http://www.buffalonews.com Latest stories from The Buffalo News en-us Sun, 19 May 2013 12:51:46 -0400 Sun, 19 May 2013 12:51:46 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/CITYANDREGION/130519193/1237
The stretch of sidewalk along Elmwood Avenue between Allen and North streets, about as unremarkable a city block as any in Buffalo, is home to a few liquor stores, salons and art galleries. Pedestrians shuffle quickly past the storefronts on their way to the bus stop or to the bars on Allen Street, rarely taking notice of what surrounds them.

But slow down for a minute, cast your eyes downward, and you’ll start to see the evidence of another, slower urban world. In the late afternoon sun, for instance, you’ll see a parking meter near North Street that seems to be casting two shadows. One is real, the other painted onto the sidewalk in fading black paint to give off a barely noticeable illusion.

In that same neighborhood, on bike racks and building walls, if you look closely, you’ll see the miniaturized tags of the city’s graffiti artists on ad-hoc sign-in sheets – the better to decipher their work on larger structures around the city. You’ll see peculiar spray-painted stencils of armored buffaloes, strange stickers, lampposts papered with crude crayon drawings of some unknown origin and tiles chiseled into the pavement at crosswalks spelling out cryptic messages.

This is the sometimes-secret language of the city, a system made up of symbols, sanctioned murals and bits of illicit personal expression that together make up Buffalo’s quiet and slowly growing street art scene. In larger cities, street art has become an assertive, unavoidable part of urban life. But in Buffalo, where authorities have tended to treat artistic expression anywhere other than gallery walls with suspicion if not outright hostility, it’s just beginning to assume a more recognizable role.

For Matthew Grote, the street artist who goes by the name of OGRE and who collaborated with fellow artists Max Collins and Chuck Tingley to produce downtown’s most visible piece of recent street art on the side of 515 Main St., there’s plenty of art to be found here. You just have to hunt for it.

“For some people, and I guess I’m one of those people, it’s a method of communication. It’s like a secret language or a secret society almost,” Grote said. “Most people don’t even look at the stickers, but I do. I see that person is communicating directly to me in that moment, and because I’m paying attention, I get to experience that, whereas most people just blindly walk past it.”

Evidence of Grote’s artistic alter ego can be found all around the city, in places prominent and hidden, sanctioned and unsanctioned. The same goes for a small but growing group of artists whose work aspires to more than the artfully written tags of the city’s handful of experienced graffiti writers.

Their art takes strange and often unexpected forms, from wheat-pasted illustrations form-fitted onto concrete pylons to tiles meticulously inserted into the blacktop under cover of night.

Many of these works are temporary: A beautiful tile piece on Porter Avenue near Kleinhans Music Hall that contained an excerpt from a short story by Ray Bradbury, for instance, was recently scratched out by the City of Buffalo. Asked about street art, the Buffalo Department of Public Works emailed that “unauthorized placement of art is subject to removal by the city.”

But some seem to linger for years. Seeking them out makes us see the city from a different angle. Buffalo’s bits and pieces of street art – good and bad, grand and minuscule – are lenses through which to view the city anew. They help us see the streetscape not merely as a space to inhabit or pass through, but as a canvas waiting to be filled. Being more attuned to this evolving world, in some small way, helps us appreciate where we are as a city, and what kind of city we might become.

With Grote as a tour guide – with a few self-guided detours – I surveyed a few of the city’s more intriguing pieces of street art, legal and, well, less so. Here’s a look at a small sliver of them, with exact locations omitted when the art is off the beaten path or may be targeted for removal:Elmwood Avenue and North Street

On the east side of Elmwood Avenue just south of North Street, one of a row of parking meters is not like the others. Extending from its base is a strip of black paint running across the sidewalk, blooming out into a skewed “shadow” of the part where you drop your quarters. It’s devoid of the ego of graffiti, barely calling attention to itself and rewarding the rare viewer who actually notices it.

“One thing that does kind of separate graffiti from street art is that street art seems to be meant to engage the community,” Grote said. “Somebody doing that,” he continued, pointing at the painted shadow, “they’re not building a name for themselves. But once you see that, you may not ever look at a parking meter the same way again.”Various locations

For years, a series of tiles meticulously chiseled into a crosswalk spanning Delaware Avenue where it intersects with Allen Street advertised a person or outfit known only as “House of Hades.” But that tile was recently removed, leaving behind only scratched pavement. Same goes for a particularly good example of the peculiar form – called “Toynbee tiles,” a fixture in many Rust Belt cities – on Porter Avenue that contained a Ray Bradbury quote that seemed to capture the spirit of Buffalo’s cultural resurgence: “Oh, future’s bright and beauteous spires, arise!”

Fortunately for those seeking out tiles, a series of them can be found at the intersection of Elmwood Avenue and Bidwell Parkway that look at first glance like a ream of paper haphazardly scattered across the road. Also on Elmwood, a series of smaller, abstract pavement interventions are there to be discovered. And many more tiles are sure to appear.

3. Chow Monstro

Various locations

It’s tough to miss the work of Chow Monstro, one of Buffalo’s more recognizable street artists. His trademark symbol – a skull with Mickey Mouse ears, often dripping black paint – has been popping up on buildings downtown and in Allentown for the past several years. Monstro’s wheat-pastes and stickers can be found on gritty stretches of Allen Street, as well as on a wall that’s slowly becoming a target for street artists on Exchange Street. One particularly striking example is on the south side of the former Club Diablo at 517 Washington St.The New Orleans-based street artist Candy Chang created a kind of franchise system, whereby her interactive murals have been exported to cities across the globe. One of those projects, a mural with “Before I die...” printed on it and meant to be filled out in chalk by passers-by, hangs on a vacant property (with the permission of the owner) at the corner of Fillmore Avenue and Paderewski Drive, not far from the Central Terminal and Torn Space Theatre. Recently scrawled bucket list items included “become a unicorn,” “live and let life,” and a wish for the Bills to win the Super Bowl.No tour of Buffalo street art would be complete without a stop at Main Street Studios, where artists OGRE, Chuck Tingley and Max Collins (who on his own has grown into a sort of street art wünderkind) collaborated on one of the more striking murals to grace the streetscape in decades. The piece is a fusion of the three artists’ styles, with OGRE’s illustrative, cartoonish characters melting into Tingley’s more realistic portrait work and Collins’ wheatpasted photography of joyful neighborhood characters.

