Panel Discussions

Buffalo Arts Studio is hosting the panel Contemporary Art and Folk Art Practices to discuss how artists are influenced by the intersection of their cultural histories and contemporary experiences. This discussion will consider the way(s) one can be a contemporary artist while using cultural and/or familial practices labeled as “folk art.” The panel will examine how this category creates hierarchy and inequity for those outside of Western colonial and academic practices, and how curators, galleries, and collecting institutions can make space for artists within art rather than archaeological, ethnographic, or folk art spaces. The panel will include exhibiting artists, Deborah Canales and Benjamin Cirino from Multinational Art Illumination; El Batey Executive Director Beatriz Flores; Corporación Piñones Director Maricruz Rivera Clemente, Kanien’kehá:ka mother, artist, teacher, and language learner Jodi Lynn Maracle, and Dr. Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University at Buffalo. Spanish translation support will be available. This discussion is made possible in part, with the support of an Action Grant from Humanities New York.

Beatriz Flores is the founder and Executive Director of El Batey Puerto Rican Cultural Center, an organization with a mission to honor and empower Puerto Rican people through culture, music, and history. Flores believes that bomba is the encapsulated expression of Puerto Rican history and ethos, as well as a vehicle for social change. Born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, Flores maintains close ties to the island and their cultural practitioners and activists, often traveling to the island to continue her training while also bringing a number of experts to Buffalo to lead workshops and forums. Her cultural and historical knowledge and Puerto Rican networks are invaluable to the success of the 1,849 Millas project. Flores introduced Buffalo Arts Studio to the artists and many academics and activists participating in this project.

Multinational Illumination Art artists Deborah Canales and Benjamin Cirino were born and raised in Loíza, Puerto Rico, and currently live and work in Buffalo, NY. Cirino was raised in a family of artists and artisans who passed their traditions from generation to generation. Cirino studied with cultural visual artist Daniel Linn and began his workshop shortly after. Canales, whose artistic practice includes seashell doll-making and mask-making, began studying these crafts at the age of 14. Cirino and Canales, who have been working together for over two decades, formed the Multinational Illumination Art collective in 2023 to educate communities about the roots of the vejigante masks tradition, ensure that the cultural legacy continues into the future, and teach new generations about the art of carving vejigante masks.

Maricruz Rivera Clemente is an Afro-Puerto Rican activist, social worker, sociologist, and Ph.D. candidate at the Universidad de Puerto Rico del Recinto de Río Piedras. She is the founder and the executive director of Corporación Piñones se Integra (COPI), a nonprofit, community-based, and antiracist organization committed to seeking alternatives that result in improving the quality of life of residents, families, and visitors through education, community economic development, culture, music, and natural resources. She is also an active member of the Afro-descendant Regional Articulation of the Americas and the Caribbean (ARAAC).

Dr. Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Caraballo Muller dedicates herself to the twin (and intertwined) passions of historical research in her field and educational program development for social and planetary good. She is currently researching African and Afro-descended intellectuals in early 20th-century Cuba who thought at the limits of the possible as they staked claims to rights, dignity, and equality in a world that denied their full humanity.

Jodi Lynn Maracle is a Kanien’kehá:ka mother, artist, teacher, and language learner. Maracle utilizes Haudenosaunee material language and techniques, such as hand tanning deer hides and corn husk twining, in conversation with sound-scapes, projections, video, and performance to interrogate questions of place, power, erasure, story making, and responsibility to the land. Her research as a PhD student at the University at Buffalo focuses on Haudenosaunee material culture, language, land, and birth practices.

This project is made possible in part by the generous support of Humanities New York Action Grant as well as a New York State Council for the Arts Support for Artists grant to Multinational Illumination Art.

Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio, in collaboration with Buffalo Arts Studio, Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center, and Buffalo Game Space, presents Creativity in the Time of Covid-19 – an exhibition of pandemic artwork and creative expression. The exhibition is the outcome of a three year project examining how people ranging from professional artists to first-time creatives used creativity during the Covid-19 pandemic. The project defined creative expression broadly, including traditional and experimental art forms as well as creative hobbies such gaming, baking, crocheting, and much more.

