Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
— Rumi

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
— Anaïs Nin

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin on non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.
— Luis Buñuel

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
— Will Rogers


Friday Overture: The Truth




CO-STARS: OBJECTS FROM THE FILMS OF KEVIN JEROME EVERSON
Opening Fri, June 11, 8—11pm
Artists Talk @ 8pm

"For his gallery exhibition at Hallwalls, Kevin returns to Buffalo with what has become an Award-Winning film, Erie, and an exhibition of objects and materials from his films. Central to the exhibition is the billboard, installed for three weeks south of Buffalo along Route 20, depicting an African-American auto worker and advertising jobs in the industry. Both a work of public art and an intervention into our Rust Belt landscape, the installation in an unsettling and uncanny way shed light on the history of our community and the sense of loss and anxiety felt by Americans and Auto Workers last summer. An aspect of his HARP residency, he will continue his work with students from the Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts to realize the creation and exhibition of materials that reflect the themes of Erie, AMC, and Costars—the process of filmmaking, and the role of visual culture on the migration of African-Americans and thus the shaping of American communities." — Carolyn Tennant, Media Arts Curator, Hallwalls



2 Shows Left TONIGHT and TOMORROW

Hallwalls Performance


As Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” pumped out over the sound system at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis twirled in blissful circles, demanding that the man in the booth turn up the volume.

Colin Dabkowski's interview with Karen Finley

Thomas Dooney's cover story in Artvoice Joyce Kryszak interview Karen on WBFO






Hallwalls Members Exhibition July 30

Buffalo Rising asks John Massier, "What's with this year's theme?"


Science & Art Cabaret 2.5




The Rest of Summer 2010 @ Hallwalls




Opening Elsewhere
• Mary Johnson @ 464 Gallery op Fri, July 16, 6—11pm (July 22)
• Barbi Lare, Bob Schultz, Curtis Robinson, Dorothy Harold, Dorothy Stallworth, Duncan Bethel, Eileen McNamara, Garry Collins, Kenn Morgan, Kevin Bobo, Lenore Bethel, Molly Bethel, Olga Lownie, Ricky Gonzalez, Roscoe Jackson, Sally Danforth, Tysheka Long, Valeria Cray @ El Museo op Fri, July 16, 7-9pm (Aug 20)
• Tanya Zabinski @ Indigo op Fri, July 16, 7-9pm (Aug 7)
• Autistic Services: Perceiving Buffalo @ Historical Society op Thurs, July 22, 8pm


Tanya Zabinski: Twenty Five Simple Ways To Be A Peace Activist

op @ Indigo Fri, July 16, 7-9pm (Aug 7)


MJ Myers @ Betty's

op Mon, July 26, 6-9pm (Sept 12)


The Lovely Anna Kaplan Wants Your Lovely Art

Anna writes, "People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) is teaming up with The Urban Soccer Initiative (USI) to raise money in order to help further rehab at the Massachusetts Avenue Park. The fundraising event, An Evening of Art for the Park, will take place on August 20th and include a silent art auction. The funds raised will be used to build a multi-purpose playing field at the Massachusetts Avenue property. Could you possibly include something about this in your blog and/or pass this information along to other artists who may still be interested? I am still looking for art donations. To thank artists for their donation, they will receive two complimentary tickets to the event which will include beer, wine, music, snacks, and an overall good time :). Any artists interested should contact me directly- akaplan16@gmail.com, 716-604-6183."


Music Is Art Call For Submissions

"MiA Seeks Artists: Music is Art is seeking artists in all mediums to exhibit their work at the 2010 Music is Art Festival on September 11 at the Albright Knox Art Gallery grounds. Art must be original. Installation and live art proposals are also welcome. Send 2 low resolution (72dpi) images of your work to kellerx@roadrunner.com for consideration. Please include your telephone number in the email. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to reach thousands of festival goers with your work while supporting an organization that makes a difference in the lives of thousands of young people."

