Showing at - I AM MAGICK - 216 Grant Street

Featuring - Know Your Garden - Installation by Claudia Carballada Music by Sarah Maybee

Claudia Carballada is a visual artist with a studio practice rooted in drawing and painting, extending to installation and performance. She is Creative Director for The Discovery Project, an ensemble based in Los Angeles which produces multi-media installations for performances. Together with this team, she creates concepts, maintains role of scenographer and engages in performance with live painting and drawing. Carballada attended Claremont Graduate University, earning a MFA in 2011. She has worked with The Albright-Knox Public Art Initiative installing murals in the city of Buffalo and is an adjunct art professor.

Know Your Garden’ is inspired by The Hopi Prophecy of June, 2000. Written twenty years ago, the message remains a relevant reflection of navigating our personal lives, especially during the times we are collectively experiencing today.

The following is an excerpt from the Hopi Prophecy of June, 2000 from the Elders of the Hopi Nation

You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour. And there are things to be considered...

Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for your leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time!”

To fully experience this installation:

1. Download the AReveryware app on your smart phone or tablet.
2. Follow the ‘tap here’ prompts.
3. Listen to improvisational music, (inspired by the paintings in the windows) created by Sarah Maybee.

Showing at Record Theatre - 1800 Main Street

Featuring – Video and Painting, “I Am a Black Man”

"I moved from Haiti to Long Island as a teen in ‘87. It was a brave new world in so many ways. My dream was to be an artist. I attended Buffalo State College for Fine arts and afterwards became an American citizen, adopting this city as my town and home base. I’m married with 2 kids and am still working on my dream to be a full fledged artist, celebrating my Haitian heritage through my art."

 About the work in the show:

"I hope you can see me as a person, the same way you’ll notice a cat is gray yet all you see is a cat. A self-portrait is a way for the artist to look at themself and be comfortable with who is staring back. My hope is that as you look at me - painting myself - you’ll feel my insecurities, my hopes, and my humanity. Basically, I’m you - just a little darker or lighter."

Showing at the Homik Building - 479 Amherst Street

Featuring black-and-white photographs

Julian, originally from New Mexico, is a photographer based out of Buffalo, NY.  Julian earned a degree from the University at Buffalo in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography.   Julian's work is a variety of work using both digital and analog cameras as well as Inkjet, Silver and historical processes (Palladium, Gum Brichromate, Cyanotype).  The majority of Julian's work is focused on landscapes. However, his personal work is deeply rooted in his personal experiences with war, and trauma.

About the work in the show:

From birth we view the world from our own lens. We relate to the world around us from our own perspective.  There comes a point in most people’s lives where that perspective is challenged.  Whether we understand it or not there comes a time when you begin to see things from a different point of view. “Window shopping” inspired me to create this series which addresses the idea of perspective. What do you think about perspective? Is perspective the why you physically interpret the world around you? Is it your ability to feel empathy? Is it how you see yourself or others?  When you look in the mirror what do you see? Is it the same thing that other people see?  As you look at these photographs think about what you see.  Think about what the person next to you sees. Do you see Fruit? Art? Pain? Beauty? Paper with Ink? Is it black ink or white ink?  Is it real for fake? Challenge yourself to explore your own perspective. Look, listen, feel….. Close your eyes, breathe and look again. 

Showing at Record Theatre - 1800 Main

Featuring The In-Betweens, a project about the spaces between buildings

Jim Cielencki is a photographer, videographer, and motion graphics artist . Drawing from experience as a former professional bike rider, runner, and urban planner, he looks to understand the smaller details that shaped the urban environment and its people from its origin through the present day.  

The project is inspired by Jan Gehl’s Life Between Buildings and William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. The project looks at the spaces next to, around, and between buildings. Often discarded, underutilized, or out of view, these spaces represent boundaries between the prized buildings they surround. Examining spaces that would normally be empty, the photographs offer examples of how creativity and necessity have come together to fill them. These filled spaces blur boundaries and challenge our expectations of the urban environment. Then the question must be asked, why? What was happening that this space needed to be used? Can you imagine what a community looked like when the spaces in-between had to be used? A nod to how cultural and economic needs shaped our worlds, the In-Betweens shows how this shaping can last well beyond cultural and economic needs. 

