Luck is the residue of design.

— Branch Rickey

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

— Stephen Hawking

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

— Henry David Thoreau

Deep experience is never peaceful.

— Henry James

Friday Overture: Big Rock Candy Mountain



@ Hallwalls through December 8
gallery hrs Tues to Fri 11am to 6pm, Sat 11am to 2pm

AJ FRIES: Ignoring The Sirens

Buffalo News Dabkowski review


JON HADDOCK: Vintage Mouse Porn


@ Hallwalls Sat, Nov 14, 8pm
Holly Hughes: Clit Notes

"Presented by the Brazen-Faced Varlets, this touching one-woman show about love, family, and coming out features Kelly M. Beuth under the direction of Lara Haberberger. The work, which was first performed by Hughes as part of the 1994 Ways In Being Gay series (shortly after the NEA Four debacle), earned the lesbian feminist performance artist an Obie award. "


@ Hallwalls Sun, Nov 15, 7pm
David Marshall: Swimming With Lesbians

"Following a sold-out screening this summer, Hallwalls is proud to present an encore screening, presented in person by filmmaker David Marshall. The documentary follows local hero and activist Madeline Davis, chronicling her efforts to build an LBGT historic archive. 'Much credit is due to people like Madeline and others in the film—people in places like Buffalo, New York—who moved Gay rights out of the Castro and the Village and onto the Main Street of mid-sized American cities and small towns.'"


@ Hallwalls Thurs, Nov 19, 8pm
The Cockettes

"This critically acclaimed doc explores the rise and fall of the San Francisco theatrical troupe (1969-72) whose legendary gender-bending performances have been all but neglected in the history of the psychedelic era. Using brilliantly colorful archival footage, David Weissman and Bill Weber's 2002 documentary literally sparkles as 'The climate of all-embracing acceptance, blurred sexual lines, joyful transgression, rebellion and freedom comes through with warmth, humor and nostalgia.' (David Rooney, Variety)"


Opening Elsewhere
• Peter Fowler, Mary Begley, Peter Dyett, Candace Keegan, Mathew John Pasquarella @ Queen City Gallery op Fri, Nov 13, 5-8pm (thru Nov 25)

• Jane Marinsky @ Daemon College op Fri, Nov 13, 6-9pm

• Jay Carrier and Jonathan Rogers @ Gateway Gallery op Fri, Nov 13, 6-9pm

• Hell's Commissary @ Cosmopolitan (413 Gennessee) op Fri, Nov 13, 5-8pm

• Rebekah Champ, Kasarian Dane, Ani Hoover, Kathleen Thum, Tricia Wright @ Villa Maria College op Fri, Nov 13, 5:30-7:30 Buffalo News Dabkowski

Dennis Bertram Open Studio

Sat, Nov 14, 3-5pm @ the Tri-Main (5th flr)

They are almost certainly lying about "acrobats all day," but there WILL be a veritable shitload of art books for sale....



Sun, Nov 15 @ the Market Arcade, 3-5pm

"A collaboration between Preservation Buffalo Niagara and Squeaky Wheel the Buffalo Youth Media Institute combines documentary production with local history to teach filmmaking to Buffalo's youths...Some of the highlights include a magical portrait of Forest Lawn cemetery, an insightful interview with recently deceased community activist Rosa Gibson, an ode to the beauty of grain elevators, a loving portrayal of St. Luke’s on the East Side, a passionate appeal on behalf of bees, and a thoughtful essay about the proposed downtown casino..."

Joseph Radoccia @ Betty's

op Mon, Nov 16, 6-9pm (thru Jan 17)

BAS Annual Exhibit & Sale Nov 21

Continuing Elsewhere
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo Venture: From the Larkin Building to Broadacre City @ UB Anderson Gallery thru Dec 30
• Brendan Bannon @ Studio Hart thru Nov 25
• Robert Mangold @ the Albright thru Jan 31
• Amanda Maciuba, Rob Rzeznik, Andrew Vaga @ UB Art Gallery thru Dec 12
• Polly Little, Lynn Northrup, Mary Weig, Jacqueline Welch @ Indigo thru Nov 17
• In Good Company, organized by Ilana Chlebowski @ the Albright thru Jan 2 Buffalo News Dabkowski
• Buffalo Society of Artists 113th Annual Fall Catalogue Exhibition @ Kenan Center thru Nov 15
• Polly Little, Mary Weig, Lynn Northrup, Jaqueline Welch @ Indigo
• Catherine Parker @ WNY Book ARts Collaborative thru Nov 14
• Caroline Bronckers, Jeffrey Cutler, Tammy Hoy, Elizabeth Leader, Timothy Neesam, MJ Worthington, David Torke @ Gallery 464 thru Nov 15
• Scott Bye, Doug Bauer @ NCCC thru Nov 24
• Daemon College Faculty Show thru Nov 4
• Millie Chen, Warren Quigley @ Big Orbit thru Nov 14
• Kara Daving @ Nichols School thru Nov 3
• Diane Baker @ CG Jung Center thru Dec 14
• Lin Xia Jiang @ Villa Maria College thru Oct 30
• Ilania Kaplan @ Betty's thru Nov 15
• Conversation Pieces w/ Alexis Bhagat, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Mariam Ghani, Guerrillagirlsbroadband, Sharon Hayes, Incubate/Material Exhchange/Adam Bobbette, Nina Leo & Stefani Bardin, Carlos Motta, Oliver Ressler, Stephanie Rothernberg @ CEPA thru Dec 19
• 18th Annual Regional Artists Exhibition @ Art Dialogue thru Nov 13
• Coni Minneci @ Market Street Art Center thru Nov 15
• Ingrid Calame @ the Albright thru Feb 28
• Tom Hughes @ the Castellani thru Jan 17
• Idols and Eye Candy: Fall Exhibit and Sale @ Starlight Studio thru Oct 30
• Mark Lavatelli, Robert Schultz @ Burchfield Nature & Art Center thru Nov 14
• Diane Baker at The Mansion on Delaware (indefinitely)

