STILL WAITING FOR THE WRECKING BALL

1681 Fillmore Avenue has been waiting for years. It’s been on the official top ten list to be demolished since at least May, 2012. Meanwhile, it’s wide open and dangerous, filled with tires, toys, wooden pallets and broken furniture. Filthy vinyl hangs from the ceiling like depressed flags. Evidence of gang activity shows in the graffiti throughout. This place, once a carpet store, has none of the structural beauty of many of Buffalo’s other abandoned places. It sits in a residential neighborhood, open and unprotected, just begging for a kid to fall down a broken staircase. Right across the street is a firehouse.  Fire may claim this building long before the city ever gets around to demolishing it. When it finally goes down, no preservationists will mourn.

I’ve actually found many toys in this nasty dumping ground. Here is a Batman figure in an assemblage I call ‘Batman vs. The Joker.’ The graffiti at the building’s entrance is duplicated in miniature on the side panel of the assemblage. All together, it is a landscape – a neighborhood in a box.

RESTORING SCAJAQUADA CREEK

Thanks to dedicated activists like Margaret Wooster, Doreen DeBoth, Mark Kubiniec and Max Willig, there is a real drive to restore the Scajaquada Creek to some of it’s former health and beauty. This once pristine stream, meandering through Cheektowaga and Buffalo, has been diverted, damned, fought over and polluted, but now is gaining respect. With Alberto Rey’s visually stunning and enlightening exhibit at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, it was the perfect time for the Grant/Amherst Business Association to organize a panel discussion about the Creek. We met at the Burchfield Penney on June 12 for “Scajaquada Creek Talks II: Art in the Service of Education and Community Development.” Both the panel and the audience told some amazing stories! There was a new appreciation for just how much damage has been done to this treasure of water.

The next community meeting will be on Wednesday, June 18 from 4 – 7 pm at Buffalo State College in the Bulger Communication Center at 1300 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. The focus will be on the NYS Department of Transportation and plans to convert the Scajaquada Expressway into a 30mph city street. Citizens agree, “the Expressway was a mistake made decades ago and now the time has come to fix it.”

GYRE, The Plastic Ocean

Now on view at the Anchorage Museum of Alaska is the compelling exhibit, ‘GYRE, the Plastic Ocean.’  ‘GYRE’ combines art and science to show viewers the full scope of this environmental crisis.

In the words of curator, Julie Decker, “With stunning visual impact and an astonishing array of ocean trash, internationally recognized artists create works of art for this exhibition from debris collected from beaches around the world. Plastic packaging in a throwaway culture finds its way into our ocean biosphere and then into the hands of artists. Our oceans and beaches are awash in plastic pollution propelled by gyre (rotating ocean currents). The exhibition explores the relationship between humans and the ocean in a contemporary culture of consumption. “

My three pieces in the show are illustrations of figures in the trash filled water. Other artists, such as Mark Dion, created beautifully organized display cases of found objects. So interesting to see how other artists approach the problem.

‘GYRE’, will remain on view until September 6. It will then tour with the Smithsonian. People seem to becoming aware of the problem. For more information trash in the oceans, check out www.oceanconservancy.org. Also, #marine  #debris  Thank you!

DOES ANYONE KNOW THESE MOTHERS?

Their photos were part of an entire album thrown out with the trash on Rodney Street. I added my photos of houses on the Eastside along with bits and pieces to mark locations. The frames are wood from Buffalo ReUse, sanded just enough to reveal more layers of time. Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 11. These mothers are long forgotten but their DNA, their children’s children could still be in Buffalo. Their life goes on. 

IN THE LAND OF HENRY DARGER - CHICAGO

Henry Darger reminds us that art is not about selling a painting to match the couch – it’s about keeping your spirit alive no matter how harsh your circumstances.  He’s probably the greatest self-taught  “outsider” artist and the little room he retreated to at the end of his workday is perfectly preserved in the Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago at 756 N. Milwaukee Avenue.