The closing reception for Creativity in the Time of Covid-19 consisted of a curatorial talk with Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan (Buffalo AKG), Cody Mejeur (Amatryx Gaming Lab & Studio), Ekrem Serdar (Squeaky Wheel), and Shirley Verrico (Buffalo Arts Studio.)

Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan has been a curator with the AKG since 2017. Before joining the AKG, she was a Curatorial Research Assistant in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is a recognized expert in the field of media art, including video, digital, and internet art, and holds five degrees in art history, including a BA from Harvard and a PhD from Columbia.

Cody Mejeur is a game scholar, developer, player, and activist whose work focuses on trans, queer, and feminist studies and social justice in video games and new media. They received their PhD in English from Michigan State University with specializations in game studies, digital humanities, and college teaching. Their work uses games to theorize narrative as an embodied and playful process that constructs how we understand ourselves, our realities, and our differences. They have published on games pedagogy, gender and queerness in games, and the narrative construction of reality in journals including Feminist Media Studies and Digital Humanities Quarterly and edited collections such as Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock and The Pokémon Go Phenomenon.

Ekrem Serdar is the curator at Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center, where he is responsible for the organization’s exhibitions, public programming, and residency program. Previously, he was a programmer with Experimental Response Cinema (Austin, TX) which he co-founded. He is the recipient of a Curatorial Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2017). He is an advisory member of the FOL Cinema Society (Istanbul). His writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Millennium Film Journal, 5harfliler, Altyazı, among other publications. He is from Ankara, Turkey.

Shirley Verrico has over 25 year of experience within the arts field, including curating, managing gallery spaces, and teaching art history. She holds a Bachelors in Fine Arts and Communication Design, a Masters of Arts and Humanities with a concentration on Art History and English from SUNY, Buffalo, and a NYS K-12 Art Education Certification. At Buffalo Arts Studio, Verrico manages and maintains the three gallery spaces as well as produces all exhibition support materials. In addition, she curates fundraising special events including Trimania, Plates & Pasta, and Live on Five. Verrico also conducts gallery and studio tours for diverse student and community audiences, oversees volunteers and interns, and supports regional artists in funding research and grant applications. In addition to curating exhibitions, Verrico also works with grassroots activists and service organizations to establish meaningful community and cultural partnerships while organizing, promoting, and moderating regular panel discussions and community forums on relevant cultural topics.

The community is invited to attend and participate in Making Accessible, a panel discussion centered around accessibility to creative and cultural institutions and experiences. Making Accessible will take place in the Buffalo Arts Studio Community Space at 6:00 pm on Friday, February 24, 2023. Exhibiting artists George Hughes and Jodi Lynn Maracle, along with Savion Mingo, co-founder of D.O.P.E. Collective, and Maria Ta with Frontline Arts Buffalo (FAB) will discuss some of the social, economic and physical barriers they have experienced as artists. 

George Afedzi Hughes was born and raised in Ghana and studied painting at The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, College of Art (1985–1991) where he earned a BA in Painting and Drawing and an MA in Art Education. He relocated to the United States in 1994 and earned his MFA in Painting from Bowling Green State University (2001). Hughes is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at SUNY Buffalo. His paintings, performances, and installations have been shown in Canada, China, Denmark, Dubai, England, France, Germany, Ghana, Holland, Northern Ireland, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Uruguay, Wales and the USA. Hughes is represented in Germany by Artco Gallery, in Portugal by Influx Contemporary Gallery, in Ghana by Artists Alliance Gallery, and in the USA by Skoto Gallery.

