You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
— Steven Wright

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.
— Alvin Toffler

In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
— H. L. Mencken

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
— Epictetus


"The debates were particularly challenging for me to monitor. First I tried running in and out of the room so I would only hear my guy. This worked until I knocked over a tray of hors d'oeuvres. 'Sit down or get out!' my host demanded. 'Okay, I said, and took a seat, but I was more fidgety than a ten-year-old at temple. I just couldn't watch without saying anything, and my running commentary, which mostly consisted of 'Shut up, you prick!' or 'You're a fucking liar!!!' or 'Go to hell, you cocksucker!' was way too distracting for the attendees, and finally I was asked to leave."

Huffington Post Larry David


If You Can't Trust Little Opie Cunningham, All Is Truly Lost

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

HALLWALLS EXHIBITIONS CLOSING TOMORROW
gallery hrs Tues to Fri 11am to 6pm, Sat 1 to 4pm

RODNEY TAYLOR



ANDREW REYES



@ HW TONIGHT
NO PROGRAMS
CAROLYN & JT NUPTIALS

"We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light."



NEXT HALLWALLS EXHIBITIONS
OPENING NOVEMBER 1, 8-11pm




Opening Elsewhere
• Shawn Fintak at Starlight Studio op Fri, Oct 24, 6-9pm (thru Nov 14)
• Bruce Adams & Richard Huntington at the Carnegie, op Sat, Nov 1, 7-9 (thru Dec 13)
• 18th St. Park Project presented by UB architecture students @ Gallery 164 Fri, Oct 24, 6pm
• Oreen Cohen @ Gateway Studio opening Fri, Oct 24, 6-9pm
• closing reception for Books Reborn @ Impact, Sat, Oct 25, 1-4pm


Opening Tonight



Evite of the Week

Brian Groombridge
@ Susan Hobbes Gallery, Toronto
Oct 23—Nov 29/08


Continuing Elsewhere
• David Schirm & Justin Thompson @ Buffalo Arts Studio thru Nov 1
This ends in a week and it's a beautiful pair of shows, if you haven't seen them. Thompson's bedraggled tree sculptures and David Shirm's whopping great paintings of organic, imaginative landscapes and optical terrains. Great stuff.
• Bruce Adams @ the Center for Inquiry thru Dec 24
• OP Art Revisited at the Albright thru Jan 25
• Cynnie Gaasch @ Studio Hart thru Nov 22
• Catherine Parker @ Indigo (74 Allen) thru Nov 30 Samuels' new digs
• Buffalo Society of Artists 112th Annual Catalogue Exhibition @ Art Dialogue thru Nov 21
• Richard Huntington, Max Streicher @ the Castellani thru Jan 18
On the one hand, thirty years of paintings crunched into an intensely swift mini-retrospective. On the other, a gigantic inflated dung beettle. Win/win!
• Sonia Penaranda-Taggart, Maria Fernanda del Bufalo, Geraldine LIquidano @ Galleria Blanca (Orchard Park) thru Nov 10
• Katherine Sehr @ Nina Freudenheim thru Nov 19
Sehr's fields of minutely-drawn, colored webs, which manage to be simultaneously enormous and intimate, have been seen frequently the last few years. With work so specific and laborious, one prevailing question is how will it change over time. Or will it? How long can you make—not just Sehr's but any—formally-specific work before you approach the territory of shtick. (Not that there's anything wrong with a well-wrought shtick.) In Sehr's current show, what keeps the work interesting and engaging are the burgeoning hints of looseness. In a few drawings, her controlled fields of color have begun to merge. To great effect. And in one large work, Sehr's tight version of the grid breaks loose and she lets the lines curl away in gestures that appear wildly spontaneous. Installed in the back, it was one of the last works you would look at. Nice.
• Connie Coleman & Alan Powell @ Squeaky Wheel thru Oct 31
• Bruce Adams at the Center for Inquiry thru Dec 31 Buffalo News
• Mark Duquette @ Alleyway Theater thru Nov 30
• Sam Van Aken @ RoCo thru Nov 23
• David Mitchell @ Big Orbit thru Nov 22 Buffalo News Eisenberg

One of the least honored of Buffalo art traditions is the experience of heading over to Big Orbit, entering the space, checking out the show, and leaving without ever seeing anyone. It's pretty great that you can have that strange, intimate moment. I'm sure someone was around somewhere, but I didn't hear a sound and never saw anyone. Michell's astutely-installed mis en scene with colliding automobiles and spit-swapping deer sits there like an artifact, well-placed and quiet, just long enough for the viewer to question the status of the gallery equipment. Then...well, you'll see. Love found, love lost, tragedy, a great subwoofer, and very savvy use of lighting. Eloquent, sad, funny, could very well be the best thing in town right now. I'm going back.
• Carrianne Hendrickson at Shy Rabbit (Colorado) thru Nov 15
• Trans-Evolution: Examining Bio Art @ CEPA thru Dec 20
• Michael Goldberg @ Anderson Gallery thru Jan 18
• Priscilla Bowen at Olean Public Library thru Oct 25
• Cynnie Gaasch @ Studio Hart thru Nov 22
• MIchael Mulley @ Chow Chocolat thru Nov 25
• NCCC Faculty Exhibition thru Nov 21
• Adele Cohen @ Buffalo Big Print thru Nov 29
• Adele Becker, Susan Budash, Susan Copley, Jason Klinger, Ginny Lohr @ Amherst Jewish Center (Getzville) thru Nov 30
• Michael Goldberg @ UB Anderson Gallery thru Jan 18
• Joel Lewitsky @ Betty's thru Nov 9
• Kenn Morgan, Robert Schultz, Robert Minick, Gene Witkowski, Jerry Greenburg, Lukia Costello @ Artspace thru Nov 1
• Barbara Tanke, Ann Margaret Munley, Jennifer Seth-Cimini @ redFish thru Nov 15
• Diane Baker at The Mansion on Delaware (indefinitely)


