I witnessed this extraordinary one day event on Saturday amongst the massive concrete and steel grain elevators on the Buffalo, NY waterfront. I was shocked and giddy!
According to the City of Night website... CITY of NIGHT is an annual, multi-disciplinary event, this year held on August 17th. Key themes include art, history, culture and sustainability. The "Silo City" complex of grain elevators plays host on the Buffalo River, which sets the historical tone and informs the art installations, musical performances, fine art fair, and site tours. City of Night represents Buffalo's incredibly diverse cultural scene with a wide variety of music, dance, sound installation, fashion, and a community art project for all to engage in. We strive to become an ever more eco-conscious event, with local environmental non-profits represented, we encourage recycling and composting, and solar-powered energy! Food truck delights, beverages and CITY of NIGHT-themed merchandise will be available for purchase. The event is free to attend and open to people of all ages and backgrounds. Proceeds benefit the coordinating organization, the Emerging Leaders in the Arts Buffalo (ELAB), a chapter of Americans for the Arts
Here are some thoughts...
How in the world did the organizers, Dana Saylor (events-coordinator), Marcus L. Wise (president of ELAB), Marissa Lehner (coordinator of site-specific installations), Tara Sasiadek (vice-president of ELAB), Leslie Fineberg, John Furman, and other members of the Emerging Leaders in the Arts in Buffalo (www.ELABuffalo.com), cut through all the red tape and turn this industrial site into a massive art and music party? The fact that this event even took place was a huge success.
There was a great variety of art, from stark minimalism to blacklight velvet paintings. Somehow the three hundred foot high, million tons of concrete, held it all together.
For the size of the event and all its component parts (art performances, installations, craft booths, music stage, beer/wine tents, food trucks, merchandise tables, porta-potties, parking, bike racks, garbage, recycling) the event was smooth riding and coordinated.
Not all the art was mind-blowing work but I don't think that wasn't the point... the event showcased a range of artists from the community, high-brow and low-brow without discrimination.
Observation: for a city composed 40% of African American and 10% Latino, those groups were largely absent from the event. One of the questions for next year should be how to attract this other half of the city. I know the organizers worked hard to provide transportation not to mention that the event was free admission too... maybe a wider array of music might help... the inclusion of hip-hop artists for instance might attract a different scene?
Perhaps it was just me, but I had a hard time finding out what artists did what. Maybe a detailed flyer (separate from the map of the event) indicating each room/section of the interiors and labeling the title of work and artist would suffice... it could even include info about the art and artist as a kind of brochure.
You could've gone just for the music, food, and beer and had an amazing time... but without a doubt the star of the show was the Marine A installations. In a sense the artists that exhibited or performed in these spaces didn't have to do much to create an awe-inspiring experience because standing inside the 300 foot or so silos was an experience in itself. Kisha Patterson-Tanski and Ron Shaw's balloon installation was my pick for the show... who would've thought that throwing lit up balloons propelled by industrial fans to the top of the silo would be so exciting and mind blowing (see video below)! Daniel Seiders' massive lit up gears suspended from the ceiling of another silo created not only a thematically appropriate subject matter but also created an amazing visual effect. And Steve Baczkowski's unconventional solo sax playing in yet another silo was all that was needed to transport your imagination to somewhere far far away (see video below).
I am very happy to announce that from September 14th - November 9th at Buffalo Arts Studio (http://buffaloartsstudio.org/) I am having my first gallery solo show. But it gets better... I'm having it adjacent to the solo show of my new favorite artist: Leif Low-Beer. I will be exhibiting an assortment of oil paintings, acrylic paintings, and mixed media drawings along side my Buffalo architecture prints and monumental Central Terminal sculpture made of wood and cardboard (yet to be created). During the exhibition's opening I've invited Marilyn Rodgers of the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation and Jason Wilson of Preservation Buffalo Niagara to speak about the importance to preserving the terminal and Trico (a building currently in danger of being demolished). I will be also be speaking about my paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture during the opening following Leif's talk which begins at 7:30pm. And to top it all off my band The Fusioneers (at least Kengo [sax] and myself [guitar]) will be performing from around 8:30pm to 10pm. Lastly, beginning in October in conjunction with BAS I will be offering a 4 day workshop where I will bring students to the Central Terminal to draw and paint it's interior... I hope you'll join us!
