According to Wei, “Inspired by my conservative upbringing in China, ‘I Miss You Already’ is a self-portrait project that reveals the process of self-reflection and self-discovery. It is a provocative way to explore my sense of security through understanding the tension between freedom and boundaries. While this project is my awakening response to liberation and hope, it also represents a universal search for our place in nature and society.”

Wei has exhibited his work internationally at venues such as the Museum of the City of New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Lincoln Center Avery Fisher Hall, the Harn Museum of Art and the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing. Wei’s first monograph, “Chinese Sentiment,” was published by Charles Lane Press in 2011. His photographs have also been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Aperture, ARTnews, PDN, American Photo and Chinese Photography. His work is included in permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, the Library of Congress, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, the Museum of Chinese in America, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Kinsey Institute. Wei holds an M.F.A. in photography, video and related media from the School of Visual Arts, New York; a B.F.A. in photography from Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and an A.A. in decorative arts from Shanghai Light Industry College. He is represented by Daniel Cooney Fine Arts in New York.

Also on view at this time is the Light Work Grants exhibition, featuring the work of the 2012 Light Work Grant winners Dennis Krukowski, Tice Lerner and Sayler/Morris.

The exhibition runs Aug. 15-Oct. 19. A gallery reception will be held Sept. 13 from 5-7 p.m.

Sarah Averill
For one evening in May 2011, artist, physician and community activist Averill turned a laundromat on the north side of Syracuse into a gallery and lively community event. The Lodi Street Laundromat is located in the heart of the north side, a neighborhood largely populated by immigrant families from Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal and Vietnam. While in medical school, Averill sought to keep her creative spirit alive by walking the streets of the north side and interacting with and photographing this diverse community. Averill’s background in fine arts and urban planning came together in this project as she set up her camera and printer at the laundromat for a “Free Friends and Family Day,” where patrons and neighbors could have their portraits taken while doing their laundry. These events culminated in the installation at the laundromat of photographs of hundreds of immigrant families and a reception with food and music provided by families from Burma and Somalia. For this exhibition, Averill has reinstalled her photos at Light Work, and they continue to provide a true celebration of community.

Bang Geul Han
Han works in a variety of media, including watercolor, digital video, photography, performance and computer programming. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, Han moved to the United States in 2003, and creates work in response to this experience as well as the coinciding explosion of new media and communication platforms such as blogs, social media, and reality TV. She is interested in exploring, “how we (and especially myself) engage with these new forms and how the contemporary narratives are constructed from these disembodied environments where conflicting impulses of public and private, anxiety and desire are blurred.”

Mark McLoughlin
McLoughlin’s series of portraits, “Stolen Souls, Willing,” was created using a large pinhole camera without a lens, constructed by the artist, which accommodates a 16 inch by 20 inch paper negative. As each model sat for the 15-minute exposure time required, they could not help but contribute to the destruction of their likeness, as perfect stillness is impossible and the long exposure time records every movement. But within this process the artist also discovered his models left behind what he describes as a notion of the spirit, reminding him of the belief that the act of taking someone’s photograph would steal that person’s soul.

Jan Nagle
Following the deaths of both her father and cat in the spring of 2010, multi-disciplinary artist Nagle began to take weekly drives through the landscape of Niagara County and Lake Ontario. The open road provided her with a way to filter her memories and process her grief. In her words, “Personal loss is a marker; from such a point, we either suck up inside ourselves and die a little bit, or we pivot into a new period of our lives. Either way, there is a time of mourning, followed some way, someday, by grace, by acceptance, and ultimately by celebration or tribute.” “Vaulted” is a series of 20 TTV (through the viewfinder) photographs, which were created during this period.

Matthew Walker
“Recollection” is a series of photographs by Walker taken at the State University of New York College of Brockport and in the community of Brockport, N.Y. The project was funded in part by a commission for the college’s 175th Anniversary celebration and also through an artist residency at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester. Although Walker is an alumnus of the college, he stresses the photographs are not a record of his personal experience, but “speak to the potential and limitations of memory, and acknowledges that location stands as a testament to the passage of time.”