Showing at Lindsay DeDario Photography - 292 West Utica Street

Featuring Photographs documenting Black Lives Matter events in Buffalo 

Lindsay is a photographer and photojournalist who believes storytelling is important business.  Lindsay’s work strives to visually explore stories of human connection and thoughtfully preserve the legacies of those relationships.  Lindsay also climbs mountains, loves the accordion and is afraid of gum.

About the project:

Photography has served as a great communicator throughout history.  Pictures speak a universal language that can teach big ideas to its viewers in ways words often can’t.  They can serve as living, breathing illustrations of the human experience.   Pictures can shape history as they tell important, unforgettable stories and humanize serious and complicated issues.

As history has unfolded in recent months, pictures and videos have once again served as an incredibly important tool in educating us and forcing change.  The pictures displayed here show a sample of what I documented during this time, as a photojournalist.  These images were photographed during Buffalo’s Black Lives Matter events which brought together thousands of citizens for a common cause, protecting and elevating our BIPOC citizens here in the city of good neighbors.  These photos serve to put human faces to current events and to encourage others to no longer be idle in the face of abuse. 

Lindsay is a photographer and photojournalist who believes storytelling is important business.  Lindsay’s work strives to visually explore stories of human connection and thoughtfully preserve the legacies of those relationships.  Lindsay also climbs mountains, loves the accordion and is afraid of gum.

Showing at Acme Cabinet Company - 1848 Clinton Street

Featuring Conversations With the Sun

Cassie has spent nearly 10 years exploring her artistic craft including time spent in materials exploration at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Beyond the visual arts, Cassie works in costume departments for film and theatre, her focus remains on exploring human experience through the manipulation of different materials.

Conversations With the SunIs a series I’ve been sketching out in our time at home during covid, it’s based in longing for nostalgia, searching for a constant and finding peace in what you already know.

Showing at Essex Pub - 530 Rhode Island Street

Featuring photography highlighting the emptiness and confusion—but also the resilience of Buffalo and her residents—of everyday life during recent events.

Chef, writer, photographer—and lifelong Buffalonian. His work has been in shows and publications locally and nationally. Joe lives car-free, carries a camera and journal with him always, and documents life as it happens. He has a self-published book aptly titled, The View From My Handlebars, and another to be published next month, Empty City Empty Streets, focusing on the empty streets of Buffalo during the initial stages of pandemic shutdown.

Chris Hawley showing at Eugene V. Debs Hall - 483 Peckham Street

Featuring: New neighborhood, a photograph installation

Chris is an urbanist, preservationist, and photographer.  He is undertaking a project to rehabilitate 483 Peckham Street, a historic tavern on Buffalo's East Side that will soon reopen as Eugene V. Debs Hall.

Showing at Record Theatre - 1800 Main Street

Featuring - Eco-Pause - an image projection and sound collaboration with Molly Jarboe

Jonathan Hughes is a jazz bass player and composer in Buffalo. His album “Evenfall” won best album in the 2019 Jazz Buffalo poll. "His non-jazz compositions mix orchestral and electronic sounds and can be heard in the scope for the Independent Spirit Award-winning film “August Evening”, as well as numerous documentaries.

Showing at Record Theatre - 1800 Main Street

Featuring - Eco-Pause - an image projection and sound collaboration with Jonathan Hughes

Molly Jarboe is a founding member of Buffalo Obscura and co-organizer of the group’s one-night-only art events.  Originally from Omaha, NE she received a Bachelor of Fine Art from The Kansas City Art Institute and a Master of Fine Art from the University at Buffalo.  Through her photography and writing she explores the fault lines that emerge when memory and landscape collide.

More about Eco-Pause When the COVID 19 quarantine began in New York in March, I was preparing to move to my new home which is a short walk from the site of the Installation.  The chaos of the move, working from home, and feeling overwhelmed by news cycles caused me to turn to my photographic practice for focus.  I found myself seeking solace in nature parks and preserves in and around Buffalo. The time I’ve spent over the last few months of transition has been characterized by a longing for more time in these settings. The events in cities all over the world following the May 25^th murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer punctuated this feeling. This project explores the tension felt when the need for a time and place to pause eludes us.