Continuing Elsewhere
• ALBRIGHT KNOX • Fletcher Benton (July 5); ECHO: Sampling Visual Culture (Oct 10) Buffalo News
• BIG ORBIT • Elena Lourenco (July 17)
• BUFFALO ARTS STUDIO • Takashi Horisaki, James Paulsen, Megan Michalak/Stephine Rothenberg (Aug 7) Artvoice Foran
• BURCHFIELD PENNEY • Moxie & MayhemM, Acquisitions for a New Collection (Sept 5); Ben Perrone War Project (June 30); Burchfield, Cleveland, & new York (Aug 29); Pine Trees and Oriental Poppies (Aug 29)
• CARNEGIE ART CENTER • Buffalo Society of Artists (July 17)
• CASTELLANI ART MUSEUM • BSA Catalog Exhibition (Sept 5); Interpreting Traditional Genres (July 11); Amanda Wachob (Sept 19)
• CEPA GALLERY • Art of War (Aug 2)
• HALLWALLS • Kevin Jerome Everson (July 23)
• SQUEAKY WHEEL • somthing squeaky
• UB ANDERSON • Paul Jenkins (Aug 22); The Gutai and New York (Aug 22)
• UB ART GALLERY • installing

Curator Interview: Roby and Champ

Buffalo Rising Laura Duquette

"Since most of my trips to England revolve around either debauching or performing, I have never actually stepped foot in a London art gallery. I wasn’t sure where to begin."

artnet Reverend Jen

"We see an artist increasingly interested in making clear not just his painting process, but also a kind of emotional concentration that, while hardly Expressionist, did not exactly exemplify the Olympian detachment habitually attributed to him."

NY Times obit

"Gesturing with large, meaty hands in the manner of a football coach, Lowry describes the history of MoMA as one of 'instability,' in which the museum had to tear itself down and rebuild itself every ten years in order to accommodate new kinds of art, a process which Lowry describes as 'madness.'"

artnet Finch

“It dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited medium. There was a tremendous amount of things you could do in comics that you couldn’t do in other art forms — but no one was doing it. I figured if I’d make a try at it, I’d at least be a footnote in history.”

Shit. Fuck. Goddamn. Is there any solace to be found in the extremely sad news of Harvey Pekar's passing? Well, I did get to meet him in Buffalo in 2009, so there's that. But consider: fame aside, money aside, Pekar was a serious contemporary artist working in what, even in the best of times, was (and is) a fringe art form and he persisted in it, creating art for decades until a deeply serious body of work had accumulated. Over the many years and multiple stories, I always found Pekar's material to belie his persistent reputation as some kind of cranky middle-aged man—more often than not, there was an underlying optimism that blossomed forth from almost every story told, no matter how apparently desultory or banal. Pekar's contribution to contemporary American art and literature was something more than significant. It was exemplary. Crushingly sad and unfair that he only made it to 70, but I'm eternally grateful for all the splendor.
NY Times obit



"With his bushy beard and wild hair, Mr. Kupferberg embodied the hippie aesthetic. But the term he preferred was bohemian, which to him signified a commitment to art as well as a rejection of restrictive bourgeois values..."

NY Times obit


For your Netflix queue...NOT

(2008, dir. M. Night Shyamalan) THE HAPPENING
I'm not even sure I can express just how fucking awful this film was. Near the end, Zooey Dechanel asks Mark Wahlberg "It's over, isn't it?" Well, I checked the time at that point and there was still 15 excruciating minutes to go. This film was so bad, I actually found myself speaking out loud to myself: "God, this is fucking awful." I have generally found M. Knight to be the most singularly over-rated director working today. With the exception of the unerringly brilliant film Unbreakable, he's largely been a style over substance kind of filmmaker and that style is slowly revealing itself to be more and more shallow. There are elements of this film that actually seem promising and at least a couple scenes that might otherwise have worked, but it moves like fucking molasses and somewhere in the middle, he unbelievably kills off two child characters for no good plot reason that I could discern. Oh, and I didn't say "spoiler alert" there because it's not possible to spoil something already so putrified. If I can say anthing positive, it's that it's such a terrible, terrible film, I'm almost impressed by its awfulness. Almost.


Something I listened to this week...

(1975) ROY AYERS • A TEAR TO A SMILE
Jazz vibraphonists are not exactly high on my list of must-listen music, but I've had this one on the iPod for several months and it's kind of a great album. Smooth and slinky, funky and skillful, great great vocalists and superb musicians. It's an album I'd never head of before by an artist I only knew by name and I'm super-pleased to have happened upon it. It's remaining in iPod rotation.

You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings—there are no such things. There are only middles.
— Robert Frost