Born and raised in what is currently considered Buffalo, NY, Jodi Lynn Maracle is a Kanien’kehá:ka mother, artist, teacher and language learner. Maracle utilizes Haudenosaunee material language and techniques, such as hand tanning deer hides and corn husk twining, in conversation with sound scapes, projections, video, and performance to interrogate questions of place, power, erasure, story making, and responsibility to the land. She has shown her work throughout Dish With One Spoon Territory in site specific installation performances such as the Mush Hole Project at the Mohawk Institute Residential School (home of the Woodland Cultural Centre) in Brantford, ON, as well as the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, ON, Artpark in Lewiston, NY, and Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center in Buffalo, NY. Her research as a PhD student at the University at Buffalo focuses on Haudenosaunee material culture, language, land and birth practices. 

Savion “Quaran” Mingo is an arts organizer from Buffalo, NY and co-founder of D.O.P.E. Collective, Dismantling Oppressive Patterns for Empowerment, which is a community bulletin board and project-based collaborative. D.O.P.E. Collective is rooted in political arts movements including “The Messenger” publication of the Harlem Renaissance, D.I.Y. organizing of 1970’s punk culture, and youth resistance of 1980’s New York – creating underground hip-hop and ballroom. Currently Quaran (pronounced: Ka-ron) is nurturing his career as an agency graphic designer and several initiatives such as Artbox, a free art supply mutual aid project and Buffalo’s Annual Cree Summer Chalk Walk, celebrating black and brown creators and voice actors in animation.

Maria Ta is on the Steering Committee of Frontline Arts Buffalo (FAB). FAB seeks to support frontline arts and cultural organizations and artists in Buffalo in their transition from conditions of precarity to viability. FAB is a collaboration among artists, arts administrators, engaged citizens, justice advocates, and policy researchers who advocate for systems-wide changes in order to create an arts ecosystem that is equitable and sustainable for all. Maria is also the founder of the Ta Collective, LLC where she works to provide operational and administrative services to creatives in order to clear pathways for their best creative work. She believes that the cultural revolution precedes all other revolutions and strives to support artists and the creative community in their efforts to change the world. Contact at maria@tacollective.co.

The panel brings together artists, architects, scholars, and activists in support of the current exhibition Homing, which features artwork by UB professor Matt Kenyon and Eastern Michigan University professor Jason J. Ferguson. Homing includes Kicking the Ladder, an installation by Kenyon designed to raise awareness about climate change and its impact on front-line communities. Kicking the Ladder is made up of hundreds of champagne glasses in a nearly complete pyramid. Each glass contains a miniature model of a house cast out of a material the Kenyon has developed that has the same refractive index as water, making the houses invisible when they are submerged. Kicking the Ladder is responding to the multi-layered American housing crisis. The installation clearly points to property that has lost its value due to the effects of rising water and climate change while also serving as a visual metaphor for the fragility hidden within the current housing market where—when someone owes more than a house is worth, people say the mortgage is “underwater.”  In Kicking the Ladder, the top layers of the pyramid have been disconnected and overturned. This inversion serves as both a visual and metaphoric element. The overturned glasses no longer function as vessels and their contents seemingly empty onto the floor with the hydrophobic element messaging the ubiquitous “we buy houses” linking to predatory signs often seen within distressed urban neighborhoods.

In addition to exhibiting artist Matt Kenyon, the panel includes Architectural Designer Justina Dziama, who was Buffalo Arts Studio’s 2020 Activism in the Arts Artist-in-Residence. Dziama’s resulting exhibition A Millimeter of Space used the topography of decaying architecture as a metaphor for the cultural and community blight caused by the loss of manufacturing jobs as well as discriminatory economic practices. Community activist Dennice Barr, who is President of the Fruit Belt Advisory Council, will speak to her experience advocating for her neighbors and her neighborhood.  Also on the panel is Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at SUNY Buffalo. Dr. Taylor’s research focuses on a historical and contemporary analysis of distressed urban neighborhoods, social isolation and race and class issues among people of color, especially African Americans and Latinos. 

This panel is part of Displacement Reclaiming Place, Space, and Memory, a series of programs that reflect the belief that artists and curators can effect change through purposeful collaborations that balance community needs, artistic insight, and educational impact. This series intends to not only display powerful visual statements, but to also spur dialogue between varied audiences that open doors to social and economic justice as well as a better understanding of displacement.

Listen to Curator, Shirley Verrico, discussing the panel discussion on WBFO: “Buffalo, What’s Next?”

Academics, artists, and activists will come together to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing frontline communities today, including gentrification, mass incarceration, racism, and the criminalization of immigration. Panelists will discuss the power of the arts to effect change and the ways the arts can become political action. The exhibition Attica NOW will be open to the public for extended gallery hours from 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm. The panel will begin promptly at 6:00 pm and will conclude at 7:00 pm to allow for individual conversations and networking. The gallery will close at 8:00 pm.

Moderator:

Jasmina Tumbas ((PhD, Art History, Duke University) is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History & Performance Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo. Her first book, “I Am Jugoslovenka!” Feminist Performance Politics During & After Yugoslav Socialism has recently been published by Manchester University Press’s Rethinking Art’s Histories series (February 2022). Tumbas is also working on a second manuscript, Feminists of the Yugoslav Diaspora: Art and Resistance Beyond Citizenship and Nationhood. In Buffalo, Tumbas curated Bosnian artist of Romani origin Selma Selman’s first solo show in the United States at Dreamland in Buffalo, an exhibition which traveled to Vienna, Austria. She served as the guest-editor for the special issue of ArtLeaks Gazette #5: Patriarchy Over and Out: Discourse Made Manifest and her research has appeared in ArtMargins, Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, Art Monthly, Art in America, ASAP Journal, and Art and Documentation, and in the anthologies Shifting Corporealities in Contemporary Performance and Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere.

Panelists:

Harper Bishop (he/him) is a Buffalo activist who worked with Our City on a public projection designed to hold WNY elected officials accountable. Our City is a broad coalition of community-based organizations and people in Buffalo, New York who have come together to create a policy agenda that centers on people instead of profits by building a multi-racial, multi-generational, intersectional movement for justice and equity.

Unai Reglero (he/him) is one of the founders of the Spanish-Colombian art collective CaldodeCultivo. He is visual artist, art director, and cultural organizer whose practice has led him to question the role of art in society, always vindicating it as a tool or device capable of impacting its social context. He is completing his MFA in Studio Art at SUNY Buffalo.

Mizin Shin (she/her) was born and raised in South Korea and she graduated from Hong-ik University with a B.F.A in Printmaking and received her M.F.A from SUNY at Buffalo. Shin focuses on both traditional and contemporary printmaking practices to promote a multidisciplinary approach to the medium. In 2021, she created Use Your Voice #StopAsianHate in response to rising hate crimes and as a way to speak out against racially motivated prejudice and violence.

Gabriela Córdoba Vivas (she/her) is one of the founders of the Spanish-Colombian art collective CaldodeCultivo.. She is an artist-scholar that works in the intersection between art, media, and social justice. Her research has revolved around epistemological justice, the right to the city, and cultural representations of transgender sex work. She is a fourth-year PhD student in Media Study at SUNY Buffalo.

Jerome R Wright (he/him) is an activist, organizer and Co-Director of HALT Solitary Campaign, which brings together advocates, formerly incarcerated persons, family members of currently incarcerated people, and concerned community members throughout the state to #HALTsolitary confinement in New York’s prisons and jails. Wright is a returning citizen who spent 30 years in prison. He has worked with community based intervention programs including Back to Basics Outreach Ministries and Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). He has also worked training, teaching and supervising people on parole and probation on work assignments as well as providing mentorship, tutoring, and behavior modification training to at-risk youth in Buffalo and Rochester.