"In its long history as a cultural centre, Toronto, for the most part, has failed to successfully export its best visual artists. Something about Lake Ontario just seems to kill our cultural pollen as it flies. There has been, however, one notable exception—or three, depending on how you calculate it...”

Globe and Mail Milroy

General Idea Website

AA Bronson, Officer of the Order of Canada

John W. MacDonald's Weblog

“Maybe it is a fantastic collection, but the museum is a public trust: nonprofit, tax exempt and government supported. It is supposed to be an independent arbiter of taste and art-historical value. It is not supposed to surrender itself to a trustee and donor whose collection stands to be enhanced in value by a major museum show.”

NY Times

"...the show makes much of the ideological and creative clashes that rocked this German school during its brief but remarkable history — between commercial and creative values, pragmatists and idealists, social activists and aesthetes. It makes a convincing case that the remarkable creative output of the Bauhaus had as much to do with this constant discord as with the individual genius of any of its members."

NY Times

"'Big Wheel' in action is striking in its simplicity, mesmerizing in its movement and awe-inspiring in its scope and scale. The entire piece weighs 5,000 pounds, including the 3,200-pound steel flywheel (which was originally part of a generator and found in a Long Beach scrap yard), the 300-pound bike and the 1,500-pound trestle, which Burden engineered himself using building timbers."

LA Times Carpenter

"The voyages are an outgrowth of a long collaboration between the society and Cosmos Studios of Ithaca, N.Y., headed by Ann Druyan, a film producer and widow of the late astronomer and author Carl Sagan."

NY Times

"One day, I'm gonna die. That's all there is to it. Hey, it's too bad, but I've got to make room. I'm using a lot of oxygen and such—I think it's good use of oxygen myself, but of course, I'm a little prejudiced on the matter."

SF News

"As a general rule manuscript illumination has long-since gone the way of lighthearted children's books. Crumb, however, takes on the daunting task with a fierce intelligence and the graphic skill one expects from a founding father of the radical underground comics movement."

LA Times Knight

"Dollars to doughnuts, Robert H. Rines will be mainly remembered not for holding more than 800 patents, starting a law school or writing music for the stage, but for his dogged pursuit of the Loch Ness monster."

NY Times obit

"In her scholarship, Professor Rossi explored the status of women in work, family and sexual life. An early public advocate of abortion rights, she was often quoted by the national news media on an array of women’s issues. Her writings are widely credited with helping build the platform on which the women’s movement of the 1960s and afterward was erected."

NY Times obit

"Mr. D’Lugoff enjoyed a career as eclectic as any of his concert bills, working as an encyclopedia salesman, a waiter in borscht belt hotels, a cab driver in Los Angeles, a tree surgeon’s assistant in upstate New York and a union organizer in Massachusetts and Kentucky. Returning to New York, he embarked on a career as a concert promoter, presenting calypso, folk and jazz artists around the city."

NY Times obit

"Ms. Hofer’s studied approach — the gravity and stasis of her portraits owed much to the German photographer August Sander — put her at odds with the candid, on-the-fly photography of contemporaries like Robert Frank. She remained unrecognized by most critics and curators, and never received a museum show in the United States."

NY Times obit

“We view him as the last of the great masters who spent their life training and teaching hula. His reach around the world is unmatched.”

NY Times obit

"A powerful thinker, Mr. Lévi-Strauss, in studying the mythologies of primitive tribes, transformed the way the 20th century came to understand civilization itself. Tribal mythologies, he argued, display remarkably subtle systems of logic, showing rational mental qualities as sophisticated as those of Western societies."

NY Times obit

"Mr. Punchatz was a skilled hyperrealist with a penchant for the fantastic and absurd."

NY Times obit

"In a 1995 New Yorker magazine profile of Mr. York, Calvin Tomkins said he was perhaps 'the most highly admired unknown artist in America.' He described a shy man who avoided anyone connected to the art world, who worked slowly and who was perpetually dissatisfied with his work, prone to scraping down his wood panels and starting over."

NY Times obit

Something I listened to this week...

(1975) I bought his first album on a blind whim, but acquired this one in a pointed effort to get more Beaver in my life. Obscure funk soul that will probably never become more known than it already is, but full of tasty guitar licks, smooth grooves, and engaging singing. As you can see, he's got a nice rec room too. Recommended!

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.

— Woodrow Wilson