The mural, which has grown since its original painting to back of the building facing Washington Street, was meant as a tribute to the neighborhood and has proved to be a consistent draw for the growing arts and business district on the block.Near Larkinville, this jarring mural in an off-the-beaten-track area is also the work of OGRE and Tingley, whose studios are nearby. Completed over the course of a single day, it’s an example of the kind of work that could soon make its way onto the walls of more vacant and disused Buffalo buildings in neighborhoods where vibrant color is hard to come by.206 Allen St.

Though not necessarily a bona fide piece of street art, this series of miniaturized tags could serve as a kind of Rosetta Stone for Buffalo’s much-maligned graffiti community. But you can look at graffiti without endorsing it, and this sign-in sheet of sorts will help you decode what you see, to separate the talented taggers from the total hacks, and to understand which of them deserves your ire and which your respect.938 Elmwood Ave.

This mural on the side of Jim’s Steakout in the Elmwood Village is the work of well-known local artists Bruce Adams and Augustina Droze, and it’s about as above-board as Buffalo’s street art world gets. It depicts scenes of neighborhood life, from skateboarding to the Elmwood-Bidwell Farmer’s Market and some brash product placement of a Jim’s sub, complete with banana peppers, in the middle of it all. Like the 515 Main St. mural, it may be the signal that edgier and more vibrant legal murals are coming to Buffalo’s streets.300 block of Exchange Street

One man’s piece of street art is another man’s canvas. That was the case with a strange, looming white head someone painted on a stretch of gray wall along Exchange Street on the way to Larkinville last summer. Since then, the face has been modified, presumably by a different artist with a different style, to resemble Mahatma Gandhi. That artist, or maybe a third one, then spray-painted part of Gandhi’s famous quote to go along with the modification: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

The wall also contains work by Chow Monstro and stencils and tags from other street artists. The work there, which is constantly changing and being painted over and repainted, is an example of the collaborative ties beginning to develop in the street art community and the rising social consciousness of some street artists.Central Terminal

Because of its relative inaccessibility, it’s tough to count this masterful tribute to the late comics artist Spain Rodriguez as a piece of viewable street art. But its importance in the gradual shift of Buffalo’s street art scene from pure graffiti to socially and culturally conscious work is undeniable.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 17 May 2013 12:56:55 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
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To accompany the conference, the Burchfield Penney Art Center will host “Asian Lacquer International,” an exhibition that explores artists’ diverse uses of lacquer – an expensive resin extracted from trees found only in Asia – in decoration, painting and sculpture.

Patrick Ravines, the director of Buffalo State’s recently expanded art conservation department and an associate professor there, described lacquer as “a dying art” and the conference as an attempt to bring together artists and scholars whose paths might not otherwise cross. The exhibition, he added, is a way to communicate to the public the “many faces of lacquer” throughout the centuries in a way that may surprise gallerygoers.

The show will contain traditional decorative pieces of the sort visitors might have seen in vitrines at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it will also feature plenty of contemporary uses of the medium, such as the luminous paintings of Vietnamese-American artist Nhat Tran or the bulky, multisurfaced creations of German sculptor Heri Gahbler.

The use of lacquer through the centuries has evolved from one of necessity to one of aesthetic preference. Whereas primitive versions of paints were prone to growing mold or other problems in the high humidity of Southeast Asia, lacquer – a precious substance that often causes those who handle it to break out in severe rashes – was a substitute impervious to mold. Today, many artists use lacquer for its rich depth of color and its difficult-to-replicate texture.

For Ravines, who has been at the college for three years, organizing an exhibition around a single medium like lacquer provides an opportunity to bring attention to a living medium that too many ascribe to a distant era.

“You can do an artist and his different periods. You can do a medium like this and just show the expansiveness, but also that if you want to continue to see this, we have to preserve the craft,” he said. “It’s kind of a cottage industry that goes all the way back to the tree itself.”

The conference will feature more than 25 speakers, including three artists working in the traditional mode of “Urushi,” or Japanese lacquer: Kazumi Murose, Fumio Mae and Kunihiro Komori. It will also feature talks by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Barbara Brennan Ford, as well as panels moderated by Ravines and Buffalo State College design professor and lacquer expert Sunhwa Kim.

The breadth and ambition of this first-of-its-kind symposium, Ravines said, is extensive.

“We’re bringing in art historians,” he said. “We’re bringing in lacquer artists, craftspeople, conservators, restorers, scientists and museum people, and basically anybody who has touched or is touching lacquer and hasn’t gotten a rash will be coming to talk to about it.”

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What: “Asian Lacquer International”

When: Monday through May 24

Where: Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave.

Admission: $5 to $10

Info: 878-6011 or burchfieldpenney.org

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 07:05:35 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130516/GUSTO/130519337/1237 Jason Seeley, the subject of an exhibit opening at 8 p.m. Friday in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Ave.).

Seeley’s work, Hallwalls curator John Massier wrote in a release, “explores the nuances within this freedom and imprisonment dichotomy, and the struggle to survive within society.” His illustrative paintings depict such odd situations as one figure improbably carrying around two others on his back and a self-portrait of the artist wrapped in a four-armed embrace with himself.

Also opening at Hallwalls on Friday is an exhibition of the Brooklyn-based and Venezuela-born artist Esperanza Mayobre, whose “fictive laboratory spaces” explore the problems of cities like Caracas, the economically struggling Venezuelan capital, and New York. With simple tools, Massier wrote, “she creates structures that are in continuous construction and de-construction.”

“Jason Seeley: Piles” and “Esperanza Mayobre: Nada Se Trata De Nada, Todo Se Trata De Mucho” continue through June 28. Admission is free. Call 854-1694 or visit hallwalls.org.

