ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Nearly 15,000 refugees have resettled in Syracuse over the course of the past 15 years. The majority of these families and many of those who continue to arrive ultimately call the Northside neighborhood home.

Most families have fled extreme poverty, environmental disasters, political turmoil, conflict, or worse and have since begun life anew, many arriving in Syracuse without a penny or a word of English.

These communities—spanning individuals from throughout Africa, the Middle East, Ukraine, Cuba, and parts of Asia—live in what most of us would consider poverty, but their appreciation for a new life and work ethic is profound.

Photographer Maranie R. Staab has explored these communities and feels privileged to have been allowed into the lives of families as they work to recreate "home" thousands of miles away from the ones they once knew.

ArtRage Gallery
505 Hawley Ave., Syracuse

Jerome Witkin is one of the most important figurative painters alive today. After studying art in both the U.S. and Europe, he became a professor of art at Syracuse University in 1971.

John Handley, Director of the Stephen Austin University Art Galleries, writes "Witkin's art is not for the faint of heart. Although he renders in pencil and paint as skillfully and theatrically as Caravaggio or Rembrandt—he is a master of drama and light—his work often carries the blunt force of a wartime journalist."

His biographer, Sherry Chayat, once noted that when Witkin enters his studio, "... he leaps into the dark realm of political repression, the Holocaust, the private wars of domesticity, the collision of recurrent nightmares and the evening news."

In this his first exhibition at ArtRage, he will offer us a stunning glimpse of his artwork dealing with a range of social issues that, as he put it, "insisted on being painted."

His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum.