Past Exhibitions

Looking Up; Artists from the Hunt Gallery Residency Program

February 23 – March 30, 2024

Opening Reception, Friday, February 23, 2024, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Looking Up is an exhibition of four artists who were a part of the Hunt Gallery Residency program. The C. Stuart and Jane H. Hunt Art Gallery provides emerging WNY artists rent-free studio space for four to five months and encourages the selected artists to collaborate and network with one another. This residency allows emerging artists to enter a collaborative environment in partnership with the Buffalo Society of Artists (BSA) where they will have the opportunity to collaborate and exhibit work throughout the duration of their occupancy. Buffalo Arts Studio Curator Shirley Verrico and Hunt Gallery Manager Christina Buscarino will co-curate a collection of work by former Hunt Gallery Artists-in-Residence Kevin Burzynski, DJ Carr, Laura Valkwitch and Nicholas Wheeler.

Phyllis Thompson, Evolving Memories

January 26 – March 1, 2024

Opening Reception, Friday, January 26, 2024, 5:00—8:00 pm

Artist Talk & Closing Reception, Saturday, March 2, 2024, 1:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Phyllis Thompson’s new exhibition, Evolving Memories is a survey of work from the artist’s 50-year career as an artist and educator. Evolving Memories traces four aesthetic and conceptual threads rooted in the 1970s or 1980s and that run through much of Thompson’s work. The themes embedded in nearly five decades of work come from Thompson’s childhood memories, experiences with family and friends, and imagined histories with ancestors the artist has only met through photographs. Thompson’s memories are supported by artifacts she has collected, spaces she has lived in, and places she has visited.

Annual Studio Artist Show and Sale

November 18 – December 23, 2023

Artist Reception, Saturday, December 2, 2023, 5:00 — 9:00 pm

The Annual Studio Artist Show and Sale showcases the work of Buffalo Arts Studio’s 30 Studio Artists who actively maintain working studios on-site, many of which are open to the public during regular gallery hours. Each studio is unique and offers visitors a glimpse into the creative process central to making engaging artwork. The Annual Studio Artist Show and Sale features over 100 pieces of original artwork exhibited in the galleries and includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, and more. Many of the studios will also have work on display and nearly all of it can all be purchased right off the wall and taken home with our guests. Original artwork makes the perfect gift! Gift certificates for classes and artwork are also available in the gift shop.

Muhammad Zaman, Morphing Essence

October 6 – November 11, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, October 27, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Buffalo Arts Studio presents Morphing Essence, an exhibition of new work by urban artist Muhammad Z. Zaman. Zaman has combined gestural brush strokes and calligraphic markings with the energy of street art to create this dynamic set of smaller works. Morphing Essence is a series of calligraffiti paintings on wood created with iridescent new-generation paints. Zaman’s brand of calligraffiti is one of the most contemporary interpretations of Hurufiyya art, an aesthetic movement that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century amongst Muslim artists, who used their understanding of traditional Islamic calligraphy within the precepts of modern art. When iridescent colors are used on a flat surface, the microparticles contained in the color create a morphing effect from refractive angles of light that is very subtle when the viewer is still. The color shift is far more dramatic when one moves through the gallery and views the work from different angles. The effect is achieved by interfering with the reflection and refraction of light from the painted object’s surface. 

Carl Lee, Unity Island

September 22 – November 3, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, September 22, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Buffalo Arts Studio presents Carl Lee’s Unity Island, a film installation about a ¼ square mile piece of land in Buffalo, NY. Lee’s practice examines ideas of perception, memory, and the spatialization of time using simple formal means. Shot on 16mm film, Unity Island is a personal look at different aspects of the island that reveal the intersecting vectors at this site. The project is primarily a visual exploration consisting of multiple projections, audio interviews, and ambient sounds that hint at other histories and experiences. 

Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio, Creativity in the Time of Covid-19

August 25 – September 30, 2023

Opening Reception: Friday, August 25, 2023, 5:00–8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

In partnership with Michigan State University, Amatryx received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to document, exhibit, and highlight experiences of creativity during the pandemic, with particular attention to those most impacted by systemic discrimination. As the authors of the grant describe: “This project explores how individuals—particularly those hardest hit by the pandemic—are using creative outlets to cope with COVID-19 and challenge systemic discrimination to imagine a more just future. COVID-19 has called attention to the vast disparities in our society today, specifically how disproportionately minority populations are affected by this pandemic. The power of Black Lives Matter, the outrage over separation of immigrant and refugee families, and the harsh toll taken on racial and economic minorities, LGBTQ+, and disability communities all illustrate the importance of listening to the people whose lives have been most impacted; their creative practices illuminate new paths toward social justice. What has yet to be explored is how diverse individuals are using creative practices that resist injustice, foster healing, and push back against the systemic inequities of COVID-19.”