– Colin Dabkowski ]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 06:34:10 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130510/CITYANDREGION/130519911/1237
The events, announced Friday by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp., will include concerts, festivals, dance, theater and poetry performances, outdoor exercise classes and family activities.

Some highlights of the mammoth series, which the harbor corporation pulled off with a budget of just $200,000, include the Pride Festival on June 2, a pop-up playground June 15, a July 4 celebration, Squeaky Wheel’s Outdoor Animation Festival on Aug. 21 and the Buffalo Irish Festival from Aug. 23 to 25.

The organization also announced a new website, canalsidebuffalo.com which lists all the planned activities.

At 10 a.m. today, the canal corporation will host a preview of the summer’s events, featuring several dozen presentations from the likes of MusicalFare Theatre, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Young Audiences of Western New York and the Rince na Tiarna School of Irish Dance. Food trucks will be on hand in a preview of the “Canalside Food Fight” series of competitions among local mobile food vendors.

The fair-weather activity at Canalside has grown significantly since summertime programming began in 2009 with a handful of events. After Friday’s news conference in the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, Tom Dee, president of the canal corporation, said that Canalside’s vastly improved reputation has helped make it into a lucrative destination for cultural groups.

“In our infancy, we had nobody coming down here. Nobody would come down, nobody knew where we were, because everybody said there was nothing to do. So we had to pay people to come down and entertain,” he said. “Now people are knocking on our door, saying, ‘We’ll do it for free. We want to get our name out there.’ The Irish Center, the Philharmonic, the Pride Festival – we gave them money last year and the year before. This year, no money. And they’re saying they’re thrilled to come down.”

Mayor Byron W. Brown praised Dee and his agency for its approach to developing the waterfront, which has shifted in the past five years from silver-bullet solutions like a Bass Pro shop to incremental, piecemeal projects designed to reach a critical mass.

“It’s a philosophy I support, because by promoting smaller events, it creates more excitement, more momentum, continuous activity,” Brown said after Friday’s news conference. “There is always something to see and do down here, and I think that really helps to set the table for the larger investments.”

Brown added that small-scale public investments in events by the canal corporation were crucial in attracting private money from Benderson Development’s renovation of the former Donovan Building, Ellicott Development’s Carlo project near Templeton Landing, and the Buffalo Sabres’ $172 million HarborCenter on the Webster Block.

State Sen. Mark Grisanti joined the chorus of praise Friday for the series of summer activities.

“When you listen to the radio and you talk to people, there are still a lot of naysayers out there that are saying that nothing’s happening in Buffalo, that Buffalo’s dying,” he said. “But let me tell you, those have got to be individuals who have not been down to the waterfront.”

Today’s Canalside Food Fight will get the season off to a lively start and fill a void for downtown visitors who love to eat.

The city’s licensed food trucks, barred from the Canalside area in most times, will be allowed to park and sell food this afternoon for what will be a season-long cooking competition, said organizer Matt Carlucci.

From noon to 4 p.m. today,seven trucks will be serving paying customers, Carlucci said.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 14:47:40 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
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After all, being underground is pretty much the entire point of graffiti, and appealing to suburbanite sensibilities isn’t the prime objective of most of Buffalo’s hardworking rappers.

But over the last few years, through events such as the Buffalo Infringement Festival, the Art of Hip Hop, Music Is Art and other festivals, the city’s simmering street culture has begun to poke its head above ground.

The latest and perhaps most comprehensive look at Buffalo street culture since the dawn of the century is Cuts & Breaks, a vast and ambitious survey of hip-hop, break dancing, graffiti and other art that has risen up from the street rather than floating down from a museum or gallery.

The whole affair gets under way at 7 p.m. Friday in the Vault Arthouse, a community art space that has become one of the city’s busiest and most diverse venues for underground or otherwise alternative art and music.

The first Cuts & Breaks, held in 2011, combined newly painted pieces of graffiti in the space above the Vault with performances from rappers, DJs and break dancers. This year’s version will be even larger, with the added aim of serving as a historical survey of Buffalo street culture stretching back at least 10 years.

“It’s basically going to be uniting the four elements of hip-hop and street art and basically putting it into perspective,” said Vault director and exhibition co-curator Kevin Cain. “So when you come to the show you will leave with a further understanding of the hip-hop scene in Buffalo and how it has progressed over the past decade.”

Notably, the show will feature a performance from DJ Optimus Prime, a legend among local and national DJs who has mentored several younger artists also performing at Cuts & Breaks.

“If you ask just about anyone that’s been following this stuff for generations, he’s the guy who literally brought the wax here to Buffalo,” co-curator and Vault second-in-command Jeff Maciejewski said. “If there’s a Grandmaster Flash in Buffalo, it’s Optimus Prime.”

Hip-hop artists Keith Concept, Prime Example, Koolie High and many others will perform, along with dancers from the Differential Flavor Crew and elsewhere. Concept, a fixture on the local hip-hop scene who has been performing for at least 10 years, said he sees Cuts & Breaks as an opportunity to begin to repair the bad rap hip-hop has picked up in this community (it’s frowned upon in many local music venues) and to help aspiring artists make stronger connections with one another.

As in the last version of the event, Maciejewski and Cain have lured a handful of graffiti artists off the street to transform the second-floor space of Wasteland Studios into a kaleidoscopic graffiti gallery. The downstairs space will also feature canvases by graffiti artists, photographs and installation art related to Buffalo’s street culture.

Though some of the artists in Cuts & Breaks may know one another or cross paths at shows, most rarely have the opportunity to show off their work in the same venue.

“That’s why this show is so important, because it gets everybody together,” Cain said. “All these individuals working hard on their own, working together to create this large show, which represents the history, the hard work.”

Maciejewski agreed.

“It’s a very insider’s game,” he said. “And thankfully enough, all the guys that are on the inside let us peek in.”

preview

What: Cuts & Breaks

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: The Vault Arthouse, 702 Main St.