“TONY: 2012” is organized by the Everson Museum of Art in collaboration with ArtRage—The Norton Putter Gallery, Community Folk Art Center, Erie Canal Museum, Light Work, Onondaga Historical Association, Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact, Rosamond Gifford Zoo, Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, SUArt Galleries, Urban Video Project, The Warehouse Gallery, City of Syracuse and XL Projects. Major funding is provided by The Central New York Community Foundation through the John F. Marsellus Fund.

has announced the exhibition “Pastoral,” featuring landscape photographs by Alexander Gronsky. The photographs were taken along the outlying areas of Moscow, where the human need to find solace away from the city collides with urban sprawl, and the fragility of nature.

The exhibition will be on view through May 31. A gallery reception will take place Tuesday, March 27, from 5-7 p.m.

Gronsky is a self-described landscape photographer with an uncanny ability to capture scenes in nature as elegant allegories that include rolling hills, spectacular lighting and far-reaching horizons. His skilled use of perspective and composition, reminiscent of centuries-old traditions in European landscape painting, draw the viewer’s eye deep into the landscape and generate a sense of awe for each place.

Gronsky’s images follow city dwellers as they seek out urban hinterlands for precious moments of leisure. The people in his images seek sun. They yearn for tranquility. And they especially hope for an escape into nature, away from the stresses of day-to-day life, away from the city. Within the constancy of human presence, Gronsky photographs recreational moments deep in forested areas or open beaches, in secluded niches or general gathering places. Meanwhile, he never loses sight of the proximity of big city life. Glimpses of high rises and industrial parks can be seen at some distance through the trees or sometimes in surprisingly close proximity to the people in their leisurely pursuits.

Gronsky started working as a freelance photographer in 1999 and joined the Photographer.ru Agency in 2003. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Gronsky currently lives in Latvia. His images can be viewed at alexandergronsky.com.

Support for this exhibition was provided through the New York State Council on the Arts and Syracuse University. Special thanks to FotoFest in Houston and the Iris Art Foundation in Moscow.

Also on view at this time is “Wounding the Black Male,” featuring photographs from the Light Work Permanent Collection.

Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.

For the months of March–May, , Light Work and the Everson Museum of Art will present the video “Flo Flow” (2011) by William Wegman. It will be the world premiere of the video, which was created specifically for UVP.

“Flo Flow” is Wegman’s latest in a long line of human-canine collaborations. It was while he was in Long Beach, Calif., in the 1970s that Wegman got his dog, Man Ray, with whom he began a fruitful collaboration of many years. Man Ray, known in the art world and beyond for his endearing deadpan presence, became a central figure in Wegman’s photographs and videos. Ever since, Weimaraner-actors have peopled Wegman’s uncanny imaginative universe, a reflection on both the humanness of ‘animals’ and the strangeness of humans.

Wegman was born in 1943 in Holyoke, Mass. He received a B.F.A. in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, and an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana.

By the early 1970s, Wegman’s work was being exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. In addition to solo shows with Sonnabend Gallery in Paris and New York, Situation Gallery in London and Konrad Fisher Gallery in Dusseldorf, his work was included in such seminal exhibitions as “When Attitudes Become Form” and “Documenta V,” and regularly featured in “Interfunktionen,” “Artforum” and “Avalanche.” Wegman lives in New York and Maine, where he continues to make videos, take photographs and make drawings and paintings.

UVP is a multimedia public art initiative of Light Work and Syracuse University that operates several electronic exhibition sites along the Connective Corridor. The mission of UVP is to present exhibitions and projects that celebrate the arts and culture of Syracuse and engage artists and the creative community around the world. Light Work and UVP work closely with collaborative partner Everson Museum of Art in determining exhibitions and programming for that site. 

Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work and UVP are members of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.

For more information, contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.

The exhibition will run Jan. 17-March 8, with a gallery reception Feb. 23 from 5-7 p.m.

Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive and violent aspects of male identity in her series “Elegant Violence,” which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins’ images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.

Both artists focus on the construction of identity—the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves, while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.

Davis received her M.F.A. from Yale University, and her bachelor’s degree from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; Joy Wei Gallery in New York; SI FEST: Savignano Immagini Festival in Italy; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Center for Photography at Woodstock; Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum; and Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne, Germany, among others. Her photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, and the Library of Congress. Davis is represented by Lee Marks Fine Art.

Elkins received her B.F.A. in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including shows at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna; The PIP International Photo Festival in Pingyao, China; Gallery Elsa in Busan, South Korea; National Arts Club, Tina Kim Gallery, and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, among many others. Elkins and Cara Phillips co-founded wipnyc.org, a platform for showcasing both established and emerging women in photography. Elkins is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York.

Employing footage shot on a high-speed film camera, “Always After” focuses on the broken glass accumulated after the windows of the Mies-designed Illinois Institute of Technology’s Crown Hall were smashed by the architect’s own grandson as part of a ceremony in advance of the building’s renovation. Manglano-Ovalle scrupulously edits out all clear reference to this odd ‘kill your fathers’ ritual, leaving the viewer with a dream-like sequence in which well-shod anonymous masses eternally exit and equally anonymous custodians endlessly move in to sweep up the crystalline debris of modernism. The precise nature of the event—whether it is a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or just routine construction—never becomes clear. Instead, the narrative unfolds like a Jacob’s ladder: never reaching the end, passing again and again through the point where modernist progress and crisis become indistinguishable—a point that is always already “after.”

Manglano-Ovalle (born in Madrid, 1961) has received numerous awards and grants, including a MacArthur ‘genius’ Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including solo exhibitions at El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey and Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; among many others. His work has been included in such group exhibitions as the Whitney Biennial, New York; Liverpool Biennial; and at The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada. Manglano-Ovalle is currently represented by Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin, and Galleria Soledad Lorenzo in Madrid. He is a professor in the Department of Art Theory & Practice at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.

McCarney creates his sculptural objects and photo-based editions as one-of-a-kind, hand-made pieces, as well as small runs of print-on-demand books. According to Hannah Frieser, director of Light Work, “Scott McCarney rethinks the book form, considering books as a starting point rather than a mere vehicle for information and images.”

The gallery reception on Nov. 3  from 5–8 p.m. will celebrate the exhibition, and also serve as the kickoff event to the Society of Photographic Education (SPE) Northeast/Mid-Atlantic regional conference titled “Photographers + Publishing,” which will be hosted by and Syracuse University. Light Work is publishing a special conference edition of the award-winning publication Contact Sheet in a run of 250, which will include original art by McCarney.

McCarney’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Center for Book Arts and Printed Matter Inc. in New York City; Tower Fine Arts Gallery in Brockport, N.Y.; Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis; University of the West of England; and other locations throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and more. He received his B.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., and his M.F.A. from SUNY University at Buffalo and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y.

He has received numerous awards, including the New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (printmaking/drawing book arts) and multiple Special Opportunity Stipends from NYFA/Rochester Arts & Cultural Council. McCarney’s work is featured in many permanent collections, including those of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City and the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, among many others.

Also on view at this time is “2011 Light Work Grants,” an exhibition of work by the winners of the 2011 Light Work Grants in Photography Competition: Neil Chowdhury, Danielle Mericle and Ahndraya Parlato. In addition, “bobCollignon:Outdoorsman” is on view in the Community Darkrooms Gallery.

For more information, contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, at 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.

Since its founding in 1974, En Foco has been dedicated to promoting cultural diversity in the field of photography. It has nurtured and supported photographers of diverse cultures, beginning with Latinos in New York, eventually broadening its mission to embrace photographers of African, Asian and Native American heritage across the United States.

