The Community Folk Art Center and The Syracuse (NY) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated present : The 54th Annual Teenage Competitive Art Exhibition. Fifty-four (54) years ago, three high school art teachers, Charles Wollowitz, Roberta Braen, and Nancy Peck of Nottingham and Corcoran High Schools with Herb Williams, Director of CFAC, engaged in a strategic planning process that led to the development of an art show and competition in response to a need to provide competition and exhibition opportunities for African American, Asian, Latino and Native American students attending high schools in the Syracuse area. Subsequently, the Syracuse (NY) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, in conjunction with the Syracuse City School District, joined CFAC and art teachers from the local community to continue these efforts.This year’s exhibition features 85 students with over  122 works including 3D sculptures, photography, Digital Art, Mixed Media, painting, and drawing. Participating schools include Cazenovia High School, Charles W. Baker High School, Cicero-North Syracuse High School, Corcoran High School, Cristian Brothers Academy, Henninger High School, and Nottingham High School.  Special guest judges included visual artists, Brandan Rahim and Iris Williams alongside arts administrators Dr. Tanisha Jackson, Jess Posner, and Alexander Vamvakias.

Congratulations to this years participants and winners! 
–
BEST IN SHOW
Nola Johnson of Nottingham HS for watercolor painting titled Morality- “In this painting I aimed to capture an expression of innocence and child-like wonder, using the apple to symbolize the childhood themes of growing up and maturing.” 
DIRECTORS’ CHOICE
Ne’ Ari Ray of Henninger HS -for digital art titled Self-Portrait -“This digital self-portrait uses color and images to highlight everything that I love.”

DIGITAL ARTS
first place : Zeniya Jordan – Corcoran HS
second place : Lola Morin – Corcoran HS
third place : Janielle Grace Quiron -Nottingham HS

DRAWING
first place : Braelyn Cross -Corcoran HS
second place : Talasey Hussein- Henninger HS
third place: Andy Nguyen – Henninger HS

MIXED MEDIA
first place: Zeniya Jordan – Corcoran HS
second place Harmony Corrice – Corcoran HS
third place : Shirin Hamo – Nottingham HS
PAINTING
first place : Naveah Slaughter – Corcoran HS
second place : Sia Welling – Nottingham HS
third place : Yamalay Abad – Henninger HS

PHOTOGRAPHY
first place: Delsar Jimenz-Ortiz – Henninger HS
second place : Isreal Gaterwood Smith-Nottingham HS
third place : Lillyanna Freeman – Nottingham HS

SCULPTURE
first place: Evelyn Morocho- Corcoran HS
second place : Jacelyn Pena – Corcoran HS
third place: Mohammed Ahmed- Corcoran HS

The Community Folk Art Center (CFAC) has been awarded an $18,200 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support “Rooted & Rising,” an innovative artist residency program designed to uplift and amplify the voices of artists from the African Diaspora. This prestigious award reflects CFAC’s ongoing commitment to fostering artistic excellence, cultural preservation, community engagement, and educational enrichment throughout Central New York.

Led by Dr. Tanisha Jackson, Executive Director of the Community Folk Art Center and Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University, the residency will begin in Summer 2026 and continue through the end of 2027. Over the two-year period, four artists will be selected to participate in the program, receiving dedicated time, space, and institutional support to create new work while engaging meaningfully with students and community members.

     Through workshops, exhibitions, artist talks, mentorship opportunities, and free public programming, the residency will create dynamic spaces for dialogue, creativity, and cultural exchange. Participating artists will collaborate with Syracuse University students while also extending their impact beyond campus walls, ensuring that the broader Central New York community has access to transformative arts experiences.

   “The Rooted & Rising residency embodies the Community Folk Art Center’s mission to celebrate and advance the artistic traditions, stories, and lived experiences of the African Diaspora,” said Jackson. “By supporting artists and connecting them with students and community members, we are creating opportunities for learning, reflection, healing, and collective growth through the arts.”