I am visiting Chicago this week so I have some time to catch up on Darger’s story. Born in 1892, his mother died when he was four and his crippled and impoverished father was taken to live in a Catholic Mission home. Soon after, Darger was institutionalized in the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children. "Little Henry's heart was not in the right place." He suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome, probable sexual abuse, forced labor and severe punishments. He finally escaped at the age of 16 and returned to Chicago. With the help of his godmother, he found menial employment in a Catholic hospital where he worked and supported himself until his retirement in 1963. Except for a brief stint in the U.S. Army during World War I, his life followed a rigid pattern: he attended daily Mass, frequently returning for as many as five services; he collected and saved a bewildering array of trash from the streets. His dress was shabby, although he attempted to keep his clothes clean and mended. He was largely solitary; his one close friend, William Schloeder, was like minded on the subject of protecting abused and neglected children, and the pair proposed founding a "Children's Protective Society", which would put such children up for adoption to loving families. Schloeder left Chicago sometime in the mid-1930s, but he and Darger stayed in touch through letters until Schloeder's death in 1959. In 1930, Darger settled into a second-floor room on Chicago's North Side, at 851 W. Webster Avenue. It was in this room, over the course of 43 years, that Darger produced his breathtaking, disturbing, monumental artwork and writings. His works including “In the Realms of the Unreal” detail a complex fantasy world filled with idyllic beauty and hellish violence.

 Darger’s secret life’s work was found by his landlord shortly after he moved out of his apartment and into a nursing home. Darger died in 1973 and is buried in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois, in a plot called "The Old People of the Little Sisters of the Poor Plot". Darger's headstone is inscribed "Artist" and "Protector of Children". Darger once wrote of children's right "to play, to be happy, and to dream, the right to normal sleep of the night's season, the right to an education, that we may have an equality of opportunity for developing all that are in us of mind and heart."

THE STORY OF MAIE

I met Maie last summer and was struck by the deep wisdom in her face. After taking her photograph, I created this portrait with spray paint and acrylic and framed it with recycled wood.  To me, she represented so many of the immigrants who have passed through the Rust Belt. Maie’s daughter, Eva Ruutopold told me a bit of her mother’s history:

"Maie’s world was turned upside down when WWII came into her fishing village on an island in the Baltic Sea. She was only thirteen-years-old when she left her home with her parents and siblings. Huddling together in a small boat, their only thought was to escape the brutal fighting that was taking over their country. Maie spent the next 6 years as a refugee in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany. Even when the war ended, their country’s border was closed. They could not return to their home. In 1949, she was given the opportunity to immigrate to the United States. American companies were offering jobs to many of the displaced persons. She landed first in New Jersey, then in 1954 she moved to Buffalo. She lived on Maryland Street as a young bride and then as a young mother. She did not make it back to visit that small fishing village until 1990 when Estonia finally gained its independence again. Western New York was her home until 2011".

Maie’s portrait is part of the Buffalo Society of Artists Exhibition opening on March 28 in the Buffalo Arts Studio. The opening, part of the M&T Fourth Friday series, will be from 5 to 8 pm. Buffalo Arts Studio is located on the fifth floor of the TriMain Center at 2495 Main Street in Buffalo. Parking and admission are always free.  Come visit Maie and see the work of over 30 other artists.

A “COMMUNITY IN A GALLERY” – MERIDIAN WEST

The Meridian West Gallery opened in November, 2012, with a special mission. As co-owner, Nancy Clarke Mariani, expressed it, “collecting art is an investment, and Buffalo is filled with so many talented artists…it’s incredible how fortunate we are to live here amongst them. Normally a gallery is located in a community – here at Meridian we have a community in a gallery.” This beautiful, multi-use space, will host the EYE SYMPHONY Exhibition, with an opening on Saturday night, March 22 from 6 – 9 pm. Meridian Gallery is located at 1209 Hertel Avenue in Buffalo, New York.

Three of my “Discarded Ancestors” collages will be part of EYE SYMPHONY. These pieces began after I found photo albums thrown out to the curb in front of a demolished house. There was apparently no one left to care for all these mementos and no way of finding out who these discarded ancestors were. The photos were so precious that I wanted to preserve them in some form. To me, they represented all the millions of people who have passed through this city. Each picture is unique and yet so universal that it could be from almost anyone’s family. I took a group of the photos out of the albums and surrounded them with bits and pieces of abandoned Buffalo – graffiti, empty houses and decaying landscapes. They are framed in recycled wood with its own story to tell. It is my attempt to put the past and present together and to honor these unknown people. I hope their spirits are happy being part of this art and not just discarded as trash.