En Foco has become recognized in the field of photography for its publications, annual New Works fellowship program, workshops and exhibitions. Much less known is a collection it has amassed of works by many of the photographers who have taken part in its programs. It now numbers nearly 700 prints dating from the 1970s to the present day, encompassing not only a plurality of voices, but also subject matter, photographic approaches and points of view. The images presented in this exhibition offer an introduction into this significant photographic collection.

The exhibition features the earliest works in the collection, dating to the 1970s and 1980s, which reflect the documentary impulse that characterized photographic work produced during, and in the aftermath of, the Civil Rights era. The exhibition also traces En Foco’s mission as it broadened its scope beyond Latino photographers. In doing so, the organization reflected the multicultural discourse of the 1990s, one that pressed for the inclusion of many cultural and ethnic voices in the spheres of culture, politics or the media, and looked at photography as a medium to examine identity, otherness and social and cultural contexts that shape perspectives on the self.

Finally, the exhibition looks at En Foco through the youngest photographers represented in the collection, who provide a glimpse into the contemporary art scene’s global landscape. Whether dealing with local or universal themes, photographers of the current generation approach photography with great freedom, drawing from multiple photographic traditions, cultural histories and creative modes. These artists have come of age as digital technologies matured and essentially replaced the old, analog processes, and as virtual realities and communities have assumed an influential role in the way we perceive the world.

In addition to Light Work, the EN FOCO/IN FOCUS exhibition is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Bronx Council on the Arts, Canson Infinity and Archival Methods.

The exhibition title speaks to the multicultural character of American identities (Irish-American, African American, etc.). Although a person’s heritage might be inferred by looking at their features and clothing, viewers of Anderson-Staley’s work are encouraged, according to the artist, “to suspend the kind of thinking that would traditionally assist in decoding these images in the context of American identity politics.”

Anderson-Staley makes portraits with the 19th-century wet-plate collodion process. She uses wooden view cameras, 19th-century brass lenses and chemicals she hand-mixes according to the traditional formulas. In this series, she focuses on just one plane in the face—usually just the eyes. The exposures are long, lasting anywhere from 10-60 seconds, so the images capture a full moment of thought. Because of these characteristics of the process, there is an introspective quality to each portrait, as if each person has been caught looking at himself or herself in a mirror.

According to the artist, “There are so many technical variables in the process, and there can be flaws and defects that enter the image at every stage of the process, and in many ways this makes it a perfect vehicle for portraits—it is truer to the reality of human imperfection. My images are titled only with the first name of the individual, and I very deliberately try not to draw attention to differences like race, because I want to challenge photography’s role in defining difference. At the same time, I want every person I photograph to stand out very sharply as an individual, to be defined as much as possible by the expression on their face.”

The portraits in the Light Work exhibition are mostly individuals from the broader Syracuse community photographed during Anderson-Staley’s residency in 2010. This collection of tintypes, numbering more than 100, is thus as much a portrait of a diverse community as it is a series of individual portraits.

This exhibition is part of Syracuse Symposium. Syracuse Symposium is presented by the Syracuse University Humanities Center for The College of Arts and Sciences, with a 2011 theme of “Identity.”

Anderson-Staley’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally and published widely in print and online. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Puffin Grant. Anderson-Staley has given artist talks at many colleges, universities and organizations. She received her bachelor’s degreefrom Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and her B.F.A. from Hunter College in New York.

Freyer’s series of videos connects speaker to listener, performer to viewer. His 5-year-old daughter and her friends take turns posing for the camera for periods of several minutes without moving. At first, the static video images of little girls in Cinderella skirts or mom’s high heels appear as cute clichés familiar from advertising and family photo albums. However, the children’s mild discomfort at standing still and silent becomes increasingly unsettling over time. The children struggle not to fidget or speak, opening a space for a more complicated reading of their self-presentation. Their chosen objects of ‘dress up’—the clutter of pink hair curlers and ballerina frills—become a costume that liberates, rather than obscures, the personality beneath.