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

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

Buffalo Arts Studio presents the panel discussion Depicting Duality featuring artists and activists whose work deals with the intersection of race, gender, culture, class, and sexuality. The term “intersectionality” was first coined as a way of understanding feminism through the lens of race, but in the 1980s, its application to cultural production was advanced in fields of critical race theory and ethnic and feminist studies. Artists who take intersectionality as their focus are interested in the way that different types of discrimination—such as racism, classism, xenophobia, misogyny, or ageism—can converge and impact individuals and groups, and their work explores these complex interactions. 

Panelists Julia Bottoms, Cristiano Pereira, Sepideh Pourhang, and Annette Daniels Taylor will address the ways their identities impact their artmaking and performance processes. The artists will also discuss their own experiences of intersectional discrimination within various cultural and artistic contexts. 

Julia Bottoms is a visual artist whose work developed in response to the media’s repetition of racially biased imagery. Bottoms rejects the hyper-sexual, violent, and sinister portrayal of people of color that saturates the media, countering the manufactured images of “Blackness” promoted in popular culture. Her paintings honor the individuality and character of the dynamic and creative young people whom she encounters in her daily life.

Cristiano Pereira identifies as a queer, Latino immigrant, visual artist. He was born in Brazil, which he describes as a religious, yet sensualized country, where the images of saints and Orishas (spirits) share the carnaval parade with half-naked people, and where the social and economic disparities are embedded in daily life. Pereira sees himself as part of the “LGBTQ diaspora,” and his work analyzes gender identity within that community.

Sepideh Pourhang’s multi-disciplinary approach brings her identity to the aesthetic surface of her work. Rooted in the processes of photography, printmaking, and painting, Pourhang’s mixed media pieces break free from the customs the artist grew up among. Pourhang received training in traditional styles of Persian Miniature and has since turned this institution on its head, combining old-world notions with the contemporary struggle of equality for women.

Annette Daniels Taylor is an award-winning author, playwright, poet, and artist-filmmaker. Her debut Young Adult novel, Dreams on Fire (October 2018) with West 44 books is a poetic urban teenage journey written in verse. The author of two poetry chapbooks, Street Pharmacist and Hush now, Daniels Taylor’s work explores identity, class, memory, place, and public history. Daniels Taylor is a New York State Public Humanities fellow.

The panel discussion titled Media, Image, and Perception in Contemporary Culture was presented as part of Buffalo Arts Studio’s Activism in the Arts; an exhibition, public art, workshop, and community forum series funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Activism in the Arts reflects the belief that artists and curators can effect change through purposeful collaborations that balance community needs, artistic insight, and educational impact. View the full discussion here.

Buffalo Arts Studio curator Shirley Verrico moderated the panel that included exhibiting artists Patrick Foran as well as community activist and photographer Johanna C. Dominguez, PUSH Buffalo Climate Justice Organizer Kelly Camacho, and 17 year old WNY Youth Climate Council Co-organizer Ilyas Khan. The panel brought together artists and activists to discuss the various ways each seeks to visually document the conflict and chaos of contemporary culture. They also shared their own experiences both collecting and disseminating information across multiple platforms. 

Kelly Camacho is the Climate Justice Organizer with PUSH Buffalo and also works with New York Renews, a coalition of over 200 organizations fighting for environmental justice under the current Climate, Jobs, and Justice Recovery campaign. Camacho grew up on Buffalo’s East side, attended City Honors, and earned a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies from the University at Buffalo. Based on her experience growing up on the East Side and as one of only three women of color in her major, Camacho is passionate about the intersectionality of social, economic, racial, and environmental justice issues. Camacho uses her position with PUSH to advocate for racial justice within the local environmental movement, recognizing the power of the Black Lives Matter movement while also responding to the economic downturn brought about by COVID-19. Watch Kelly Camacho’s video introduction here.

