Author Andy Weir's “Project Hail Mary,” his latest book, follows “Cast Away” (but in space) to the big screen, bookending 2015's “The Martian.” The previous Weir adaptation, which was directed by Ridley Scott, garnered seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture and starred Matt Damon as an astronaut presumed dead but trapped on Mars. Now it's Ryan Gosling's turn to be stranded in space. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are at the helm this time around, directing their first feature film since the miraculously funny and so-stupid-it's-brilliant “22 Jump Street” (they've been plenty busy with TV work and producing the “Spiderverse” films in the meantime). Their brand of humor is injected throughout the movie, for better or worse. Gosling's character, Ryland Grace, wakes up from a coma and doesn't know what has happened to him. It takes him a beat to learn how to move his body again and, much to his surprise, when he looks out the window, he sees nothing but stars. How did he get here? It also takes a while for those memories to come flooding back to him. The timeline for “Project Hail Mary” jumps back-and-forth. Back on Earth, Ryland was a quick-witted, sarcastic science teacher. He feels [...]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was 26 years old when her first child, a son, was born. “I was entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt without chart or compass,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815–1897.” Stanton was one of 11 children, five of whom died as infants and small children. As she watched her mother grieve the cycle of childbirth and loss, Stanton was determined to spare herself and her son the same fate. “Having gone through the ordeal of bearing a child, I was determined, if possible, to keep him,” she wrote. “So I read everything I could find on the subject.” Skeptical of male experts and the books they wrote, Stanton rejected common practices like tight swaddling, which liberated her infant's tiny limbs. A parenting style rooted in independence began to take shape. “Though uncertain at every step of my own knowledge, I learned another lesson in self-reliance,” she reflected. Living in Boston, she home-schooled her children while reading, writing and hosting reformers. But after moving to Seneca Falls, with her husband often away and three young boys to raise, domestic labor became stifling. Stanton felt — as so many [...]

Unique Fair has his exhibition "Veils" now at Joy Gallery489 West Main Street, Rochester, New YorkOut for the night, and it is First Fridays in Rochester, New York. This is our kind of connection with a community for the arts. In each of our three stops, we took in the show and had conversations with others to catch up on what we have missed.. This winter has been more like shoveling snow and trying to stay warm! Now, with temperatures rising, we HAD to get out!First stop, West Main Street, we enter Joy Gallery, with the featured artist Unique Fair, and he is there to greet everyone. His paintings are figurative, with many portraits, and he is fluent in the medium, as he seeks out the personalities of his sitters. There are smaller paintings in this show he calls "Veils", with some bright color backgrounds in oil and he makes really careful efforts at finding a likeness.Portrait of a Woman in oil by Unique FairUp a few stairs and you will find a real still life that Unique has arranged, and he has a wonderful story to tell about the fancy plates and glassware, [...]

Y is for YESKathy Clem invites you to come on over!Just now I have an invitation card to the opening of a new art space in Rochester. It will be very interesting to see what will happen at Kathy Clem's Museo de Arte! The space is attractive, and the location is out-of-the ordinary ( 3495 Winton Place in Rochester ). I visited the site months ago to talk with Kathy Clem and at the time the community installation was still in progress. The little shanty on the premises is going to have handmade pieces of felt to wrap around and give the building some interesting textures and colors. The opening is coming in April, on the 16th, so I plan to attend!The Print Club of Rochester at Made On StateThis winter, along with shoveling snow, I have been doing my research for a new book project, which will be in honor of The Print Club of Rochester. Today, I visited The Print Club archive and office on State Street, to look over the files and consider what I should say about The Club. My understanding is that this book will be a tribute [...]

Merry Christmas Eve! Tonight, some of you will be going to a Christmas vigil mass and will probably hear a retelling of the birth of Jesus. It is a familiar story with some key elements - Jesus in a manger, shepherds in a field, and three kings bearing gifts to the newborn child. With these key points, the story is complete, but it was not always this way. The nativity story that we are familiar with today is actually a composite narrative of canonical and non-canonical writings. In the early years of Christianity, the Church leaders spread this hybrid tale to the masses through art, which Pope Gregory the Great described as “the Bible of the illiterate." The Dijion Nativity by Robert Campin is an example of several nativity stories melded into one. Campin pulled from the canonical gospel of Luke, the non-canonical gospels of Pseudo-James and Pseudo-Matthew, and the popular (at the time) vision of Saint Bridget of Sweden. Dijion Nativity, Robert Campin, c. 1420 Shepherds from Portinari Altarpiece, Hugo van der Goes, c. 1475 The three shepherds peering in at Jesus are from the canonical gospel of Luke. Each of the gospel writers played towards their audience. Luke wrote in Asia [...]

