As Richard Kegler and Carima El-Behairy’s Western New York Book Arts Center (468 Washington St.) comes into its own, it’s drawing an increasingly interesting crowd of artists and organizations. The directors of Just Buffalo Literary Center recently decamped from their former offices in the Market Arcade Building to occupy part of the WNYBAC, already delivering on the organization’s promise to bring together the city’s visual and literary arts scenes in one space. Continuing with that multidisciplinary trend, the center will host an exhibition of assemblages by artist Richard Rockford, opening with a reception at 6 tonight. Rockford’s work comes out of a desire to highlight the beauty of discarded objects, a task he accomplishes by arranging items of no special interest—“wooden panels, ink-stained blocks, deconstructed household furniture,” as Rockford writes—into unexpectedly eye-pleasing artworks. If Rockford’s work succeeds, it may cause viewers to be more attuned to the innate beauty of a piece of splintered wood by the side of the road, an unloved bit of tissue of paper at the bottom of a waste basket, or the meticulously designed allure of a velvet-lined box. Or it may not. The only way to know for sure is to drop by the WNYBAC and see for yourself. The show runs through Sept. 5. For more information, visit

www.wnybookarts.org

. —Colin Dabkowski