“William Mazza-Forest for Trees: Mining the Literary Landscape,” a solo exhibition at the ArtRage Gallery, showcases work by an artist with multiple creative projects.

Indeed, Mazza has made drawings and paintings exploring books he finds meaningful, designed cover art for “An Unruly Manifesto,” an album by saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, accompanied jazz bands by creating a digital painting as the band plays.

At ArtRage, the works are selected from Mazza’s Literary Landscape series. In one group, he accumulates the text from a book’s cover, separates the words into letters filling a written page, finishes with a drawing or painting.

For example, the artist reacts to “John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s,” written by Frank Kofsky. Mazza created a pen-on-paper drawing and a gouache painting featuring eye-popping colors– green, gold, red and orange.

In another instance, he’s mined the text from the cover of Sally Roesch Wagner’s “Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists.” He created a drawing and several gouache paintings. The latter works blend earth colors and an array of circles and looping forms.

And then there’s a painting in a different format. In interpreting the cover of poet Minnie Bruce Pratt’s memoir ,“S/he,” Mazza created a long, long painting, a 36-by-80 acrylic on panel. Pratt taught at Syracuse University for over two decades and lived in the Hawley-Green neighborhood, not far from ArtRage.

The exhibit also presents artworks referencing a page of a book. Because a page typically has more text than a cover, Mazza is working with more letters in these pieces.

In the case of a page from Peter Gelderloos’ “Worshipping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation,” the artist has created an outstanding work. The gouache painting has a bunch of letters packed together on its periphery and explosive gold color in its center.

Yet another gouache work culminates Mazza’s investigation of “Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisee Reclus.” It was edited and translated by John Clark and Camille Martin.

That painting integrates several elements–large, intersecting dark circles, lines of graceful letters, a background of bright letters underneath the circles.

These pieces, and the other works at ArtRage, make it clear that Mazza isn’t working within the confines of a set format. Rather, he’s riffing, improvising, reacting to a cover or a page from a book he considers significant.

At the same time, “Forest for Trees” isn’t a closed-off literary exercise. It’s a visually dynamic show, with its own weight, its own merits. There’s no assumption that viewers will have read the referenced books or even heard of them.

Instead, the exhibit seems to focus not only on Mazza’s connection to the books but also on the general notion of people’s relationship to words. Viewers are invited to consider both the drawing and paintings and their own thoughts about text.

Beyond that, Mazza, in his November 12 artist’s talk at ArtRage and other statements, has indicated that his artistic practice extends beyond working in a studio. He collaborates with artist-led organizations serving communities traditionally under-represented in the arts.

After moving to New York City in 2000, he started volunteering for the Bella Donna Collaborative, a feminist avant-garde group which publishes poetry and stages readings and salons. He’s designed their chaplets (chatbooks). In addition, he’s participating as a volunteer in Art for Arts Sake, an organization advocating for African-American improvisational arts.

And, as mentioned earlier in this article, he’s created paintings in real time, working with a digital art application such as Corel Painter while a jazz band plays. During a 2022 festival in Brooklyn, he accompanied three bands; in each instance, the work appeared on a screen.

Those involvements don’t exist in a vacuum. During the 1990s, when Mazza lived in Syracuse, he was intensely interested in art, collaboration, and alliances with community groups. He was a member of the staff for the Syracuse Peace Council, took part in the Syracuse Alternative Media Network, participated in the Altered Space collective gallery, based mostly at 922 Burnet Ave.

Altered Space presented exhibits without a jury or gatekeeper; all works submitted were hung on walls or placed on pedestals. Once a year, it hosted a Cheap Art Auction where artworks were sold for a little as $5.00. And it partnered with the Mental Health Association on a show devoted to children’s need for mental-health services.

“William Mazza-Forest for Trees” is on display through Jan. 13, 2024 at ArtRage, 505 Hawley Ave. The gallery is open from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

For more information, call 315-218-5711 or access artragegallery.org.

Carl Mellor covered visual arts for the Syracuse New Times from 1994 through 2019. He continues to write about artists and exhibitions in the Syracuse area.