Freyer is an interdisciplinary artist working at the crossroads of photography, video, audio and performance—both on the Internet and in real-world exhibits and installations. His work explores the role of everyday, personal objects in our lives—as commodities, fetishes, totems and touchstones. He also uses photographs to investigate systems of exchange—how the circulation of objects and stories enriches social ties between individuals and groups. Freyer’s work has evolved toward the human flow of memories and stories, especially across generations.

Freyer’s projects include his internationally renowned Internet project “All My Life for Sale,” his national PBS pilot “Second Hand Stories,” and his readymade projects “Walm-Art.com” and “Big Boy.” His work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, The Sunday London Times, Art Forum, Print Magazine and NBC’s “The Today Show.” His first book, “All My Life for Sale” (Bloomsbury USA, 2002) was optioned by Scott Free Productions, and the Oscar-nominated writer/director team Shari Berman and Robert Pulcini are attached to write the screenplay and direct the feature film adaptation.

Freyer is an assistant professor of studio art in the School for Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, where he teaches advanced photography and digital imaging classes. He is currently a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden.

Amy Elkins and Cara Philips, founders of  (WIP), will talk about their Internet-based exhibition space for emerging and established artists. While WIP features the work of female photographers, the website is essential reading to anyone interested in contemporary photography. Since its founding, WIP has become one of the premiere sites for up-and-coming photographers to exhibit their work, as well as for more established photographers to reach a wide audience. Several photographers associated with Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program and the Department of Transmedia’s Colloquium lecture series, including Alessandra Sanguinetti, Kelli Connell, Talia Chetrit and Elinor Carucci, have been featured on the site. In the past year, WIP, in association with the Humble Arts Foundation, Lightside Photographics and Kodak, has established a $1,000 grant to emerging women photographers.

This event has been coordinated by Doug DuBois, associate professor of art photography in the Department of Transmedia. It is co-sponsored by Light Work, Syracuse University’s Division of Student Affairs Co-Curricular Funding, and the Department of Transmedia and Matrilineage, a student-run organization committed to promoting women in the arts.

Three $2,000 grants will be awarded to photographers, critics or photohistorians who reside within an approximate 50-mile radius of Syracuse. The recipients of these grants are invited to display their work in a special exhibition at the Light Work Gallery, and their work will also be reproduced in Light Work’s award-winning publication, Contact Sheet.

In its 37-year history, the grant program has supported more than 110 artists, some multiple times. With the help of the regional grant, many artists have been able to continue long-term projects, purchase equipment, frame photographs for exhibitions, promote their work, collaborate with others or otherwise continue their artist goals. Laura Adams Guth, 2009 Light Work Grant recipient, used her grant award to purchase a new computer to continue her photographic work. Karen Brummund, who also received a grant in 2009, used her grant to purchase 10,000 sheets of copy paper to continue with her installation-based photographic project. Nancy Keefe Rhodes, 2008 grant recipient, utilized her award to fund the printing of an exhibition and catalogue.

All applications must be postmarked or delivered to Light Work by March 31. All applicants must reside in of one of the following Central New York counties: Broome, Cayuga, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga, Oswego, Schuyler, Seneca, St. Lawrence, Tioga or Tompkins.

Three judges from outside the grant region will review the applications. Their decisions are based solely on the strength of the candidate’s portfolio and completed application. Individuals who received this award prior to 2007 are eligible to reapply. Full-time students are not eligible for this competition. Grantees will be notified of the results by May 15.

Application forms are available at Light Work or online at .

To request an application or to obtain further information, contact Light Work at (315) 443-1300, or write to: Light Work, 316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, N.Y. 13244.