Johanna C. Dominguez is a photographer, poet, environmentalist, and activist who uses the power of the lens and words to bring attention to critical issues affecting people and the planet today. She is dedicated to environmental and social justice issues and has worked with individuals and organizations across the world. For the last ten years she has served as a trustee of the Wallace Global Fund, a progressive foundation that works on social justice, environment, climate change, media and democracy, and women’s issues.  Her work has appeared across the nation in  The Wall Street Journal, Outside Magazine, Washingtonian, and other publications. She is both a member of the United States Press Association and the National Press Photographers Association. Watch Johanna C. Dominguez’s video introduction here.

Patrick Foran is concerned with the nature of emergencies and the way we experience and respond to them from a distance. His drawings and paintings often isolate, fragment, and reframe events within the context of contemporary catastrophe, forcing viewers to consider how events are relayed and consumed through social media, broadcast news, and other networks of information transmission. Originally from Michigan, Foran received his BA from the University of Michigan. He went on to study English and Visual Studies at Cornell University, where he received his MA. Most recently he received his MFA from the University at Buffalo in Visual Studies and Art. He currently resides in Buffalo, where he teaches studio art and writing at the University at Buffalo, SUNY Fredonia, Niagara County Community College and Niagara University. Watch Patrick Foran’s video introduction here.

Ilyas Khan is a student at City Honors High School. He is the co-organizer of the WNY Youth Climate Council, which he helped create last June at the Youth Climate Action Summit. Khan developed the idea with the help of other youth leaders who want to make climate justice a reality for our region. Khan started his advocacy work in 2018 after joining the Youth and Climate Justice Fellowship with the WNY Environmental Alliance and led the first of four Buffalo Youth Climate Strikes in 2019, which have continued digitally this past year. Watch Ilyas Khan’s video introduction here.

Buffalo Arts Studio presented a panel discussion titled Art Ecologies: Understanding the Environmental Impact of Public Art  live from Duende restaurant at Silo City through Buffalo Arts Studio’s facebook page Friday, August 28, 2020. This event is part of Buffalo Arts Studio’s Activism in the Arts, an exhibition, public art, workshop, and community forum series funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Activism in the Arts reflects the belief that artists and curators can effect change through purposeful collaborations that balance community needs, artistic insight, and educational impact. The Art Ecologies panel featured Avye Alexandres, and Jozef Bajus, both of whom are part of the public art project Restoration at Silo City, which focuses on restorative art practices that reuse and reimagine the detritus from the Silo City site. Also participating in the panel were Joshua Smith, Director of Ecology at Silo City and Buffalo artist Alexis Oltmer, who created a conceptual body of artwork that elevated plastic pollution imagery, data, and samples.

View the full video of this discussion on the Buffalo Arts Studio facebook page.

Part of M&T Fourth Friday @ TriMain Center

Panelists: Jay Carrier, George Hughes, Jodi Lynn Maracle, and Sepideh Pourhang

This panel discussion focused on the ways artists are influenced by the intersection of their cultural histories and contemporary experiences.

More information can be found here.

Buffalo Arts Studio curator Shirley Verrico moderated a panel that included exhibiting artist Patrick Foran as well as community activist and photographer Johanna C. Dominguez, PUSH Buffalo Climate Justice Organizer Kelly Camacho, and 17 year old WNY Youth Climate Council Co-organizer Ilyas Khan. The panel brought together artists and activists to discuss the various ways each seeks to visually document the conflict and chaos of contemporary culture. Panelists considered the growing distrust of “the media,” information, science, and even academic expertise. They will share their own experiences both collecting and disseminating information across multiple platforms. 

Kelly Camacho is the Climate Justice Organizer with PUSH Buffalo and also works with New York Renews, a coalition of over 200 organizations fighting for environmental justice under the current Climate, Jobs, and Justice Recovery campaign. Camacho grew up on Buffalo’s East side, attended City Honors, and earned a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies from the University at Buffalo. Based on her experience growing up on the East Side and as one of only three women of color in her major, Camacho is passionate about the intersectionality of social, economic, racial, and environmental justice issues. Camacho uses her position with PUSH to advocate for racial justice within the local environmental movement, recognizing the power of the Black Lives Matter movement while also responding to the economic downturn brought about by COVID-19.

