Go To an Event in
Downtown Syracuse

Tal Placido: Meeting Place

You don’t ask a beautiful question with your strategic mind. That’s needed, but the last place it gets articulated. You ask it with your body. You ask it with your longing. And you can ask a beautiful question in complete silence with no verbalization whatsoever, just in the way you’re paying attention.

-David Whyte

Tal Placido’s large-scale abstract paintings begin with a conversation. Instead of working on blank primed canvas, Placido paints on vintage linens, embracing their stains, snags, and embellishments. A native of the Philippines, Placido is attuned to the family stories and lived experiences that she literally weaves into her work. The images she presents in Meeting Place are a record of the dialogue between experience-laden objects and an artist more concerned about thoughtful questions than concrete answers.

Placido takes the methodology for Meeting Place from the work of poet David Whyte, who frequently discusses the idea of beautiful questions, in which the quality of a question affects the depth and direction of the answer that follows. Placido’s paintings ask beautiful questions about cultural inheritance, embodied knowledge, and the moments of contact that shape identity. Her background in music, fashion, and design also adds depth to this multilayered approach, adding richness and nuance to her work.

Tal Placido: Meeting Place is part of the Everson CNY Artist Initiative, an exhibition program that celebrates the multi-faceted talents of regional artists. The Everson is supported by the General Operating Support program, a regrant program of the County of Onondaga with the support of County Executive, J. Ryan McMahon II, and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste’s vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.

About the Artist:

French-born artist Laurent Craste lives and works in the village of Saint-Gabriel in Quebec. Craste has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career (Winifred Shantz Award, grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Arts Council, Jean-Marie Gauvreau Award, etc.). His works are on display in many private and public collections (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Public Collection of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Claridge Collection, Majudia Collection, etc.). On the occasion of their entry into the permanent collection of the Musée des Métiers d’Art du Québec in 2018, 15 of his works have been recognized as of exceptional interest and of national importance by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board.

​During his more than 20-year career, Laurent Craste has participated in more than 60 group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Among others, his work has been exhibited in New York (Museum of Moving Image), in Ottawa (Carleton University Art Gallery), as well as in Paris (Cité de la mode et du design). He has also had more than a dozen solo exhibitions, including at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Burlington in Ontario, as well as the Hohmann Fine Arts Gallery in Palm Springs California.

2026 Winter Break Art Camp at the Everson

Tuesday, February 17 – Friday, February 209 am-12 pm Daily | (Drop-off between 8:45-9 am, pick-up between 12-12:15 pm)$200 Members | $250 Non-Members

Connect with the world of art! Draw inspiration from the exciting exhibitions at the Everson Museum of Art during this year’s Winter Break Art Camp, with projects designed to fuel creative thinking and exploration.

Artists ages 8-12 will learn about artwork in the Museum, then make their own creations with projects based on its current exhibitions. Students will be guided through a range of fun and engaging artmaking experiences that will spark their creative minds and strengthen their creative muscles. Material explorations will include ceramics, painting, sculpture, and collage.

Our camp aspires to be a nurturing environment for young artists to explore, learn, and grow in an inspiring, supportive environment designed and facilitated by our own staff of experienced art educators.

This half-day camp is well-suited for students eager to try new mediums, learn fresh skills, and complete engaging projects within short, manageable time frames.

Maddox Batson: Live! 2026 Worldwide

Maddox Batson navigates the world with wisdom and wit far beyond his 15 years. After the Nashville-born, Alabama-based songwriter began gaining notoriety covering songs from Zach Bryan, Red Clay Strays and more, he started to write his own songs. Thanks to early singles like “Tears In The River” and “I Wanna Know,” Batson quickly showed that he wasn’t only a star at covering country hits, but an excellent writer of his own home-cooked cuts – a practice he saw first-hand as a co-writer on Lana Del Rey and Quavo’s smash hit collaboration, “Tough.”

With the arrival of his deluxe EP First Dance (The After Party) in May, Maddox Batson was ready to show the world you’re never too young to be the face of music. Most recently, Batson wrapped his 29-city I Need A Truck Tour and released new track “Coincidence.” Batson also made his debut appearance at Stagecoach Music Festival in 2025. Life is moving fast for the multi-instrumentalist (piano, guitar & mandolin) and he’s trying his best to remain a kid while becoming next up in country-pop music. “It can be overwhelming, this life, but I’ve got a lot of good people surrounding me,” he explains. “I’m still just a kid, though, and I’m happy about that.”