Jonathan Hughes contributed the audio accompaniment to the projections that can be heard by pedestrians on the street, alongside the noise and everyday clamor of Main Street.  The music is broken into three main sections to follow the visual groupings of the photos. Although it evolves over time, it is meant to complement the imagery and environmental sounds, rather than be a central focus.

As the piece repeats on a loop throughout the day, the viewing and listening experience changes significantly due to the effects of the surrounding environment.  At times reflections of traffic and the viewer’s own image are most prominent as one looks through the window.  At night the experience is much different.  We invite you to listen and reflect.

Showing at Acme Cabinet Company - 1848 Clinton Street

Featuring – Photographs Taken on Clinton Street and Baily Avenue

Christina Laing is from Buffalo, New York and graduated from Buffalo State College in 2011 with a BFA in photography and art history.  She currently lives and Buffalo, NY a freelance artist and owner of The Buffalo Collective, a graphic design and branding company.

Showing at I AM MAGIK - 216 Grant Street

Featuring - Know Your Garden - Installation by Claudia Carballada Music by Sarah Maybee

Sarah has been creating performance experiences since she was a small child. Many years of practice and performing resulted in study at music school for piano and conducting. After many years of experience in performing with classical musicians in Buffalo there grew a desire to bring all her classical training to full creative expression in finding a personal voice in making her own music. 

Sarah takes inspiration from her environment and weaves it into her music.

Know Your Garden is inspired by The Hopi Prophecy of June, 2000. Written twenty years ago, the message remains a relevant reflection of navigating our personal lives, especially during the times we are collectively experiencing today.

The following is an excerpt from the Hopi Prophecy of June, 2000 from the Elders of the Hopi Nation

You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour. And there are things to be considered...

Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for your leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time!”

To fully experience this installation:

1. Download the AReveryware app on your smart phone or tablet.
2. Follow the ‘tap here’ prompts.
3. Listen to improvisational music, (inspired by the paintings in the windows) created by Sarah Maybee.

Showing at the Spolka Building - 436 Amherst Street

Featuring photographs of convenient stores & bodegas shot during the pandemic

Matt is a medium and large format film photographer.  Currently working on 3 long running projects, "Night Shift", "Out Fishin", and "Toxic WNY". 

About the work in the show:

More than 1/3 of American brick and mortar retail are Convenient Stores, bodegas, corner markets, and mini marts.  With at least 1 for every 2,500 people, they directly serve the needs of the communities that they are located and are often the only source of food and provisions for people with limited transportation.  Many are hand painted and have awful kerning but are vital to the vibrancy of the neighborhoods and cultures they serve.

Contact the artist for information about purchasing a print

100% of all sales will go to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Showing at the Homik Building - 479 Amherst Street

Featuring Photographs – "Looking for Beauty During Challenging Times"

Graphic Design. Advertising. Exhibit Design. Environmental Branding. Broadcast. Teaching. Photography. Currently Creative Director at the Telesco Creative Group, in downtown Buffalo, Greg has been collecting and calling upon these experiences for over 30 years at design firms and advertising agencies of all sizes. A common thread connecting it all together has been photography. From wandering through cathedrals in France as a nine-year-old, to photographing products and environments for a wide array of agency clients, to “seeing outings” when he has time to just walk around a city with camera in hand, Greg has been developing his own unique view of things.

About his work in the show:

When the current pandemic first hit, like many others, I retreated to my home and stayed there. I didn’t shoot anything for the longest time. Then the demonstrations made their way to my neighborhood, in the Elmwood Village. In the aftermath, hearing stories of vandalism and damaged storefronts, my curiosity brought me and my camera out of hiding. but I wasn’t looking for the ‘sensational shots’ of damage and chaos. They were already a dime a dozen on social media. 

I was looking for beauty. I always am. For me, photography is as much about looking and seeing, maybe more so, than clicking the shutter.  What details, happy design accidents, shadows, colors and patterns are there, just waiting to be seen? Even in a battered state, the buildings I was looking at had genuine beauty, how would it present itself to me?

Soon after being invited by the Buffalo Obscura team, to participate in this exhibition, I retrained my camera on Black Rock, knowing I'd be displaying these images on Amherst Street. So I walked around, on a few different days. And I looked, and I saw. Then I clicked the shutter.

The beauty is there. It’s always easier to see it you are looking for it.

