For many of us, the New Year celebration is a blur of slap-dash resolutions, guilt over the holiday binge, and yet more binging. That's if we remember the events at all: our calendar commences in January, leaving us lifting our glasses to a frozen landscape and rather unconnected to any significant cultural meaning. What exactly does our "new" signify? The Persian (present-day Iran) New Year, Nowruz, has been far more cerebrally set at the vernal equinox for 2,500 years. When the sleepy earth wakes, they celebrate new life and the promise of a fresh start. This month, the Gallery at the Arts & Cultural Council presents a combined show of art and a cultural history lesson, celebrating beauty, fresh starts, and pride in our local diversity.

The gallery has been transformed into a showroom of contemporary Persian-American paintings, impossibly detailed hand-woven rugs, hanging jewel-like glass lamps, stunningly crafted musical instruments, and meticulously embroidered cloth. Peppering each station are cards that educate the viewer on the origins of the Nowruz celebration, and the preparations behind the 13 days of ritual.

One info plaque provided characterizes the origin of Nowruz ("The New Day") as a combination of the remnants of a fertility cult agrarian celebration and cultural myth. According to legend, the ancient King Jamshid taught the Persian people the crucial skills of building, weaving, mining, and arms-making, but also crushed their rampant demon problem. On the first Nowruz, the tamed demons lifted the King's crystal carriage and flew it to Babylon.

Back at the gallery, an altar-like setting is covered with objects signifying the beauty and newness of the coming springtime, including painted eggs, artful trays of sabzeh ("greens," wheat, or lentil shoots), bowls of rose water, garlic (symbolizing health and warding off evil), apples (for health, natural beauty, and fragrance), coins (prosperity, generosity, gift-giving), and a holy book or poetry volume (depending on the family's faith), all atop richly embroidered cloth. Candles, which symbolize goodness and wisdom, also represent the number of children in the house. Hyacinth is also present, as the first sign of spring in the Middle East.

More than a marker of the New Year, "this festival embodies a wealth of ancient rites and customs," says Professor E. Yarshater on an info card, "and is about the only one in Persia which is not confined to the traditions of only one religious group. It symbolizes the continuity of the ancient Persian culture, which has survived so many adversaries and vicissitudes." The celebration is about resilient cultural identity, and deep-rooted connections to nature.

The table covered in drums and stringed instruments also bears signage that tells the tale of ancient kings celebrating the New Year with great shows of Persian artistic expression. The "presentation of artistic, poetic, and musical works is still a part of Nowruz today," writes Iraj Bashiri. It has been said that an empire's health may be measured through the volume of support for the arts (remember the Medici family?). In this way, artistic expression is not a frill, but an indicator of a nation's prosperity and pride in identity.

Old-world meets new as hand-me-down objects and traditions are paired with contemporary art. In fact, it would be easy to believe that many of the paintings are older than they are, were it not for the random wristwatch on a kabob vendor, or the street lights visible on one side of a mosque.

This meeting of old and new culture is evident in Murtaza Pardais's expertly articulated paintings of soaring mosques surrounded by lush trees and fluttering white birds, of people swathed in richly hued traditional clothing, and men roasting kabobs or patching pottery. Pardais is confident with his quick brushstrokes and obsessive over minutiae, capturing every detail in a portrait of a woman, from her finely braided tresses, to the laced edge of her veil, to each individual bead in her adornments.

Nasser Ovissi's spectrum-celebrating paintings seriously remind me of Marc Chagall in style and subject matter. Women with gemstone eyes and rich adornments drift in and out of substantiality, and are accompanied by doves, horses, flowers, and lute-playing lovers. The paintings of Shamira Nicolas incorporate calligraphic motifs and layers of abstract shapes.

On one info card, Yarshater states that "Nowruz ceremonies are brought to an appropriate end by spending the 13th day in the open country. It is considered unlucky to stay at home, and on this day the country-side around large cities is covered by groups of people in high spirits, who have trooped out to walk in the fresh greens and enjoy a rest along the banks of running streams." Which certainly beats the hell out of standing in frigid Times Square, amid drunken strangers, to watch a glorified disco ball complete its tedious pole dance.

Nowruz: Persian New Year

Through March 26

Arts & Cultural Council, 277 N Goodman St

473-4000, artsrochester.org

Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.