Johanna C. Dominguez is a photographer, poet, environmentalist, and activist who uses the power of the lens and word to bring attention to critical issues affecting people and the planet today. She is dedicated to environmental and social justice issues and has worked with individuals and organizations across the world. For the last ten years she has served as a trustee of the Wallace Global Fund, a progressive foundation that works on social justice, environment, climate change, media and democracy, and women’s issues.  Her work has appeared across the nation in  The Wall Street Journal, Outside Magazine, Washingtonian, and other publications. She is both a member of the United States Press Association and the National Press Photographers Association. 

Patrick Foran is concerned with the nature of emergencies and the way we experience and respond to them from a distance. His drawings and paintings often isolate, fragment, and reframe events within the context of contemporary catastrophe, forcing viewers to consider how events are relayed and consumed through social media, broadcast news, and other networks of information transmission. Originally from Michigan, Foran received his BA from the University of Michigan. He went on to study English and Visual Studies at Cornell University, where he received his MA. Most recently he received his MFA from the University at Buffalo in Visual Studies and Art. He currently resides in Buffalo, where he teaches studio art and writing at the University at Buffalo, SUNY Fredonia, Niagara County Community College and Niagara University.

Ilyas Khan is a student at City Honors High School. He is the co-organizer of the WNY Youth Climate Council, which he helped create last June at the Youth Climate Action Summit. Khan developed the idea with the help of other youth leaders who want to make climate justice a reality for our region. Khan started his advocacy work in 2018 after joining the Youth and Climate Justice Fellowship with the WNY Environmental Alliance and led the first of four Buffalo Youth Climate Strikes in 2019, which have continued digitally this past year.

M&T Fourth Friday, June 28, 2019 featured “Seeds of Change: Land, Trust, and Community,” a panel discussion on the Fruit Belt and surrounding communities.

The F.B. Community Land Trust was established by neighborhood residents and advocacy organizations to prevent longtime residents from being pushed out as developers have become interested in the neighborhood, driven by the growth of the nearby Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The Fruit Belt, once called “The Orchard” because of its fruit trees, has a deep history of German and African American settlements and a mix of residences dating to the 1830s. Some homeowners are worried about preserving the neighborhood’s historic character.

This community forum featured a variety of grassroots community activists whose work intersects within economic and ecological justice efforts. Panel participants also include representatives from the F. B. Community Land Trust who will address these concerns as well as inform the audience about the ongoing efforts to prevent developers from displacing long-time neighborhood residents.

Panelists:
India Walton, Founding Executive Director of the F. B. Community Land Trust
Reinhard Reitzenstein, Artist and Sculpture Program Head at the University at Buffalo Department of Art
Lynda H. Schneekloth, Professor Emeritus, University at Buffalo Department of Architecture
Joshua Smith, Director of Ecology at Rigidized Metals Corporation.

Moderators:
Shirley Verrico, Curator, Buffalo Arts Studio
Max Anderson, Deputy Director, Open Buffalo

Tabling Organizations:
Buffalo Youth Climate Strike, Ilyas Khan
Plastic Free Buffalo, Alexis Oltmer

Buffalo Arts Studio presented “Beyond Language; using the arts to bridge cultural differences.” This panel discussion brought together diverse voices from across our cultural community to speak about the ways each uses the arts to bridge cultural differences and work across inherent difficulties presented by language. Open Buffalo Acting Director Max Anderson and Buffalo Arts Studio Curator Shirley Verrico co-moderated the discussion.