Bob Fleming, Kilter

July 28 – September 27, 2023

Artist Talk, Wednesday, September 13, 2023, 6:00 pm

Opening Reception, Friday, July 28, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Buffalo Arts Studio presents Kilter, an exhibition of large scale representational and figurative paintings by local Buffalo artist Bob Fleming. Fleming is a visual artist whose practice includes painting, printmaking and other media, including film. He is a co-founder of Mirabo Press, a printmaking studio and edition facility in Buffalo, New York. Fleming’s work is a reaction to the diminishment of our shared humanity.  The images come from observing and absorbing material elements in both his small, personal universe and the wider world, including, consciously or not, the omnipresent media.

Erin Kearney, Living In and With

July 28 – September 1, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, July 28, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Buffalo Arts Studio presents an exhibition of new work by Buffalo artist Erin Kearney. Living In and With utilizes sculptural installation, video projection, and performance through a variety of fiber-based mediums. Her research roots itself inside the architecture of her childhood home. Pulling from personal narrative, Kearney examines the daily happenings that expose the tensions and fleshy underbelly of domestic spaces. The resulting objects are both familiar and disarming.

This program is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Services Inc.

Bud Jacobs, Ink Works on Paper

July 14, 2023

Reception, Friday, July 14, 2023, 5:00—7:00 pm

In memory of WNY artist/designer Bud Jacobs who recently passed away. Bud taught at Niagara County Community College and his own work was informed by his background in graphic design as he incorporated drawing, calligraphy and painting.

Galen Cheney, Breathing Underwater

June 23 – July 28, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, June 23, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Buffalo Arts Studio presents Breathing Underwater, an exhibition of new work by Massachusetts artist Galen Cheney. Cheney is completing the artwork during a two-week residency at David Fernan’s 321 Residence space in Buffalo. Cheney’s dynamic, abstract work addresses ideas of expansion and contraction, freedom and constraint, interiority and exteriority, and what is hidden and what is exposed. The works in Breathing Underwater are a blend of collage, painting, and weaving, reflecting today’s fragmented digital world while also nodding toward traditions of weaving and the handmade.

Jump Start Student Biennial Exhibition, Finding Ourselves

May 26 – June 30, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, May 26, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Every two years, the Buffalo Arts Studio community comes together to celebrate the amazing students in our Jump Start program. This year’s Biennial Student Exhibition is titled, Finding Ourselves. Finding Ourselves will include nearly 200 artworks by current Jump Start students as well as college students and graduates who participate in our Jump Start Extension program. The title of the show was chosen by the students and speaks to the journey they have been on both personally and with their art. Work in a variety of media will be on display including drawing, painting, video, ceramics, and multimedia.

Jump Start works with middle and high school students who show a strong ability and deep interest in the visual arts and guides them along their college and career path. Jump Start is an essential part of Buffalo Arts Studio’s larger mission of cultural access, providing high-quality art instruction, professional development, portfolio preparation, exhibiting experience, and individual mentorship to students across Western New York, regardless of the ability to pay.

Aitina Fareed-Cooke, Tales from the Porch Extensions: Featuring Fokus’d Kreatives

April 28 – June 2, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, April 28, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Tales from the Porch is an ongoing multimedia project that amplifies stories and the voices of members of the community including but not limited to minority-owned businesses, organizations, and emerging artists. In its second iteration, the project featured seven community leaders impacting the Buffalo, NY community despite the pandemic and the May 14 tragedy.

Over the course of 6 months, Aitina has guided a small cohort of emerging artists into the process of responding to the Tales from the Porch project and this exhibit will feature their artistic approach to the idea of the “Porch”.

This project was made possible, in part, by Creatives Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Program, Buffalo Arts Studio, Get Fokus’d Productions, and the generous donors of A.I. The Anomaly’s Patreon members.