     The residency program further strengthens CFAC’s role as a bridge between scholarship, artistic practice, and community wellness. By investing in multidisciplinary artists whose work sparks conversation and inspires action, CFAC continues its legacy of serving as a vibrant cultural hub where creativity and community flourish together.

The Community Folk Art Center extends its deepest gratitude to the National Endowment for the Arts for recognizing the importance of this work and investing in artists and communities. We also thank Syracuse University, our dedicated staff, board members, donors, community partners, artists, educators, students, volunteers, and patrons whose ongoing support makes programs like Rooted & Rising possible. We further acknowledge and thank Diane Stirling and Syracuse University Today for helping share this exciting news and amplifying the impact of arts and culture throughout our community in the recent article “2 University Programs Receive National Endowment for the Arts Grants”. Together, we celebrate this milestone and look forward to welcoming artists and community members into this exciting new chapter of creativity, collaboration, and cultural expression.

At STEM From Dance Camp 2026, girls will dive into the world of STEM, light up the dance floor, and create something extraordinary. Through daily movement and tech-powered creativity (AI, Robotics, and Coding). While Camp lasts three weeks, the impact on her talent pipeline journey lasts a lifetime.

• Dates: July 20th -August 7th | 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM | Monday – Friday
• Community Folk Art Center – 805 E. Genesee Street, Syracuse, NY 13210
  

REGISTER HERE

The Community Folk Art Center presents a theatrical performance of  The Dolls.   Directed by Annette Adams Brown and written by Lee Hunkins. To RSVP visit Eventbrite.

About the show : Set in a puppeteer’s and marionette maker’s shop, forgotten doll creations awaken, confront their maker, their fate, and discover their collective strength in the face of destruction.

Friday, June 5th 2026 at 6:00 PM 

CAA showcase program

Check out the newest episode of the short film series, Black Arts Speak, featuring the visionary artist Amber Robles-Gordon‪. Following her recent exhibition Healing Forward: Rituals of Self-Repair, Cultivation of Community, and Collective Activation at the Community Folk Art Center, this episode highlights Robles-Gordon’s powerful journey through art and healing.  This video is a compilation of segments from Amber Robles-Gordon’s artist talk, interview with curator Tanisha Jackson, and her commissioned Talking Stick Project Workshop, March 22, 2026, at the Community Folk Art Center

See Full Episode Here

Syracuse community leaders bridge the gap between hip-hop and STEM

The Community Folk Art Center partnered with the Hip Hop Education Center and National Grid last week for a professional development event in Syracuse. The event featured multiple interactive workshops, including a live DJ set. The goal was to show families and educators how hip-hop can help students become more engaged in the classroom and even lead to a career in STEM.

Tanisha Jackson, the executive director of the Community Folk Art Center, said that hip-hop and STEM are gateways to opportunities for underrepresented communities in STEM.

“This is a way to really create more accessibility, more equity, and for people to see they belong in STEM,” said Jackson.

Justis Lopez is the senior director of teaching and learning at the Hip Hop Education Center. He emphasized the importance of using hip-hop to meet students where they are.

“Hip-hop has the voice of the youth; hip-hop is the voice of youth, and hip-hop is youth culture,” Lopez said. “If we really want to be intentional about supporting our young people, we need to follow their lead, and we need to follow what they’re already doing.”

Some students are already putting their skills to the test, including a 10-year-old DJ known as DJ Pop Pop. He said that being a DJ has helped build his confidence.

“Just being in front of an audience has made me confident and helped my self-esteem,” DJ Pop Pop said.

Overall, industry leaders want people to understand that hip-hop is more than a genre; it’s a community.

“It’s a genre of music that has really had an impact globally, it’s intergenerational, it really is a form of expression that really allows people to see something that is achievable, reachable in ways that connect with STEM,” Jackson said.