Kost joined Adobe in 1992. She learned her craft through hands-on experience and now serves as the “Senior Digital Imaging Evangelist.” In the lecture she will discuss Photoshop and other Adobe software from an insider perspective as both an artist and Digital Imaging Evangelist. She will also talk about her photo series and book “Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking” (O’Reilly Media, 2006). This event is co-sponsored by Syracuse University’s Division of Student Affairs.

In her work, Kost is able to combine a passion for photography and a mastery of digital imaging techniques. With a degree in psychology, she finds within herself the raw components of visual emotion. For Kost, a computer isn’t merely a shortcut for what is possible with a camera, but is about exploring what is possible in no other medium and taking advantage of the flexibility and options for creative exploration.

As the Digital Imaging Evangelist at Adobe—focused on Lightroom and Photoshop—Kost’s role includes customer education, product development and market research for photography, digital imaging and illustration. She is the founder of www.jkost.com, publisher of the and the host of “The Complete Picture,” a bimonthly instructional training program featuring Lightroom and Photoshop on Adobe TV. In addition, she is a frequent contributor to several publications, a speaker at numerous conferences and industry events and a guest lecturer at distinguished photography workshops and fine art schools around the world. She has had several exhibits of her work, as well as published numerous articles on Photoshop and Lightroom in books, magazines and online. She holds an A.A. in fine art photographyr and a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Co-curated by Katz and David C. Ward, this monumental exhibition is the first to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture. The exhibition has been praised for its groundbreaking scholarship by a major museum and drew international attention when a video in the exhibition by David Wojnarowicz was removed from the exhibition under pressure from a right-wing religious group and conservative politicians.

The exhibition considers such themes as the role of sexual difference in depicting modern America; how artists explored the fluidity of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art—especially abstraction—were influenced by social marginalization; and how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes toward sexuality, desire and romantic attachment.

According to Blake Gopnik of The Washington Post, the exhibition features a “… fascinating world, and powerful art.…” He goes on to state that, “Scholars Jonathan Katz and David Ward have mounted one of the best thematic exhibitions in years.” According to Holland Cotter of The New York Times, “With the exhibition ‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,’ one of our federally funded museums, the National Portrait Gallery, here in the city of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ has gone where our big private museums apparently dare not tread, deep into the history of art by and about gay artists.”

The exhibition attracted international attention when Wojnarowicz’s video, “A Fire in My Belly,” was removed from the exhibition by G. Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, after receiving complaints from William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, as well as Republican John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and Eric Cantor, Republican Majority Leader. The removal of the video from the exhibition has sparked public outcry from arts organizations and activists around the world, including the Tate Modern in London, the Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and SF MOMA in San Francisco, among many others. Light Work joined these protests in early December by organizing a screening of “A Fire in My Belly” on Dec. 14 in collaboration with the ArtRage Gallery, which included a public forum about the work. will continue to show the video until Feb. 13, the date the exhibition is scheduled to close in Washington, D.C.

Light Work presents this event as an opportunity for Katz to discuss the process of curating this important exhibition, its significance, as well as the controversy surrounding the entire exhibition and Wojnarowicz’s video. In addition, there will be a question-and-answer session with Katz and audience members through which Light Work hopes to continue the dialogue about this exhibition, censorship and the controversy.

Katz, a scholar of post-war art and culture from the vantage point of sexuality, is an associate professor and director of the visual studies doctoral program at SUNY Buffalo, as well as honorary research faculty at the University of Manchester, UK, and a guest curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Known as an activist academic, Katz was the founding director of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University—the first queer studies program in the Ivy League—and founding chair of the first department of gay and lesbian studies in the United States, at City College of San Francisco in 1990. He co-founded the activist group Queer Nation, San Francisco, and the San Francisco National Queer Arts Festival, and founded the Queer Caucus of the College Art Association. Ward is a historian of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

The website  offers an archive of information about the censorship of “A Fire in My Belly,” as well as a growing list of arts institutions that are hosting events and screenings in support of Wojnarowicz and freedom of artistic expression.