Tickets: $10 in advance or $7 at the door

Info: 348-6127 , or search Cuts & Breaks on Facebook

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 2 May 2013 10:00:41 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
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On Sunday, when Anderson’s collection of some 400 prints goes on sale in the University at Buffalo’s Center for the Arts, the final stipulation of that document will be complete. And after that, 14 cultural and educational organizations will divide up more than $2 million from the David Anderson Charitable Trust, plus the amount raised in Sunday’s sale. In size and scope, it will be rank as one of the largest philanthropic contributions in memory to Western New York’s cultural community.

The event, organized by art dealer Dean Brownrout, includes work by Jules Olitski, Karel Appel, Christo, Sam Francis and a host of other important figures from the mid- to late-20th century. At Anderson’s instructions, the work is priced relatively affordably, from $50 up to several thousand dollars.

The organizations named in Anderson’s bequest are the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens Society, Buffalo History Museum, Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo Prep, Buffalo Zoo, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Nichols School, The Park School of Buffalo, Erie County SPCA, University at Buffalo Foundation to benefit the Anderson Gallery and Westminster Presbyterian Church. – Colin Dabkowski

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Sale of the David Anderson Charitable Trust Collection When: 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday Where: University at Buffalo Center for the Arts, Amherst Admission: Free Info: 638-0005 or Dean Brownrout. ]]> Thu, 2 May 2013 09:51:38 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130502/GUSTO/130509896/1237
Though the entire city is invited to participate, the locus of activity will be on the 500 to 700 blocks of Main Street and in Allentown. (To participate, go to www.citylightsorchestra.net for instructions.)

The project, devised by Antoine Schmitt, signals the start of the University at Buffalo-sponsored MediaCities Conference, which, according to a release, “examines how digital technologies shape the way people experience cities and urban life.” The conference, which begins on Friday, will feature a free public reception at 7 p.m. Saturday at 743 Main St., a pop-up gallery hosting an exhibition of artwork by MediaCities participants Paolo Cirio and Julian Oliver. The larger conference includes workshops and talks in Kapoor Hall on UB’s South Campus as well as at the Statler Hotel. A full schedule and registration info is online at mediacities.net. – Colin Dabkowski

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MediaCities exhibition – When: 7 p.m. Saturday through May 11 Where: 743 Main St. Admission: Free Info: mediacities.net. ]]> Wed, 1 May 2013 22:58:33 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130502/GUSTO/130509900/1237
They have launched a series of exhibitions designed to bring together current and former media studies students to show new work and forge new collaborations. The first of the 10-year series of shows, “Tempus Fugit” – Latin for “time flies” – opens at 7 p.m. Friday in the Hi-Temp Fabrication building (79 Perry St.). It will feature work by 25 artists, including video, film, games, robotics and performances by Sean Feiner and Devin Wilson.

In addition to its function of uniting media study’s brainy diaspora, the show will also be a chance for Buffalonians to see work by its most prominent members, including Conrad, which too often remains ensconced in an academic environment. A full list of participating artists is at tempusfugitdecade.com. The show continues through May 15. – Colin Dabkowski ]]> Wed, 1 May 2013 22:58:18 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130425/GUSTO/130429529/1237
Frequent visitors to Freudenheim’s gallery in the Lenox Hotel on North Street are familiar with these far-reaching concerns, having seen recent exhibitions by the likes of Buffalo painter Peter Stephens and others preoccupied with humans’ place in the universe.

Mann’s meticulously rendered acrylic paintings are deliberately constructed to be read as images of cells or molecules or visions of distant galaxies.

“The suggestion of something so small, like cells, is juxtaposed with large scale dimensions, which gives the work a more mystical, rather than methodical quality,” according to a statement from the gallery. “Mann’s work references microbiological and astronomical imagery in an abstract context. Between glowing orbs, some exploding, some imploding, some emerging and some disappearing, vast networks organize the space within the paintings while hinting at natural human social constructs such as families, friendships, and communities.” – Colin Dabkowski

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“David Mann: New Paintings” – When: 6 p.m. Saturday through June 7. Where: Nina Freudenheim Gallery, 140 North St. Admission: Free. Info: 882-5777 or ninafreudenheimgallery.org. ]]> Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:55:56 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130425/GUSTO/130429531/1237
The walk will feature 14 galleries and businesses, ranging from favorite art spots like redFISH Art Studios and Gallery (21 Elm St.) and Meibohm Fine Arts (478 East Main St.) to cafés and other businesses. A free trolley running along East Aurora’s idyllic Main Street will transport visitors among the venues, all of which are located along a mile-long stretch.

At redFISH, owner Alix Martin and fellow artist Vanessa Frost will be painting while projections play on the building’s exterior and interior during the art space’s ’20s-themed showcase. Meibohm will feature an exhibition of recent work by painter Monica Angle, while Main Street Picture and Frame (5 Pine St.) shows work by Cheryl Wnuk-Klinck, the East Aurora Co-Op (618 Main St.) has work by Tanya Zabinski, and the Roycroft Power House (39 South Grove St.) features artist Jim Cordes.

A full list of the participating venues and exhibitions is at meibohmfinearts.com. – Colin Dabkowski

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East Aurora Spring Art Walk – When: 5 to 9 p.m. Friday. Where: 14 venues in East Aurora. Admission: Free. Info: 652-0940 or www.meibohmfinearts.com ]]> Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:55:30 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130425/GUSTO/130429519/1237
“Kelly Richardson: Legion,” a midcareer survey of the artist’s technically pristine work, is on view in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery through June 9.

As visitors step into the large east gallery of the Albright-Knox’s 1905 building, they will encounter what is likely the largest and most overwhelming video installation they have seen outside of an IMAX theater.

“Mariner 9,” on view in the United States for the first time and recently acquired by the Albright-Knox, extends a full 43 feet across the gallery’s longest wall. The living painting, named after NASA’s 1971 space orbiter, presents an imagined vision of the surface of Mars 200 years hence. Its craggy and windswept landscape is littered with the blinking and whirring detritus of NASA’s exploratory missions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Those abandoned rovers and rudimentary installations amid the swirling Martian dust, Richardson has suggested, may well be transmitting signals back to a dead planet that has exhausted its own ability to support life.