If my calculations are correct, you probably got your midterm research paper back a couple weeks ago, and it was covered with red pen marks. With only four short weeks left before your final paper is due, you're wondering how you can improve your writing to boost your grade for this last assignment. Below, I have listed some of the most common mistakes you should look out for while editing your paper. This is a lengthy post, with no pictures, but I promise it will be helpful for you art history students out there. 1. Using “WH” words outside of a question Who, what, where, when, why, and how. In everyday conversation we say things like “that is where I bought my watch” or “this is how you tie a shoe.” However, in a formal paper, “wh” words should only be used when posing a question. So, if this was a formal paper, that last sentence would be a mistake. I could rephrase it as “…words should only be used if posing a question.” I don't bother making that edit here on the blog because I want to have a conversational tone, but I would never (knowingly) submit a paper with that [...]

Wheeling Community: Exploring Rochester's Little Known Public Art by Kitty Jospé On Sunday, May 3, over 80 people joined Bleu Cease, Executive Director/Curator at RoCo and Photographer Richard Margolis for a tour of eight hidden treasures of public art. This tour, in conjunction with the current exhibit, “Ride It: Art and Bicycles in Rochester” at Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) celebrated the idea of “slow art” and a chance to notice not only what we often are hurrying by, but to think of larger implications of how we live in our environment. It is heart-warming to join with others on a sunny spring day, and discover art and the stories and contexts behind it—and this incredible dividend: No, not the sounds of trains, or the way sculptures frame fascinating details of buildings, but a sense of feeling connected to others, and connected to our city. Did you know Rochester has had Liberty Poles at the same site since 1830? What a surprise to arrive on site-specific six-part Rochester Project, by Richard Fleischner. It is a magnificent outdoor amphitheatre, looking out on three stone lattices, all the same size but with variations on [...]

“A photograph presents the artist and the viewer with a challenge, because we always want to know what it is—as if the photograph were not there. For over 165 years, an extraordinary number of forces have made us instinctively believe that photographs are windows on reality—even when reason tells us otherwise.” — Carl Chiarenza, 2013 lecture excerpt A photograph of you is not you. It is, in fact, an illusion. That simple viewpoint is perhaps the cornerstone of famed photographer Carl Chiarenza's body of work—and his role as a mentor to other artists. “It's not unreasonable for people who are interested in photography to accept what has been broadcast since the 1830s, which is that the photograph captures reality, actuality,” Carl says. "Mulligan Print," by Carl Chiarenza. Carl's work has been shown around the world and can be found in the collections of more than 50 museums, including The Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Art Institute of Chicago, and Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. “From my point of view, it never did that. Every photograph is an abstraction.” That perspective has so informed his work, he avoids some of the [...]

Rochester musician and SUNY Potsdam student Mikaela Davis plays a semi-grand harp, one size down from a concert grand. When she first began to play as a child, she started on a smaller-style troubador harp. “I've always known I wanted to go to school for music,” she says. “I wanted to be a professional harpist in an orchestra and teach harp at a college—until my own music became my main focus.” (photo by Aaron Winters) Let's play word association. “Harpist.” Go. Did you respond with “pop-music newcomer”? You will. Rochester-born Mikaela Davis knows how to show a harp who's boss. Backed by a mix of guitar, keyboards, and her own lilting vocals, Mikaela has deftly plucked a classic instrument out of its past. Spun it into a modern sound. And wrapped it in sparkling lights, ready for download. Her self-titled debut album came out in 2012, and she describes it as indie-pop. Just the same, she's hesitant to commit to a category. “I don't like to put myself in a genre. The music we're doing now, it's nothing like my first album. We went something that's more psychedelic rock on the new EP,” Mikaela says. Brian Moore, audio engineer and owner of Red Booth [...]

The Beauty of Gray: Scapes exhibit showcases video art that's not all black and whiteby Geoff Graser If you don't “get it” right away, Debora and Jason Bernagozzi understand. When the couple tells people they do video art, most people say, “Oh, you do commercials.” Nope. “Oh, you do those weird foreign movies.” Not exactly. The Bernagozzis' art form is more like abstract art—abstract art that moves and talks and sometimes chirps. The Bernagozzis' work is part of RoCo's “Scapes” exhibit on display until Sunday, November 13. On my first try, I didn't exactly “get it.” And that's all right, Jason says, that's partly his point. He thinks Americans are spoon fed so many messages through the media and popular art that people believe what others want them to believe rather than making up their own minds. This echoes some of the work of Nam June Paik, considered the father of video art for his innovations in the 1960s. Paik would take footage of the Beatles and manipulate the waves so the Fab Four would disintegrate. He did this with politicians and other TV celebrities, hoping to convince viewers that the people on TV weren't indestructible gods. So you're not alone if you [...]