Limited free parking for this event is available in Booth Garage—RSVP to Light Work (315-443-1300). The event is free and open to the public. Gallery hours to view the video are Sunday to Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m., and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, call (315) 443-1300.

Juror Stephen Mahan, director of the Photography & Literacy Project at Syracuse University, picked Bell as the winner, and awarded five honorable mentions to Jeremy Decharzo, Andy Frost, Genevieve Marshall, Meghan Schaetziel, and Mindy Lee Tarry.

In 2005, after the sudden death of her mother, Bell picked up her camera after a 20-year hiatus from painting and began photographing nature. Her focus in both painting and photography has been on reclaiming visions of the past and her connection to nature.

According to Bell, “Many trips back home to New York City on the train have helped me remember lost pieces of time where life seemed simpler and less veiled. It was a natural progression for me to record the cycle of change in my ‘Hudson Past/Perfect’ series. By revisiting the same landscapes in different seasons and under different weather conditions, I was able to capture the past before it disappeared. I am drawn to the meditative quality of the Hudson River and the sacred aspects of the natural environment. The series is reminiscent of a more romantic era, when God and nature were viewed as one.”

Bell received her B.F.A. from Pratt Institute and her M.F.A. from SU. Her paintings and photography have been featured in exhibitions throughout New York state, as well as at the Brenda Taylor Gallery in San Diego. She received the Best in Photography Award in the Manhattan Arts International Online Exhibition, “The Healing Power of Art” (New York, N.Y.).

“Mare” will be on exhibition Jan. 18-March 8 in the Light Work Gallery. In “Mare,” a circular image of a wave crashing against an unnamed shore, the image spins within itself and simultaneously orbits the gallery. As the image rotates, the lines of the wave begin to resemble the layered surface of a Jovian planet. Visitors to the gallery become part of the work as the projection reflects off their bodies. Joining the sea with both corporal and heavenly phenomena, the installation recreates the awe felt when looking at the night sky and the increasing smallness of human existence within the ever-expanding universe.

At the Everson Museum of Art Urban Video Project site, Oliver will install the work “Perigee,” which will run throughout February. It echoes the circular image of a wave that appears in “Mare.” A perigee occurs when one orbiting body, in this case the moon, is closest to earth, which makes tidal waves generally stronger. The movement of the video describes the rotation of both planets and the alternate rising and falling of the sea. Its projection on the site, framed perfectly against the stars, transports the viewer into the celestial continuum where earth and its inhabitants are affected by larger bodies in space.

The third component, “Penumbra,” which will be installed in the Menschel Photography Gallery in the Schine Student Center, is a three-channel video in which Oliver’s head acts as a stellar body fading away as another body emerges to conceal it. The three videos play simultaneously, allowing Oliver to stretch time, the body and space as the circle of his head becomes both a macrocosm of the universe and a microcosm of the body. “Penumbra” will run Jan. 18-March 3.

Oliver lives and works in New York City. He received his B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, and his M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He has participated in artist residencies at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Oliver was a Light Work Artist-in-Residence in 2009. His work has been exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.; Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.; D’Amelio Terras, N.Y.; the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta; and The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Most recently, his work Jupiter was installed on the Highline Gallery in New York City.

On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, the Smithsonian Institution removed the video from the exhibition. This move occurred after pressure was exerted by the Catholic League and conservative members of Congress, who have described the work as hate speech and a waste of taxpayer money. Since the removal of the work, public outcry has built across the nation. The website http://hideseek.org offers an archive of information about the censorship of “A Fire in My Belly,” as well as a growing list of arts institutions that are hosting events and screenings in support of Wojnaroicz and freedom of artistic expression.

On Dec. 14, in the midst of an upstate freezing blizzard, people gathered to attend an emergency screening of “A Fire in My Belly” held by ArtRage Gallery and . Similar screenings have popped up across the country, and Light Work and will continuously screen the work until Feb. 13, the slated closing date of the Hide/Seek exhibition.