Below is information on the show and artists, as well as images of my new Buffalo architecture prints and some of Low-Beer's work from his website http://leiflow-beer.com. Also, I have updated my website with the prints www.danielgalas.com and they are available for purchase at www.etsy.com/shop/BuffaloPrints. Lastly, I should mention that last week I moved back to Buffalo, NY and as consequence will primarily be blogging about galleries, museums, art fairs... etc. in the Western New York area and Toronto. Adios Hudson River Valley and New York City!
When I first experienced a James Turrell exhibition in Chelsea in 2004 it captured my imagination immediately. I'd never experienced anything like it, so when I heard of his show at the Guggenheim I hit it up. If you are a New Yorker you have no excuse, you must go and see this for yourself even if you know nothing about contemporary art.
Experiencing James Turrell's art is a spiritual experience. His terrific blend of aesthetic and science creates art that is similar to the beauty and power of the natural world. Just like Andrew Goldsworthy, James Turrell has an incredible talent for making art that is selfless and profound, simple and awesome. The main attraction of this exhibition is his Aten Reign. It's a surreal experience especially if you're familiar with the interior of the Guggenheim. At once he both desecrates the architecture and honors it. This tunnel of light completely alters the interior yet adroitly reflects it's unique form... It's kind of like he destroyed the space in a kind of sacrifice only to re-create it in a purer form of its original self. As a side note, while gazing upward at the changing light I couldn't help but to think of Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract flower paintings... The other works that James Turrell is showing at the Guggenheim are very special. His drawings possess an inner glow that I've never seen before, his projected rectangles of light are striking in their simplicity and the illusion of space they manifest, and in darkness the rectangular cutout in the wall of the upper gallery recalls to mind the starkness and ascetic space of the The Rothko Chapel. His work at the Guggenheim is sublime, conceptual, challenging, and diverse. Go experience it! Here is his biography...
Born in Los Angeles in 1943 to a Quaker mother and a father who was a school administrator, James Turrell attended Pomona College, where his studies concentrated on psychology and mathematics. He later received a master’s degree in Art from Claremont Graduate School. Turrell’s work has been widely acclaimed and exhibited since his first showing at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967, which established him a leader in the nascent Light and Space movement
I went for a visit to Wave Hill on one of their "Summer Wednesdays" in order to cool down from the intense heat of the city. There, I visited "Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial" at their terrific Glyndor Gallery. One artist caught my attention above the rest... Andrea Wolf. She had four pieces being shown there... each one slightly different from the next. They all were small scale and composed of video projection onto flat rectangular surfaces. The videos from each were "unextraordinary" as if random uninteresting snippets were selected from your parents Super 8 footage of a trip they took 40 years earlier. But there was an undeniable charm to these four pieces. They were nostalgic, curious, and entertaining. Not to mention that each was created with great care and craftsmanship... especially the tiny video projectors that jutted out from the wall which oddly added to the interest of the work as if they were intended to be sculptural components.
I found Andrea Wolf's website and thought that I might share the link with all of you http://memoryframes.org/andreawolf/. Take your time exploring her wide range of work. The first three images below were taken at Wave Hill, while the rest of the images were selected off of her website.
According to the City of Night website... CITY of NIGHT is an annual, multi-disciplinary event, this year held on August 17th. Key themes include art, history, culture and sustainability. The "Silo City" complex of grain elevators plays host on the Buffalo River, which sets the historical tone and informs the art installations, musical performances, fine art fair, and site tours. City of Night represents Buffalo's incredibly diverse cultural scene with a wide variety of music, dance, sound installation, fashion, and a community art project for all to engage in. We strive to become an ever more eco-conscious event, with local environmental non-profits represented, we encourage recycling and composting, and solar-powered energy! Food truck delights, beverages and CITY of NIGHT-themed merchandise will be available for purchase. The event is free to attend and open to people of all ages and backgrounds. Proceeds benefit the coordinating organization, the Emerging Leaders in the Arts Buffalo (ELAB), a chapter of Americans for the Arts