November 21


There's no such thing as "new gallery smell," but there's a distinct vibe to a newly-created space and it's thrilling to be in it without a crowd and with no artwork. Having existed for so long in the relatively narrow confines of Rockwell Hall, it's great to see the Burchfield Penney Art Center finally realize itself as a museum space, with exhibition, performance, education, archival, and office space sufficient to its mission. Charles Burchfield's studio space, a permanent display, has been smartly rebuilt alongside a circular space (to exhibit work illustrating Burchfield's philosophy of the seasonal and the cyclical) and a second large space devoted solely to his work. The upstairs craft and sculpture galleries are, as with all the spaces, a huge improvement over their previous iterations. A technically pimped out media gallery sits alongside the the main exhibition space, half of which can be seen below. Scale comparison courtesy of John Opera, Patrick Robideau. Seeing it empty, it's clear that it would make for a killer floor hockey game, so it'll be great to see what art is going to activate the space. Clearly, they have built a new museum where anything is possible. Way to be, Burchfield!




"I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years. My rants mount when I see work from the last two years of his life, when he was in an amazing state of hellish grace."

artnet Saltz


"Picasso was one of 20th-century art’s major makers and shapers. He was also one of its most prolific purveyors of kitsch. I would place a high percentage of his output in the kitsch category."

NY Times Holland Cotter


Rudolph Ray Moore 1927—2008

NY Times obit


Levi Stubbs 1936—2008

NYTimes obit


Something I listened to this week...

I was tempted to just keep posting this album cover with the note "Ehh, check back next week." I'll be listening to it for months/years to come, just as I've been listening to it non-stop for the past few weeks. But I'll try to stop equivocating and pony up the post. I've thought about it long and hard—no question, Tell Tale Signs is one of the finest albums by an American artist in the last 10 years. Easily. And that includes all of Dylan's own recent output, from which these alternate and unreleased tracks are derived.

While factually accurate, it's a huge misnomer to think of this as leftover odds and sods from various recording sessions. There are, for instance, THREE versions of the previously released track Mississippi—all three are distinct from each other (almost radically so) and any one of the three are as good, or better, than the version eventually released. There's some deep, deep artistry at work here and it's gripping to hear. It was so compelling, I found myself listening to the different Mississippi tracks back to back, just to revel in it.

The version of Most of the Time included here completely eviscerates the version released on the Daniel Lanois-produced album Oh Mercy. In fact, all of the songs presented here that were previously produced by Lanois lay bare the fallacy of Lanois as some sort of super-producer imbued with a cajun mojo. Personally, I've always found him a loathsome producer, submerging every artist he's worked with (including Dylan) within that swampy Lanois ambience and slaughtering plenty of fine songs along the way. (It wasn't until Dylan himself began to extract the reins from Lanois on Time Out Of Mind that our latter day 21st century bard emerged.) I had never been sure about this song before. I thought it was good, but, in the Lanois version, far too elusive, I could never quite get a grip on it. Listening to the version on Tell Tale Signs was exactly like hearing the song for the first time—aha, there it is!

Then there's Red River Shore. Unbelievably (though perhaps not, as this "emergent gem syndrome" has happened so often with Dylan it's almost perfunctory), this song somehow had never before seen the light of day. It's so hypnotically gorgeous, I had listened to it four or five times before even paying to the lyrics, then another few times before I focused on the unbearable longing in the song, and a few more times before I realized the object of the singer's affection was imaginary. Absolutely heartbreaking. It's almost absurd to suggest this, in the context of a catalog of 600 songs, but you could make a case for it being one of the most beautiful Dylan's ever recorded. Beautiful like a knife in the heart.

Throughout, Tell Tale Signs spills forth with a dark, cutting, and cynical worldview, utterly in keeping with the skeptical attitude Dylan has always adopted, tempered with a sonic immediacy and warmth that cloaks even the darkest sentiment in a shroud of beauty. As he has often done, Dylan accomplishes the feat of working within familiar song structures and idioms while managing to create a space and a sound that is utterly his own. Something that sounds familiar and alien and ethereal all at once. A complicated, utterly rewarding collection of songs. Listen, I'm already into Dylan up to my eyeballs and I can find something remarkable in almost every album he's ever put out, so my experience with this latest album begins saturated in bias. I was way primed.

And it still took me completely by surprise. Knocked me out. Knocked out loaded. It's all substance, no filler. Album of the year. Nothing else even comes close.




Freedom is free of the need to be free.
Free your mind and your ass will follow.
— Funkadelic