For more information, call Light Work at (315) 443-1300, or email info@lightwork.org.

In “Asylum,” Gibson takes a page from each of his two most recent artist’s books: “Dupe: A Partial Compendium of Everyday Delusions” (self-published, 2000), a dictionary of quasi-clinical, art-world pathologies; sardonic but earnest, and “Sarsaparilla to Sorcery” (SUNY Binghamton, 2007), a picture book exploring perceptual ambiguities between allusive abstract photographic images and taxonomic illustrations swiped from old Encyclopedia Britannicas. Through a chain of slow, poetic dissolves, the video blends psychologistic text with dreamy, morphic imagery into a weirdly visceral stream of consciousness. Similarly, “Smoke” combines quack psychological text with abstract photography and pages appropriated from encyclopedia, this time the World Book series. However, whereas “Asylum” is slow and panoramic in range, “Smoke” is faster, shorter and distinctly gothic in character—more pointed, and, though humorous, blackly so.

Gibson has worked in a variety of media and contexts—painting, photography, video, posters, banners and books, for galleries and public spaces. He is currently the managing editor of Artforum, and in the past was the senior editor of Art&Text magazine. In recent years, his two artists books have been exhibited on the Panasonic Astrovision screen in Times Square as part of Creative Time’s “59th Minute” program, and he has mounted solo shows at the New York Academy of Sciences and Luxe Gallery, New York. He is represented by Stephan Stoyanov Gallery (formerly Luxe) in New York.

“Mare, 2009,” projects a circular image of a wave crashing against an unnamed shore. As the image rotates, the lines of the waves begin to resemble the layered surface of a planet such as Jupiter. Connecting the sea with heavenly phenomena, the installation recreates the sense of wonderment felt when looking at the night sky and the fundamental human desire to understand one’s place in the universe. Mare, which is Latin for “seas,” suggests movement and journeys both physical and metaphysical, as well as metaphors of darkness and illumination, looking and discovery.

Oliver lives and works in New York City. He received his B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, and his M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He was an artist resident at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and an artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. His work has been exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.; Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.; D’Amelio Terras, N.Y.; the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; and The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. His notable group exhibitions include “30 Seconds Off An Inch,” The Studio Museum; “Your Gold Teeth II,” Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; “Black Is Black Ain’t,” The Renaissance Society, Chicago; and “Frequency,” The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The installation features 272 aphorisms from her celebrated series “Truisms” and “Survival” that challenge viewers’ assumptions about the world we live in through the use of language as art. Whether questioning consumerist impulses or lamenting the struggles of daily living, Holzer always provokes a response. Her work crosses the boundary between poetry and visual art, and suggests both the limitations and power of technology and the information age.

For more than 30 years, this influential American conceptual artist has been creating subversive works that blend in among advertisements in public spaces, questioning and confronting our passive consumption of information. Since the early 1970s, Holzer has been collecting and writing phrases and aphorisms found in literature, philosophy and contemporary culture. She calls these summaries her “Truisms,” and has printed them on bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, video, sound, light projection and the Internet. In 1982, Holzer installed “Truisms” on one of Time Square’s gigantic LED billboards. In the 1980s, for her “Survival” series, Holzer adopted more personal and urgent messages about the realities of everyday living. Power, vulnerability, violence, tenderness, moral struggles and motherhood are courageously chronicled in this series, which continuously prods the viewer to question the role of individuals in society.

Holzer received a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in Athens; a M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and honorary doctorates from the University of Ohio, the Rhode Island School of Design, and New School University, New York. She has received many awards, including the Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale; the Skowhegan Medal; and the Diploma of Chevalier from the French government. Major exhibitions include the Neue National Galerie, Berlin; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Dia Art Foundation, New York; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Since 1996, Holzer has organized public light projections in cities worldwide. She was the first woman to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, N.Y.