors to create what he calls “beauty without meaning”.

The photographs which Dede presents were all made alone, on one afternoon, on one walk, in one place: the old dog park. It is a beautiful, sweeping piece of land next to Ithaca’s Treman Marina, that once saw dogs by the dozens running joyously- and illegally. Now, it is a place of soft untrampled grass, splendid old trees, the shore of the lake, and memories. If you look closely, there are birds. The dogs are gone, including the 2 who were part of Jon and Dede’s family, but they are remembered in these quiet landscapes.

Opening Reception: Friday, September 4 / 5-8 PM

Building Codes: Three Generations of Poets

Building Codes: Three Generations of Poets
A Poetry Reading and Video Screening
AUGUST 26
7 pm

Belle Gironda (top) and Caterina Gironda (bottom) at the High Watermark Salo[on

Please join the Upstairs Gallery and Stockport Flats Press as we celebrate the release of Belle Gironda’s experimental poetry collection, Building Codes. Gironda’s father and daughter, Jim Crenner and Caterina Gironda, share the stage for a three-generation poetic tapas. Between Uncertainties, a new video Belle Gironda completed in residency at Berlin’s Takt Kunstprojektraum, will complete the evening’s event.

JIM CRENNER is a Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing and the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Drinks at the Stand-up Tragedy Club (Hobart & William Smith Colleges Press, 2008), which Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Charles Wright calls “Some magical melding of Monty Python and John Donne.” Crenner studied poetry writing with Donald Justice at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was a co-founder and co-editor of the literary magazine The Seneca Review, and has had poems appear over the years in such journals as The Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Parnassus, and The New Republic. A poem from his latest collection can be seen at the on-line site Poetry Daily for January 4, 2009; a newer one is on the “Poetry Prizes Page” at torhouse.org.

BELLE GIRONDA’s poems have appeared recently in Crayon, Confrontation and CRIT Journal. She is the author of two chapbooks: Start Here from St. Andrews Press and Volume 1 Number 4 with the artist Sheila Goloborotko in the High Watermark Salo[o]n Series, from Stockport Flats Press. She worked as an art critic for several years before attending graduate school and was among the editors who transformed The Little Magazine from a print to an electronic journal, one of the first of its kind. Gironda sometimes plays with video and performance, and currently teaches writing in Cairo, Egypt. Right now, she’s enjoying a month’s residency at Takt Kunstprojektraum, in Berlin, Germany.
See www.cairocult.wordpress.com and http://webdesignfordham.com/ for samples of Belle’s work.

A New York City resident and graduate of Brooklyn College, CATERINA  GIRONDA represents the third generation of poets in the Crenner/Gironda clan. In addition to being “debilitating non-prolific,” she has never been published, and she is “generally disinclined to showcase her work in any medium, with the singular exception of the slam.” That being said, Caterina hopes that you enjoy the poetry.

Members’ Discount Day

We are introducing a new membership benefit, called Member’s Discount Day. Normally, members receive a 10% discount on any purchase from The Upstairs Gallery. Now, they get an additional 10% on the last day of every show (always a Saturday). That’s 20% off exhibition pieces only (i.e., excluding items in the Red Dot Room)!

Become a member today to take advantage of this great deal!

Red Dot Room

Our back office space is now the Red Dot Room, a showcase for local artists! Come see each month’s featured artist(s) in the front room, but don’t forget there’s more art for sale in the back as well!