In other rooms, similarly immense and unsettling video projections show animated scenes of breathing primordial swamps, desolate moonscapes with eerie holographic trees flickering in and out of view, enchanted wildlife prowling across otherwise empty forests and cars perpetually spinning their wheels in midair.

The universe Richardson has constructed for this show is bleak and devoid of all but the strangest forms of life. It has precedents, as Albright-Knox curator Holly E. Hughes writes in her illuminating catalog essay, in sources as seemingly disparate as the sweeping romantic landscape paintings of the late 18th century to the B-horror and science-fiction films of the 1970s and ’80s.

The handsome catalog that accompanies the show features a range of intriguing theories about how Richardson’s work explores the notion of the sublime, that strange mixture of hope and fear that reveals something uncomfortable about the depth and darkness of human desire.

But far beyond a mere exploration of a fascinating historical concept, her work strikes me as a fairly straightforward warning – albeit a mysterious and beautiful one – that our planet is on an accelerating path toward destruction.

“I’m interested in that contradiction at this critical time in human history when current predictions for our future are not just unsettling, but terrifying,” she told The News in a February interview.

In another installation, “The Erudition,” we see a strange moonscape (or possibly post-apocalyptic Earthscape) on which tall, undulating pines appear and disappear like the holographic projection of Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars.”

As in all of Richardson’s living paintings, we’re meant to write our own narratives for this unsettling scene, which could be humanity’s last desperate attempt at palliative care for a ruined planet. But even though she leaves the questions unanswered, it’s clear that she is prodding us to project our minds farther into the future than we’re comfortable doing. Richardson’s major gift – in addition to her technical facility and her embrace of beauty as a way to prime us the disturbing undercurrents snaking through her otherwise sumptuous work – is the way she seems to look back from the future.

For frequent visitors to the Albright-Knox, Richardson’s work can be seen as an obvious outgrowth of the concerns of other artists the gallery has recently exhibited. The stunning landscapes of photographer Victoria Sambunaris, for instance, are preoccupied, as Richardson’s work is, with the ways humans have perforated the natural landscape.

The data-driven projections of Jennifer Steinkamp, the subject of a 2008 survey in the gallery, are an antecedent to Richardson’s work, which has been technically polished to the point that most viewers are unable to distinguish what is real and what is computer-generated.

In the end, that distinction isn’t nearly as important as what the work says about the path we’re on. Some curators and experts might balk at the notion that Richardson is one of her generation’s most ingenious environmental activists, allergic as they are to art that seems to endorse a specific political message.

But Richardson’s haunting glimpses of the future – more than Earth Day slogans, more than the photographs of Sandy’s aftermath and perhaps even more than documentaries such as “An Inconvenient Truth” – may be the images that stay with us the longest.

review

What: “Kelly Richardson: Legion”

When: Through June 9

Where: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1285 Elmwood Ave.

Admission: $5 to $12

Info: 882-8700

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:15:00 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
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In the popular imagination, the year 2000 was a distant bright line between the industrial and technological ages. It was exciting and addictive to believe – or even to vainly hope – that interstellar travel and self-piloting personal aircraft were on the horizon and that disease and war would soon be history.

This fascinating and fertile period in American culture and creativity is on glorious display in “The Future Is History,” a spectacular, if jumbled, collection of space-race memorabilia, furniture, audio and video technology and publications, on view through Saturday in a multistory warehouse on out-of-the-way Chandler Street in Black Rock.

The show is the brainchild of longtime collector Martin McGee, whose trips to shows and expos across the country have yielded an enviable trove of technological and decorative oddities. The vibe of the space is a fusion of impossible chic and total nerd-vana – a cross between Carnaby Street and the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Each of the objects in the show has a life of its own, and prospective visitors tonight will probably want to show up for one of two guided tours with McGee at 6 and 8 p.m. so they can get the inside scoop.

The aspirations of the era announce themselves immediately on entrance to the building, home of CooCooU, a sprawling vintage furniture vendor. A table of atom-themed memorabilia from the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels greets visitors, including a model of the Atomium, a massive model of an iron crystal atom.

This leads, naturally enough, into a room bedecked with Space Age items that range from imaginative Russian spacecraft models and collectible pins to publications of the era with inspirational covers that can seem laughably self- serious from today’s perspective. An adjoining room is filled with furniture designs from the period, which tended to be low to the ground and egg-shaped or otherwise biomorphic.

There are fold-out record players, sleek self-loading toasters, clear inflatable chairs and dresses made out of eye-popping mylar. There is a set of funky silverware that McGee reports was used in Stanley Kubrick’s era-defining film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a black swivel-chair that appeared on the original “Star Trek” series, and two salt and pepper shakers of the same model “Star Trek” character Leonard McCoy used for medical instruments.

And there is much, much more – all of it very loosely organized into separate rooms and still looser themes. Despite the great need for some significant editing and a better execution of the story McGee is trying to tell, “The Future Is History” has at its heart a fascinating and enduring idea. As others have written, the way we viewed the future at the height of the space race, when so much was unknown and technology appeared to be moving so fast, is remarkably different than the panic-stricken attitude many of us have adopted toward the future today.

In the end, the human imagination moved much faster than reality could hope to, while science offered frightening visions of the future that look absolutely nothing like an episode of “The Jetsons.” But it’s fun, and more than a little eye-opening, to get lost in the beautiful naiveté of McGee’s many-splendored objects of aspiration.

review

What: “The Future Is History: The Rise and Fall of Space Age Culture and Design, 1957-1972”

When: Through Saturday; guided tours at 4 and 8 p.m. today

Where: CooCooU, 27 Chandler St.

Admission: Free

Info: 432-6216 or www.coocooumodern.com

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:53:34 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130418/GUSTO/130419181/1237 Squeaky Wheel has been sending documentary filmmakers out into the community to help grass-roots organizations tell their stories.