My images are captured on a Nikon DSLR, minimally processed in Photoshop, to get the match image as I saw it, and the printed on an Epson printer, using archival inks and paper.

Showing at the Spolka Building - 436 Amherst Street

Featuring – Photographs of Buffalo neighborhoods captured during the time of the pandemic. 

Born and raised in Buffalo, Matthew received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University at Buffalo with a concentration in photography and graphic design. The City of Buffalo along with its surroundings have been the focus and inspiration for much of his work. His admiration for the city and region, both past and present, can be seen through his photographs. When capturing the urban landscape, Matt tries to objectively show how it exists at the moment often focusing on overlooked or mundane locations.

Showing at Inspiration Point - 483 Elmwood Avenue

Featuring photographic portraits of healing artists (herbalists, doulas, reiki practitioners, etc) who live and work in the Buffalo area.

Kate Stapleton Parzych draws with light using digital, silver, and non-silver alternative techniques to record the spaces between moments that will be recalled later as memory. She prefers to turn her camera towards water and trees for their wisdom and to all beings close to her heart.

Showing at the Spolka Building - 436 Amherst Street

Featuring "Pandemic Painting, Google Earth" 

Currently, we are in a social climate that is unlike anything humans have ever experienced. Due to the alignment of our global - technological advancements and the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our social lives have become, primarily, virtual. As a Painter who often works from life, in public, and in close contact with people; my practice has changed. 

This group of small paintings represent sites of personal significance to me in the Black Rock and River Side neighborhoods.  They were created remotely from my residence in Boston, MA using Google Street View Map as reference.  Google Street View images are not always up-to-date and instead stand as an archive of many different moments in the past.  I was physically distanced from the neighborhoods these paintings represent, requiring me to rely on my past experiences in these places to fully realize the final pieces. It is my intention to bring up a conversation, through comparison, about what is lost, hidden, showcased, accurate, or inaccurate in the present-day representation of a neighborhoods through the biases of Google’s virtual representation

Showing at Buffalo Paint and Wallpaper -  2917 Bailey Avenue

Featuring SHUTTERED - Photographs of shuttered businesses in the Bailey-Kensington Neighborhoods of Buffalo.

Dennis Reed Jr is a photographer, musician, painter and reformed English major from North Tonawanda, N.Y.

"The large windows of Bailey-Kensington's shops and corner stores were made to be gazed into: to sell a dream of prosperity and self-determination. For now, for too many, that dream sleeps. This photo essay presents shuttered display windows of the area, inviting reflection on their new messages and implications for all who continue to dream in their midst."

Showing at Intersection Cafe - 100 Elmwood Avenue

Featuring - Photographs of Buffalo's LGBTQ community's response and support of the Black Lives Matter protests and recent calls to action.

Showing at Fawn and Fox - 1363 Delaware Avenue

Featuring altered photographs exploring the idea creating a void as a way to make room for new growth. 

CJ is a native of Buffalo, NY.  He attended college locally at Daemen College from 2008-2012. After college he dove headfirst into the Buffalo art scene by having a studio above 464 Gallery. Since then, SJ has had one solo show in 2013 and he has participated in many group exhibitions.  Working intuitively he tries to capture a certain type of mood in his practice. CJ says of his work, “It is inspired by post industrial bleakness, abandoned Brutalist Soviet bus stations, ingrained paranoia, and Eastern European winters.”

About the work in the show:

A metaphorical take on Buffalo During the Pandemic.  The project draws on ideas of TZIMTZUM which is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah describing "the moment when the creative energy of the universe that existed everywhere as everything receded into itself to become nothing and therefore allowing room for creation." 

Showing at Record Theatre - 1800 Main Street

Featuring sculptural tributes to lost homes in Buffalo

A native of Buffalo, Kurt Treeby first studied art at the College of Art and Design at Alfred University.  While at Alfred he studied painting and drawing and also received a minor in art history. After receiving his MFA from Syracuse University, Treeby developed a conceptual based approach to art making that continues to develop as he works with a wide range of fiber and textile processes. His work comments on the production and reception of art, as well as the role art plays in our collective memories. He focuses on iconic imagery and the connection between so-called “high” and “low” art forms.

Treeby has exhibited his work on a national and international level. He also teaches studio art and art appreciation at Erie Community College and SUNY Brockport. He lives and works in Buffalo.