Sa’dia Rehman, The Falls

March 24 – May 4, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, March 24, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Brooklyn artist Sa’dia Rehman will be in residency in March 2023 constructing a site-specific exhibition that will be on display through May 4, 2023. Rehman pulls apart and puts together images from family photographs, historical records, and mass media to explore how contemporary and historical visual culture communicate, consolidate, and contest ideas about race, power, and gender.

Part of the Displacement: Reclaiming Place, Space, and Memory Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Part of Buffalo Arts Studio’s Artist-in-Residence program.

George Hughes, Identity, Power, and Reconciliation

January 27 – March 1, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, January 27, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Geoge Afedzi Hughes’s paintings explore shared narratives that cut across racial differences and highlight the connection of contemporary global conflicts to colonial history. Using humor and metaphor, Identity, Power, and Reconciliation juxtaposes personal narratives, historical tropes, and pop culture references in ways that address the complex and nuanced issue of racial reconciliation.

Part of the Displacement: Reclaiming Place, Space, and Memory Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Awarded Best Exhibit, Small Gallery in Buffalo Spree’s Best of WNY 2023.

Jodi Lynn Maracle, Where the Rust Meets the Land

January 27 – March 1, 2023

Opening Reception, Friday, January 27, 2023, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Jodi Lynn Maracle is a Kanien’keha:ka mother, artist, craftswoman, and scholar-activist based in Buffalo, NY. Maracle blends traditional Haudenosaunee skills, symbols, forms and language with modern processes to articulate historical and contemporary relationships to place, land, and community.

Part of the Displacement: Reclaiming Place, Space, and Memory Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Annual Studio Artist Show and Sale

November 22 – December 22, 2022

Celebration and Extended Hours: Saturday, December 3, 2022, 5:00 – 9:00 pm

The Annual Studio Artist Show and Sale showcases the work of Buffalo Arts Studio’s 30 Studio Artists who actively maintain working studios on-site, many of which are open to the public during regular gallery hours. Each studio is unique and offers visitors a glimpse into the creative process central to making engaging artwork. The Annual Studio Artist Show and Sale features over 100 pieces of original artwork exhibited in the galleries and includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, and more. Many of the studios will also have work on display and nearly all of it can all be purchased right off the wall and taken home with our guests. Original artwork makes the perfect gift! Gift certificates for classes and artwork are also available in the gift shop.

Matt Kenyon and Jason J. Ferguson, Homing

September 23 – November 4, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, September 23, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Homing includes a variety of artworks that encourage gallery visitors to reconsider the notion of domesticity through a combination of ideas, metaphors, and objects that take as a starting point aspects and images of the home. In the nearly 10 years that Kenyon and Ferguson have worked together around this theme, the world has undergone a social and political unraveling forcing many to turn inward to reflect and re-evaluate what is truly meaningful in their lives. Homing addresses the heightened intimacy of home while challenging the invisible systems that govern day-to-day existence.

Part of the Displacement: Reclaiming Place, Space, and Memory Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mizin Shin, World Network Models

September 23 – November 4, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, September 23, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Los Artistas del Barrio Buffalo, De aquí, De allá   

August 9 – August 26, 2022

Closing Reception, Friday, August 26, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Los Artistas Del Barrio Buffalo exhibits, promotes, and supports Latino/a/x artists of all genres located in and connected to Buffalo and Western New York. Los Artistas Del Barrio Buffalo’s mission is to function as an arts collective that highlights the talents and creativity of Latino/a/x artists of every discipline in our community. Featuring the work of Aileen Gonzalez Marti, Alexsandra López, Arayoán Tylec, Arnaldo Alvarado, Joseph de James Maldonado, Julio Montalvo Valentin, Maria Charito Roasario Seijo-Cala, Melinda Capeles, Michele Agosto, Vinny Alejandro, and William Rodriguez.

Photo by Michele Agosto.