“Channels: Stories from the Niagara Frontier,” a project designed to merge the creative energy of filmmakers and community groups into a unified voice, will screen its latest crop of documentaries at 7 tonight in the Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre.

The films in this year’s program explore the importance of growing the local economy, the history of racial segregation in Buffalo housing and society’s treatment of the mentally ill.

Goda Trakumaite, Squeaky Wheel’s director of programming and outreach, who coordinated this year’s program, characterized “Channels” as a way to broaden the public’s understanding of underexposed issues.

“The idea is to produce films about topics that are not often covered in the news and kind of focus on underreported stories and things happening in the city that deserve more attention,” Trakumaite said. “I think in general in documentaries, the trend has been to really include ‘subject’ into the actual storytelling role. [To] make sure we’re not talking about somebody, but it’s people talking about themselves.”

In its five years, the impact of “Channels” has spread far beyond Western New York. Trakumaite said previous “Channels” documentaries – including films about the abuse of Native Americans in state-run schools, the effect of the proposed Peace Bridge expansion on neighborhood residents and the fight for a living wage – have been screened at conferences and other venues throughout the United States.

Here’s a look at this year’s documentaries:

• “Rooted,” a collaboration among filmmakers Kyle Toth and Ryan Delmar and the local economic advocacy organization Buffalo First, looks at local businesses striving to keep money circulating within the local economy. The film includes interviews with business owners like Block Club’s Patrick Finan, Kevin Gardner of Five Points Bakery, Justin Booth of Go Bike Buffalo and Tim Herzog of Flying Bison.

• “This Doesn’t Happen Here,” produced by the Erie County Fair Housing Partnership and local filmmaker Brian Milbrand, takes a historical look at the persistent racial segregation that has long plagued Buffalo. The film, according to a release, “argues that segregation was created and sustained by human decisions and hard work and can be unmade in the same way.”

• “Not Without Us,” by the Mental Health Peer Connection and filmmaker Sam Avery, strives to correct the way the mentally ill are stigmatized and treated by a society that is often indifferent or overly prescriptive when it comes to the treatment of this misunderstood population. The subjects of this film, according to a release, band together “to stand up for their rights by redefining the nature of the problem and reclaiming their states as integral members of society.”

preview

What: “Channels: Stories from the Niagara Frontier”

When: 7 tonight

Where: Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre, 639 Main St.

Tickets: $1 to $10

Info: 884-7172, www.squeaky.org

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:03:45 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130418/GUSTO/130419180/1237 Young Audiences of Western New York, the organization founded a half-century ago to bring classical music into local schools, has been having a heck of a golden anniversary.

Last year, with help from the John R. Oishei Foundation and other backers, it moved to the second floor of the Central Library and launched an ambitious regional arts education program called Arts Partners for Learning. After a series of popular 50th anniversary events over the past year, the organization’s work in the community has never been more visible.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, the group will cap off its yearlong anniversary celebration with a fundraising auction at the Tapestry Charter School. The event, whose honorary chair is the active local collector and artist Gerald Mead, will feature work by local artists as well as some who have gone on to larger fame.

The money raised from Saturday’s event – Young Audiences Director Cynnie Gaasch says the group hopes to raise $20,000 – will go into a fund to help schools create and build their own arts programming by providing matching funding.

During the past decade or so, Young Audiences’ approach to arts education has evolved beyond bringing the occasional performer to an assembly program. Now, with its various programs, the organization is working to develop more meaningful and long-term connections with local students.

“I would say that the number of students we’re connecting with isn’t different, but the length of time we’re spending with them has changed,” Gaasch said. “We’re not necessarily making them experts. We’re not making them artists. But we’re helping them to be comfortable in the arts, and to participate in the arts and to not be afraid of them. You can do that much more successfully when you see them over and over again.”

Among its many new programs, Young Audiences recently launched a collaboration with Erie County’s mental health and youth services departments to provide troubled teens with arts education in its home at the Central Library. Its ongoing partnership with students at McKinley High School, where Young Audiences artists visit twice weekly during the school year, has been a marked success.

And the formation of Arts Partners for Learning – a group that formed last year to foster and strengthen existing arts education programs and to spread the arts education gospel across Western New York – has been successful as well. It is also overseeing a project called Grant Street Global Voices, a community mural project funded by the National Endowment for the Arts that involves Buffalo State College, Buffalo Public Schools and Grant Street residents and businesses.

Next year, Young Audiences will launch a mini-grant program in which schools can apply to host programs created by Arts Partners for Learning members and a new partnership with the Buffalo Arts and Technology Center. The organization, volunteer-run for most of its 50 years, now has six staffers, a healthy board and a budget that expands by the year.

And as for the next 50 years?

“We want to expand the number of children who are having short-term experiences, we want to expand the number of children who are having long-term experiences and we want to create programming where we’re working with young people for multiple years and having a major impact on their ability to be successful in the world.”



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:21:59 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130418/GUSTO/130419171/1237 Artsphere Studio and Gallery, Greenberg will share stories about his life in Buffalo and his 70-year photography career.

Greenberg’s photographs include street scenes of a city that has long vanished, as well as sensitive portraits of personalities whose names no longer register, or never did. He will be joined by painters Milton Weiser and Jacqueline Welch, who will also talk about their own successful art careers, which have been featured in solo exhibitions at Artsphere.

Saturday’s talks are part of a series that coincides with the gallery’s 10th anniversary show, which runs through April 27. The final talks in the series, featuring photographer Bogdan Fundalinski and mixed media artist Michelle Mazur, are slated for the final day of the exhibition. – Colin Dabkowski

•••

Talks by Jerome Greenberg, Milton Weiser and Jacqueline Welch – When: 4 p.m. Saturday. Where: Artsphere Studio and Gallery, 477 Amherst St. Admission: Free. Info: 874-2863 or www.artspherestudio.com ]]> Thu, 18 Apr 2013 02:51:36 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130418/GUSTO/130419187/1237
“Today, the battlefields are beautiful, tranquil examples of central Virginia countryside, but we know they hold stories of sadness, horror, bravery, courage, sacrifice, rage, fear and relief,” Stuart wrote in an artist’s statement. “I tried to listen to these fields and capture with my images the emotional essence of the stories that are still being written.”