About the work in the show:

Google first surveyed Buffalo in 2007. Vans fitted with rooftop cameras scanned the streets, creating a snapshot of the city. These images were posted to the Google Maps website and visible through the “street view” feature. The photos have been updated several times since then, and every time the vans return to re-shoot the city things have changed. Houses have been restored or torn down, and new buildings have been constructed.

When one visits the street view on Google Maps, they are automatically shown the most recent photographic survey, but it’s possible for a user to “back date” the photos and look at the images from previous Google visits. In this way, it’s possible to instantaneously view over a decade of change in Buffalo’s neighborhoods. What’s perhaps most striking when viewing the city this way is how much of the city’s housing stock has been torn down in that short amount of time. This project aims to pay tribute to those lost homes and create a portrait of a city in flux.

Each sculpture in this series is a reproduction of a house that has been lost since 2007. By using the medium of plastic canvas, I am able to capture some of the details of the individual houses, but something gets lost in translation. The old, poor resolution photos visible on Google Maps leads to a simplified version of a house. Displayed in a group, the houses speak to our collective memory and a remembrance of a city in flux.

Showing at Moriarty Meats - 1650 Elmwood Avenue

Different Ships Same Storm | Youth Voices from the Pandemic

The project features pictures and poems by Elle Bader-Gregory, Eden Lowinger, Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña, Bushraa Choudhury, Theo Bellavia-Frank, Zanaya Hussain, and Aleigha Floyd. The youth, all part of Just Buffalo Writing Center, participated in a global photography project on the pandemic this spring. 

Bushraa Choudhury recently attended Suny Erie community College. She is an artist and a writer at the Just Buffalo Literary Center.  She loves to combine her poetry and artwork. 

Showing at Moriarty Meats - 1650 Elmwood Avenue

Different Ships Same Storm | Youth Voices from the Pandemic

The project features pictures and poems by Elle Bader-Gregory, Eden Lowinger, Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña, Bushraa Choudhury, Theo Bellavia-Frank, Zanaya Hussain, and Aleigha Floyd. The youth, all part of Just Buffalo Writing Center, participated in a global photography project on the pandemic this spring. 

Theo Bellavia-Frank is a 10th grader at Amherst High School. He is a poetry teacher at Temple Beth Zion and a Youth Ambassador with the Just Buffalo Writing Center. He has a passion for poetry, theatre, and language. 

Showing at Moriarty Meats - 1650 Elmwood Avenue

Different Ships Same Storm | Youth Voices from the Pandemic

The project features pictures and poems by Elle Bader-Gregory, Eden Lowinger, Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña, Bushraa Choudhury, Theo Bellavia-Frank, Zanaya Hussain, and Aleigha Floyd. The youth, all part of Just Buffalo Writing Center, participated in a global photography project on the pandemic this spring. 

Allei Floyd - “My name is Aleigha Floyd aka Allei, I go to Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts for Media Communications. I will be 17 August 18th; I am a senior, I write songs and poetry and have been since I was 8.”

Showing at Moriarty Meats - 1650 Elmwood Avenue

Different Ships Same Storm | Youth Voices from the Pandemic

The project features pictures and poems by Elle Bader-Gregory, Eden Lowinger, Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña, Bushraa Choudhury, Theo Bellavia-Frank, Zanaya Hussain, and Aleigha Floyd. The youth, all part of Just Buffalo Writing Center, participated in a global photography project on the pandemic this spring. 

Eden Lowinger is a young creative whose work has been featured in Peach Mag and Wordplay. A rising sophomore at Binghamton University, she hopes to continue writing as she pursues a degree in psychology.

Showing at Moriarty Meats - 1650 Elmwood Avenue

Different Ships Same Storm | Youth Voices from the Pandemic

The project features pictures and poems by Elle Bader-Gregory, Eden Lowinger, Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña, Bushraa Choudhury, Theo Bellavia-Frank, Zanaya Hussain, and Aleigha Floyd. The youth, all part of Just Buffalo Writing Center, participated in a global photography project on the pandemic this spring. 

Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña - "I am 50% poet, 25% a hopeless romantic, 15% crazy and 10% always covered in paint. My goal is to move you, feel you through my words and let you know there is always a light at the end of the tunnel." - Sol Del Rosario Estrada Peña