Current Exhibitions:

Sponsored in part by a generous donation from the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

“FOUNDING VISIONARIES:
Herb Williams and Jack White”

Venue: The Community Folk Art Center (CFAC)
Exhibitions: September 13th – December 13th, 2008
Opening Reception: September 27th, 2008
Opening Reception Time: 2:00 p.m.- 5:00p.m.
Phone: 315.442.2230
Address:
805 East Genesee Street,
Syracuse, NY 13210
URL: www.communityfolkartcenter.org
Admission: FREE

The Community Folk Art Center is proud to exhibit this unique collection of sculptures, drawings and prints by two CFAC founders, Herb Williams and Jack White. Celebrating Herb Williams: His Life, His Work, and His Art will be on exhibition in the Herbert T. Williams Gallery and Jack White: An Ancestral Image will be on display in the Main Gallery. Both exhibits are free, open to the public and will be on view September 13th – December 13th, 2008.

Celebrating Herb Williams: His Life, His Work, and His Art - As Community Folk Art Center's founding Director, Herb Williams (1938-1999) devoted his life to promoting the work of diverse artists and ensuring that a large audience could experience their work. His dedication to the collective vision of the founding members kept Williams busy and while he avidly supported and promoted other artist he rarely took time exhibit his own work. This will be the first large-scale exhibition of Williams’ work in Upstate New York.

Though he identified himself primarily as a sculptor, Williams worked across various artistic mediums; manipulating wood, plaster and bronze into figurative and abstract forms. His lithographs and etchings not only indicate the measure of his artistic skill and creativity but also serve as a chronicle of his literal, figurative journey as an artist.

During his lifetime, Williams received numerous awards, including the Syracuse University Friends of the Arts Award for Service to the Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of African Museums, an award for Outstanding Contributions to the Black Community from the Ghana Society of Central New York and the Service to the Arts Award from the Cultural Resources Council of Syracuse and Onondaga County. Williams served on the boards of directors of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and WCNY Public Broadcasting, acted as the chair of the Community Task Force, and served on the Syracuse Mayor's Urban Arts Commission as well as the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Jack White: An Ancestral Image

The Community Folk Art Center is honored to exhibit Jack White: An Ancestral Image, a collection of the works by CFAC co-founder and artist Jack White. Since the late 1960's, Jack White's mixed media abstract work, defined as “abstract impressionism”, has been inspired by African art forms and symbolism. The works included in the Ancestral Image exhibition are outside the boundaries of traditional painting or sculpture. They contain elements of the spiritual, the artistic, and the utilitarian that define African art. Reflecting on his work, White states, "Like most human beings I am curious about my ancestors; as a black American, I can know only that they came from Africa. Art gives me the power to explore the lives of those ancestors and expose audiences, minority and mainstream, to my discoveries."

While serving in the Air Force, White was both stimulated and inspired by the cultures he was exposed to during his world travels. White's global experience manifests in much of his art, with paintings, that are a mixture of various media that construct abstracted visual landscapes.

White began his more than forty-year career in art as an art and education major at Morgan State University in Baltimore and later continued with graduate studies in Museum Arts at Syracuse University in Upstate New York.

He has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions, with work represented in many prominent public and private collections: Schomberg Cultural Center, Syracuse University Collections, Arkansas Arts Center, Tampa Museum of Art, The Donald T. Byrd Collection, and Passaic County Community College Art Collections, among others. He recently moved from Auburn, New York to Austin, Texas, where he continues working as an artist, teacher, and curator.

CFAC: A Look Back
The Community Folk Art Center, then known as The Community Folk Art Gallery, was founded in 1972 by a group that included Herb Williams, Jack White, Shirley Harrison, David MacDonald, Bashir Alim, George Campbell Jr. and Mary Schmidt Campbell. The gallery first occupied the site of the former Elk Bakery at the corner of South Salina and Elk Street. In the 1980's, the gallery was moved to the site of the former Jewish Community Center at 2223 East Genesee Street. The Community Folk Art Center moved to its current location at 805 East Genesee Street in February 2006.

March On!

Artist: London Ladd
Exhibition: September 13 - December 13, 2008
Opening Reception: September 27, 2008
Time: 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Book Signing: September 27, 2008
Time: 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Location: CFAC Corridor
Admission: FREE

Click Here to see video.

The Community Folk Art Center is proud to have on exhibition works by local resident and Syracuse University alum, London Ladd. Works featured in this exhibition are the original paintings from the illustrated children's book, March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed The World written by Christine King Farris. March On! Commemorates the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s historical "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28 1963. The book is filled with beautiful, vivid illustrations chronicling the 24 hours leading up to Dr. King delivering the speech that changed the world through the eyes of his older sister, Christine King Farris.

London Ladd, a lifelong resident of Syracuse, started drawing in his late teens and has developed a painting style that is reminiscent of traditional artist. Influenced by great artists such as N.C. and Andrew Wyeth, John Singer Sargeant, Burt Silverman, and Frank Schoonover. With a diversified subject matter due to his multi-racial background, London's painterly style seeps through each piece. Most of Ladd's work is created with acrylic paint in his studio.

His work has been displayed at the Everson Museum and the Syracuse Jazz Fest. London has also worked with various recording artists illustrating CD covers. He has completed a mural for the Cultural Resource Council depicting the Rev. Jermain Loguen, an abolitionist who helped escaped slave to freedom in the Underground Railroad.

Most recently London was hired by Marshall Cavendish Publications to illustrate a book by award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford.

The Community Folk Art Center is a program of the African American Studies Department in the College of Arts & Sciences at Syracuse University and
is supported in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
805 East Genesee Street  :: Syracuse New York  13210  ::  (315) 442-2230  ::  FAX: (315) 442-2972 :: e-mail: cfac@syr.edu
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