Kyle Butler, Big Trash Day

July 22 – September 3, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, July 22, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Kyle Butler shifts his process and materials from one series to the next, moving between image-based painting and process–based installation work. In much of the work, the built environment draws attention to the interplay of competing and cooperating systems as well as the limitations of those systems. For a brief time, a neighborhood lays out a series of pragmatic sculptures by the roadside to be picked up or picked through. The incidental aesthetic they form relates to another such aesthetic that has been an ongoing influence in Butler’s work: the happenstance assembly of elements often apparent on dead–end streets. Butler appreciates the sum total of the worn signage, warped fences, scattered debris, overgrowth, roads that dissipate into grass, and the variety of stones, posts, and other barriers to passage. Butler regards these environments as a form of municipal expression, a sour visual sentiment brought into being by the unwitting collaboration between residents, governing powers, and infrastructure. While the accidental aesthetics may be amusing, they are also an unflattering indicator of a built environment that is often oppressive and a governing system that disregards the well–being of select groups for the sake of capital.

Jim Morris, On the Nature of Things

June 24 – September 3, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, June 24, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Jim Morris’s work explores how dynamic real-world events can be visualized to capture states of volatility, turbulence, and transformation. The title of the exhibition, On the Nature of Things, comes from a poem by Lucretius, a first-century Roman philosopher. Throughout the poem, Lucretius unfolds a narrative that testifies to humankind’s curiosity and search for knowledge and understanding of the world. According to Morris, Lucretius believed the world can be analyzed and best understood through inquiry and observation. The poet asserts there is no need to believe in magic, gods, demons, or participate in superstition — we are just a whole bunch of atoms combining and recombining in an infinite space.

Tommy Nguyen, new gods, old America

April 22—May 28, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, April 22, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Closing Reception, Friday, May 27, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Tommy Nguyen (Brooklyn, NY) will present new gods, old America, a full gallery installation that presents a new pantheon of gods that reflect all genders, ethnicities, rights, and powers made from reflective mylar. The gods float above visitors’ heads within the gallery filled with meditative, ambient sound to encourage mindfulness, prayer, meditation, introspection, and even play.

Part of Navigating Identity Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Awarded Best Exhibit at a Small Gallery in Buffalo Spree’s Best of WNY 2022.

Ashley Mercurio, Perfekt

May 5 – May 18, 2022

Opening Reception, Thursday, May 5, 2022, 5:00—7:00 pm

Ashley Mercurio’s work forefronts the haphazard process, where image contours are loosely structured and then fleshed out with a variety of collage, paint, and assemblage approaches. For Perfekt, Mercurio began with an origin work, a large-scale mixed-media work structured largely by a pattern of irregular fabric patches. From this work, she subdivided it into eight sections, traced the contours of each, and then made a series of eight companion works based on the contours of the original work. Additionally, she extended the collage and paint process to a set of irregularly shaped sculptures. Perfekt is a tongue-in-cheek reflection of an unwieldy and improvisatory process.

Maria Falanga, Attraverso il tempo

May 5 – May 18, 2022

Opening Reception, Thursday, May 5, 2022, 5:00—7:00 pm

Maria Falanga has developed a signature portraiture stylization involving hard-edged and intense color shapes with an irregular geometry and unpredictable color substitutions. The work in Attraverso il tempo involves a series of portrayals of three generations of Falanga’s family. The images shift from achromatic to full-color in line with their chronology. Additionally, Falanga makes allusions to her relatives’ survival of WWII through sculptural enlargements of candy, like that which was tossed to civilians during liberation festivities at the end of the war in Italy.

Crystal Z Campbell, VIEWFINDER

April 22—May 14, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, April 22, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Screening, Crystal Z Campbell and Allan Jamieson, Tuesday, May 3, 2022, 7:00—8:30 pm

Journeys End Refugee Services Theater, Tri-Main Center, Suite 530

Crystal Z Campbell’s multidisciplinary practice centers on public secrets, or information known by many, but that is undertold and underspoken. Campbell’s film, VIEWFINDER, was shot entirely in the resort town of Varberg, Sweden and features recent migrants to Sweden. This immersive film installation takes cues from Swedish folktales, gestures, and movements to explore belonging, allyship, and living monuments. If our bodies are archives, what is the currency of place, of movement, of memory?

Part of Navigating Identity Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In partnership with Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center.

CaldodeCultivo, Attica NOW

February 25 – April 8, 2022

Opening Reception, Friday, February 25, 2022, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Fridays at Tri-Main Center

Attica NOW is the culmination of CaldodeCultivo’s research of the 1971 Attica uprising and includes objects and images from recent political actions as well as time-based media projections based on evidence collected by NY State.

Part of Navigating Identity Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This exhibition was made possible, in part, by the generous support of the University at Buffalo Department of Art.