Finding peace in piano at Community Folk Art Center

By Desiree Robinson | April 11 2026 

Piano Students at Community Folk Art Center build confidence and connection through their shared love of music | See Video

Inside the Community Folk Art Center, beginners are discovering that learning piano is not just about technique. It is about confidence, creativity, and connection. The beginner-friendly class welcomes students of all experience levels. Some arrive with years of musical background, while others are touching the keys for the first time. Instructor Bernard Wiliford focuses on building comfort and curiosity, helping students feel encouraged as they grow. Learning an instrument can strengthen both mental focus and emotional well-being.

   “ Not only will it teach you some sort of dexterity, it’s also good for the mind and the soul,” Wiliford said. “Whatever comes from your brain to your fingers is usually backed by whatever emotion you may be feeling at the time.” Wiliford says the class encourages students to explore sound and build confidence at their own pace. The goal is not perfection. It is progress.

For student Raymond Joseph, piano has become more than a hobby. It is both a creative outlet and a personal challenge. His journey with music spans more than 15 years, and he believes learning should never stop. “As long as you’re living you should be learning,” Joseph said. Joseph says playing piano allows him to express emotion while connecting with others through music. “It’s a good stress relief,” Joseph said. “A way to express myself. To bring smiles to people’s faces.” Learning piano requires patience and persistence. Students must coordinate both hands while staying focused on timing and rhythm. Joseph says that challenge is part of what makes piano unique.“Usually with piano, you’re like the main person that holds the whole band down,” Joseph said. “So the pressure could be on.”

Wiliford encourages students to stay motivated, reminding them growth happens over time “Never be discouraged,” Wiliford said. “Anything can be done at any time. It keeps your brain fresh and keeps you striving to be better.” Beyond learning notes and technique, students say piano provides a sense of calm that extends into daily life.“Peaceful,” Joseph said, when describing what playing piano feels like.

Each note played is another reminder that learning something new can open the door to confidence, expression, and joy.

 

Join us Thursday, April 16th – Saturday, April 18th for Reel Stories: A CFAC Film Festival. Enjoy a weekend of storytelling, screenings, panel discussions, and more!

 

Schedule of Events

Thursday, April 16th:
Join us Thursday, April 16, at 6:00 PM in the Blackbox Theatre for our opening reception and screening of Space to Breathe, directed by Juicebox P. Burton. Space to Breathe is an Afrofuturist science fiction hybrid documentary, framed with a future where there are no prisons or police. The year is 2070, and Sojourner is a young, genderqueer filmmaker who sets out to understand how abolition came to be, through history’s archives on the movements of the early 21^st century. After the film join us for a fireside chat with Professor Isiah Lavender III, Ph.D., and leading actor, Nish Newton.

Friday, April 17th: Starting at 5:00 PM, enjoy an evening of short dramas, international, and experimental films:

Teens with a Movie Camera  

Chickadee Overcomes Gravity
Teens with a Movie Camera
Stuck on the ground but dreaming of the stars, an audacious chicken sets out to go where no chicken has gone before. Created in collaboration with young artists using everyday tools, smartphones, and imagination, this two-minute epic celebrates the power of persistence. Bok bok!

OUR PLACE IN SPACE
Teens with a Movie Camera
Tired of being weighed down by Earth’s gravity, a small but ambitious team of teens works together to accomplish the seemingly impossible in search of another world. Adapting a simple tent into a spaceship powered by imagination and orange juice, they take their own trip to the moon and befriend extraterrestrial neighbors.

Another Other
Dir. Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson
A Black police officer and university president are interrogated by multiple white state officials after their failures to sufficiently comply with their respective institutions’ plans. An experiment in image, sound and subtitle, Another Other identifies these figures as collaborators with racist systems, even as those systems betray them.

Della Can Fly!
Dir. jasmine lynea
Della Can Fly! is a Black folktale set in the early 2000s. In hopes of reuniting with his long-lost sister, an eccentric old man is in desperate need to prove to his family that she flew away. With the help of his grieving 10-year-old great-niece, they rectify the family myth, proving it to be true.

Lana
Dir. Laetitia Angba + Julie R. Lissouba
In the turmoil of adolescence, Lana does not lead a life completely like the others. As a daily fight goes on in silence, Lana learns that her father, Benjemin, must leave Canada permanently. She must then muster her courage to confront her father before he leaves.

Nada Fuera de la Isla: Puentes (Nothing Out of the Island: Bridges)
Dir. Dalissa Montes de Oca
Fragmented Memories and visions find a home in light and shadows, bridging the gap between past, the present, and loss of a mother.

Natimorto
Dir. Ibrahem Hasan + Leandro HBL

In Bahia, Brazil, Benicio is born into silence, loss and ancestral grief. Haunted by inherited pain, he turns inward, recording messages to his unborn self. Through remembrance and release, he begins to break the cycle. By embracing his darkness with acceptance, he confronts his past, rewrites his story and creates space for healing.

nobody’s word
Dir. camara taylor
Based on a voicenote received 500 years after the “start of slavery,” nobody’s word seeks to complicate notions of ancestor, inheritance and implication across time and space. Within the film, camara taylor digitizes and disintegrates the family archive in order to reframe accounts, destabilize claims, and inhabit the spaces between fact and fiction.

Objectionable Fruit
Dir. Gabby Follett
An experimental documentary in collaboration with artist Hogan Seidel that explores the enigmatic world of the Ginkgo tree, a living fossil that has silently witnessed the unfolding of Earth’s deep time. Ginkgo trees have endured since the days of the prehistoric, surviving through myriad epochs of pollution, aggressive urban planning, and escalating climate disasters. Known scientifically as Ginkgo biloba, this species possesses a fascinating biological characteristic: the ability to switch sexes, blurring the lines traditionally used to define male and female in plant reproduction. This unique adaptability serves as a powerful metaphor in the pieces, echoing the complexities and fluidities of gender identity as experienced and interpreted by the film’s creator.

Same Water
Martine Granby
Archival materials and research revive the story of Florida’s Paradise Park, a waterpark that served as a leisure destination for Black middle-class families during the Jim Crow era.

SEEDS
Brittany Shyne
Seeds is a portrait of centennial farmers in the American South. Using lyrical black-and-white imagery, this meditative film examines the decline of generational Black farmers and the significance of owning land.

St. Andrews
Dir. Erin Ramirez
Coming to terms with her family’s racial prejudice, a Chinese-Jamaican teenager is pushed to carry out a subtle act of defiance—one which may have permanent consequences.

Youlogy/No Ghosts
Dir. Darryl Daley
Youlogy/No Ghosts explores cyclical motifs of arrival and departure through the artist’s grandmother’s migration to the United Kingdom and her posthumous return to Jamaica, creating a transcendental frame where memory and time merge. In this speculative space, the film navigates beyond the confines of mortality, reimagining a future where inherited stories resist linearity.

Saturday, April 18th, starting at 11:00 AM

TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing
Louis Massiah + Monica Henriquez
TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing is a biography of the influential writer Toni Cade Bambara, whose literary works and film collaborations were a catalyzing force in the 20^th century cultural and political movements. The documentary is made up of stories shared by friends and colleagues including Toni Morrison, Nikky Finney and Haile Gerima.

The Bombing of Osage Avenue, 1987
Louis Massiah
This film documents the communal response to the 1985 bombing of the MOVE organization’s house in West Philadelphia, killing 11 and destroying 65 houses in the neighborhood.

 

 

 

Creative Arts Academy students visit Salt City Market for Masterminds Chess Club | See Video

Arts Journalist, Carl Mellor takes a closer look into the vibrant world of Talking Sticks, Collages, Quilts, & More by Amber Robles-Gordon in her latest retrospective exhibition  Healing Forward: Rituals of Self-Repair, Cultivation of Community, and Collective Action. Check out the full feature on cnyarts.org.