To complement the show, called “Sacred Scars, Shadowed Ground,” the Quick Center will host a performance from singer Jose Andrade of Civil War-era songs. – Colin Dabkowski

•••

“Sacred Scars, Shadowed Ground” – When: Through May 31. Where: Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, St. Bonaventure University. Admission: Free. Info: 375-2494 or www.sbu.edu/quickcenter. ]]> Thu, 18 Apr 2013 02:42:53 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130414/GUSTO/130419510/1237
Museums’ approaches to this question have been varied and variously successful. There are sprawling, seemingly exhaustive surveys with 2-ton catalogs that slog slowly through decades of creativity. There are quirky quick hits meant to explore a single facet of an irreducible moment. And then there is “American Moderns, 1910-1960: From O’Keeffe to Rockwell,” a show that attempts to pack the drama and beauty of 50 years of modern art into just 57 paintings and sculptures.

The word “foolhardy” comes to mind.

The show, which remains on view through May 12 at Syracuse’s Everson Museum of Art, was assembled almost entirely from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum by Karen Sherry and Margaret Stenz. It’s in the midst of an eight-city tour of small and midsize museums across the southern and eastern United States.

“American Moderns,” for all the glimmering individual gems it contains, isn’t likely to shock the uninitiated visitor into a new, world-shaking appreciation of that tumultuous half-century or its vast and variegated artistic output. But it contains more than enough surprises and framed bits of brilliance to whet museum-goers’ appetites and stoke their curiosities about why the art of mid-20th century America should rank among the country’s defining achievements.

The show is itself like a rudimentary cubist portrait of an era, fractured and fragmentary but deeply intriguing if you know how and where to look. It’s been divided into six separate categories, each one designed to explore some essential feature of the aging century. This approach, though perhaps necessary for the sake of cohesion and to give visitors a rope by which to pull themselves through the show, runs the risk of portraying art as a mere response to social circumstances rather than the deeply individual act of creativity it often is.

Even so, each of the curators’ categories contains some stunners.

The show begins with “Cubist Experiments,” which delves into the epochal style created by Picasso and Braque that spread with viral efficiency across the international art world beginning in the teens. Americans were quick to replicate the style. The show contains a riotous, Kandinsky-esque canvas from 1917 by Stanton McDonald Wright called “Synchrony No. 3,” with colors so bright you can almost hear them. Another piece, Marguerite Thompson Zorach’s “Memories of My California Childhood,” from 1921, is a dark and fractured cubist scene of a picnic, like a rusted-over recollection or half-remembered dream. There’s also a lively transitional piece by Max Weber (well-represented in this show) from 1917.

These cubist fancies (for few of them could be called masterpieces) spill over into the “Still Life Revisited” room, which contains two of the most intriguing pictures in the show. The first is Marsden Hartley’s 1942 oil “White Cod,” which on first inspection seems like nothing more than a painting of two dead fish but upon reading the wall text, is revealed to be a heartbreaking memento mori of two of Hartley’s friends who drowned off Nova Scotia in 1936. It’s a horrifying, engrossing painting, and its presentation here is as good an argument for the importance of smart and pointed wall text as any I’ve seen.

The still life section also includes a fascinating small painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, the 1939 oil “Fishhook from Hawaii No. 1,” in which the artist turned a loop of fishing wire into a sort of strange-looking glass that refracts the turquoise sea beyond in three distinct ways. It’s a surreal and disorienting piece, much more thought-provoking than the decorative works by O’Keeffe elsewhere in the show, and I had to double back to make sure I saw it right the first time.

Later, it’s on to “Nature Essentialized,” which contains a large, strange painting of a reimagined globe by Augustus Vincent Tack (“Canyon,” from 1931) and a fine piece by Arthur G. Dove, the 1946 painting “Flat Surfaces,” which nonetheless will probably escape first-time viewers because it provides no context for Dove’s unique gifts. For me, the standout is Milton Avery’s “Artist’s Daughter by the Sea,” a 1943 canvas in which a girl, painted in the style of Matisse, almost blends into the seascape behind her, symbolizing a fusion of man and nature.

“Modern Structures,” shorthand for artists’ growing fascination with the rapidly growing urban landscape, has a lovely, wall-mounted bronze sculpture by Herzel Emanuel from 1937 (and finally cast in 1990) called “View of Lower Manhattan” that shows a dizzying, cubist vision of fractured steel and wood. “The Emerald Tower,” a nightmarish neon cityscape of candy-colored towers looming over Brooklyn Heights by Isabel Lydia Whitney from 1927-28, also captures the eye and seems ahead of its time.

“Americana,” the next section, is the most problematic of all. It was almost surely an excuse to shoe-horn in Norman Rockwell’s famous 1944 piece “The Tattoo Artist,” which appeared on a Saturday Evening Post cover that year. It’s a deft and very funny illustration, but, like the other pieces in this section, too tenuously linked to what came before it to qualify as a useful plot point in the long narrative this show is trying to weave.

The show closes with “Engaging Characters,” which despite its seemingly random title, contains a trio of lovely works by the painter Guy Pène du Bois, a sort of social documentary painter who captured scenes in cafés and on streets. My favorite of these was “The Confidence Man,” a 1919 oil which depicts a dark, menacing transaction between a goateed businessman and a woman – his wife? a prostitute? – in a dimly lit space rendered in ruddy browns and blacks.

The Everson, not content to let this pint-sized exhibition hang by its lonesome, put together a room of work from its own collection drawn from the same period the show covers. It is a revelation in itself, with 12 works by the likes of Reginald Marsh (his very funny 1932 piece “Jack Curley’s Dance Marathon” is a highlight), Milton Avery and Katherine Dreier. Of particular interest is Eldzier Cortor’s “Southern Souvenir No. IV,” a wild and disorienting picture from 1948 that gets at the dark heart of the African-American experience in Urban America. The show ends in a fashion any Buffalalonian could appreciate, with “Six O’Clock,” Charles Burchfield’s somnolent wintertime scene from 1936 of dinner being served in the glowing front room of a city house.

