Print shop
Buffalo just got a lot more bookish. As it reels from Just Buffalo Literary Center’s recent announcement of its heavy-hitting Babel reading series (featuring Salman Rushdie, Azar Nafisi, Ha Jin, A. S. Byatt), the literary scene officially welcomed a brand-new institution on Thursday night. The Western New York Book Arts Center (468 Washington St.), a multiuse facility dedicated to teaching, promoting and advancing the art of printing in all its forms, celebrates its full day of operations today. The center grew out of the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative as the brainchild of local designer Richard Kegler and his wife and business partner, Carima El-Behairy. Its multiple missions include exploring Buffalo’s significant history in the printing world at large, making printing technology and knowledge available to underserved communities and playing a role in retraining artists and craftspeople who might otherwise leave Western New York for lack of employment opportunities. With a full complement of printing technology—some of it more than 100 years old—a roster of workshops in printmaking, letterpress printing and bookbinding and a book shop, the center is poised to establish itself as a serious presence on the city’s arts scene. It’s also in a good position to foster collaborations among disparate art groups and bring together the concerns of poetry, literature and the visual arts under one roof. Through June 25, the space will also host its inaugural members exhibition, featuring book-oriented work by area artists and designers such as Julian Montague, Diane Bond and Jozef Bajus. The WNYBAC will be open from noon to 6 p. m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. For more information, visit www.wnybookarts.org . —Colin Dabkowski
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