On a basic level, “American Moderns” doesn’t do its job as well as it might have even with the available material. But frankly, given the turbulent decades the exhibition covers, the potential for anyone to go into this exhibition clueless and exit it an expert is extremely unlikely. It’s still well worth the 150-minute trip, though, for the many small pearls of beauty and wonder it contains.

More exhibits Down the road

The Everson Museum (401 Harrison St., Syracuse; free admission with $5 suggested donation) has a host of intriguing shows planned.• “An American Look: Fashion, Decorative Arts and Gustav Stickley,” which focuses on the fashions of 1910-14 as well as furniture and decorative objects by Stickley and others, runs from June 15 to Sept. 22.

• “Jordan Eagles: Red Giant,” a solo exhibition for the popular artist who uses blood as his primary medium, runs from Sept. 21 to Jan. 5, 2014.

• “The Art of Video Games,” a look at the evolution of the form over the past 40 years, runs from Oct. 26 to Jan. 19, 2014.

• “Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums,” an exhibition of works that rarely travel now getting excellent reviews in the United Kingdom, runs April 17 to July 13, 2014.

• “African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond,” a traveling show organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, runs from Oct. 18, 2014 to Jan. 4, 2015.

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:44:45 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130411/GUSTO/130419850/1237
“Cycles at the Center,” a four-day series of screenings, performances and workshops timed to coincide with the opening of five new exhibitions, runs through Sunday afternoon.

Two of the new shows, “Charles E. Burchfield: Oh My Heavens” and “Charles E. Burchfield: The Studio,” examine the center’s namesake from different angles. In “Oh My Heavens,” Burchfield’s fascination with constellations and celestial bodies and phenomena takes center stage and provides viewers, according to the center, “with the opportunity to examine the scientific, historical and spiritual implications of the artist’s works.”

The center’s rotunda gallery, which previously showcased an engrossing exhibition of the artist’s absentminded doodles, will focus on Burchfield’s 1917 painting “Salem Bedroom Studio.” It will also include several objects from his longtime studio in Gardenville.

Also going on view Friday is an exhibition by prolific Chinese artist Xu Bing made up of photographs documenting his 1994 performance “Cultural Animal,” which involved a live pig interacting with a mannequin. The center will also present an installation by Ohio-based artist Ann Hamilton and a video installation, “Broken Mirror,” by Beijing artist Song Dong.

The final three exhibitions – by Xu Bing, Song Dong and Ann Hamilton – are the first in the newly launched Electronic Arts Alliance, a series of collaborations with Alfred University’s Institute of Electronic Arts School of Art and Design announced Tuesday.

Among many sights and sounds designed especially for the four-day festival, which begins at noon today with a screening of a film by Paul Sharits, will be an original dance piece choreographed by Jon Lehrer. That piece, Lehrer said, is based on the photographs of local professor Bruce Jackson to complement the exhibition of his work in the grand east gallery. The dance troupe will also perform its popular pieces “Murmur” and “The Alliance.”

The full schedule of events is online at burchfieldpenney.org. Here are some highlights:

• The film “S:Stream:S:S:Section:S:S:Ection:S:S:Ectioned” by Sharits screens at noon today and 6:30 p.m. Saturday. LehrerDance also performs at 7:30 tonight, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

• From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, the center hosts an opening celebration for its five new exhibitions. Visitors can take a guided tour of Shasti O’Leary Soudant’s kid-friendly exhibition “Let There Be Light!” hosted by the artist. The evening will also feature performances by Dive House Union at 6:30 p.m. and A Musical Feast at 8 p.m. Weather permitting, visitors can go stargazing with Buffalo State College’s Whitworth Ferguson Planetarium staff.

• From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, a special “Pop-Up Park” for kids ages 8 to 18 will materialize on the Burchfield Penney grounds. Anyone interested in participating in the vaguely defined event, which includes lunch, should call 878-4534 to make a reservation.

• The weekend will wrap up with an architectural tour of the Burchfield Penney at 2 p.m. Sunday and a screening of work by video artists, “Preview, Premier and Peruse Films and Video,” also at 2.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:09:17 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130411/GUSTO/130419866/1237
“The astonishing epoch that bridges the Atomic Age and Information Age is showcased in a rare and eclectic collection that exemplifies the prescient Space Age aesthetic,” a release claims, going on to call the period documented in the exhibition “an intrepid time dominated by the Space Race when envisioning the future was omnipresent and now was not now enough.”

The show will contain a tremendous variety of objects, from toys and games of the era to architectural models, space-themed memorabilia, electronics and films. The exhibition’s opening party, according to a release, will feature “spacey electronic grooves, cosmic projections, moon shot mixtures, orbiting edibles and earthlings modeling far-out fashions.” – Colin Dabkowski

•••

“The Future is History: The Rise and Fall of Space Age Culture and Design 1957-72” – When: 6:30 p.m. Friday through April 27. Where: 27 Chandler St. Admission: Free. Info: 432-6216 ]]> Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:07:53 -0400 http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130411/GUSTO/130419865/1237
Butski’s series of oils depicts the quiet, eerie spaces left behind by the neighborhood’s evacuation as well as visions of the toxic waste responsible for the whole affair. The show will also feature artifacts from the site as well as explanatory maps that provide a deeper sense of how the crisis played out.

“The Love Canal crisis received national and international attention as the entire neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, had to be relocated due to the amount of toxins in the soil and groundwater,” a statement reads. “Although much of the disaster’s details have been forgotten, generations continue to suffer from its shattering effects.” – Colin Dabkowski

•••

“The Love Canal Revisited” – Where: Adams Art Gallery, 600 Central Ave., Dunkirk. When: Through April 26; reception at 6 p.m. Saturday. Admission: Free .Info: 366-7450 or www.adamsart.org ]]> Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:07:43 -0400