Zsofi Barabás, BuBu Artist-In-Residence, Buffalo Arts Studio  
Zsofi Barabás is the inagural BuBu Artist and Residence. Her colorful, amorphous paintings and stark, black and white works on paper reflect her extensive travels, and draw inspiration from distinct architectural elements throughout the world. Prior to her residency in Buffalo, her artwork has been featured widely in exhibitions across Europe, as well as Russia and Japan. www.zsofibarabas.com

Mackenzie Hafner, Community Outreach Specialist, Journey’s End Refugee Services
Mackenzie Hafner has a long history with Journey’s End. She volunteered with the agency for four years before she joined the staff in the fall of 2017, after graduating with her degree in Global Gender Studies from the University at Buffalo in 2017. She founded the Refugee Women’s Empowerment Group at Journey’s End, and is currently leading the advocacy efforts of the agency. She is also involved in running the volunteer program, donor relations, and special events, including marketing for the Journey’s End WNY Refugee Film Festival fundraiser that will begin this September. The website for the fundraiser is www.wnyrff.org.

Katalin Mechtler, Director of the BuBu Artist Resident Exchange Program
Mechtler originated the Artist Resident Exchange Program between Budapest, Hungary and Buffalo, NY in the summer of 2018. The program supported the exchange of Hungarian Artist, Zsófi Barabás, to work at the Buffalo Art Studio, while American artist, Sarah Fonzi, works at Art Quarter Budapest. The goal of the program is to enable artists to meet and network with other artists and arts professionals internationally. Ideally, the BuBu Artist Resident Exchange Program will build a strong and meaningful relationship between the two contemporary art centers: Buffalo Art Studio and Art Quarter Budapest.

Win Min Thant, Educational Coordinator, Buff State Center for Excellence in Urban and Rural Education
Win was born and raised in Burma, and came to the U.S. in 2007. She found new roots in Buffalo through her grassroots work with a variety of local organizations and public schools. A true believer of equity and democracy, Win strives to empower youth through education.

MarCe Zerrate-Sandel, Executive Director and Founder, Amor and Heritage Dance 
Born in Cali, Colombia, MarCe has been involved in and celebrated the Hispanic Heritage through the arts from her early childhood. She began Folkloric dancing and acting in Cali, Colombia and continued her artistic career when she moved to the United States in 1999, where she professionally performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, taught folkloric, Hispanic- Latino dances at various non-for-profits and schools, founded and is the executive and artistic director of her Folkloric, Traditional, Hispanic dance Company Amor and Heritage Inc. in Buffalo, NY. In recognition of her work, she was awarded the Certificate of Merit by Assemblyman Peter D. Lopez and Certificate of Recognition for her valuable contribution to arts and culture by the Art Services initiative. More information is available at https://www.amorandheritage.org/

Muhammad Z. Zaman, Open Buffalo Emerging Artist 2018
Muhammad Z. Zaman, a Buffalo-based, urban artist, specializing in calligraphy. Using language and text as cultural signifier, Zaman layers English, Bengali, and Arabic into richly-textured canvases. Zaman uses the languages that make up his identity: English for his current home, Bengali as the language of his fatherland, and Arabic as the language of his religion. His drawings, paintings, and murals are meant to inspire people to learn from each other in harmony and mutual understanding. https://zamanarts.bigcartel.com/gallery

Representatives from regional arts organizations including Buffalo Arts Studio, Anderson Gallery, Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, Dreamland, the Foundry, and Sugar City Arts Collaborative discussed the role of small, creative communities within a larger cultural context. Topics under consideration include engaging neighborhoods, responding to shifting regional demographics, and the costs and benefits of organizing into a 501(c (3).

Additional organizations invited to participate included Panthfrica, Urban Arts Collective, Locust Street Art, Maybe Heaven, and D.O.P.E. Collective and will be onsite to provide information about their own work within the realm of maker-based, creative, non-profits and answer questions following the panel discussion.

Artists, administrators, and educators will discuss their specific experiences as artists, activists, and placemakers in a panel discussion to be held at Buffalo Arts Studio on Friday, May 26, 2017. Art and Activism: Examining the ways visual, performing, and literary arts can affect social, political, and economic change within communities” will begin at 5:00 pm with an introductory presentation by artist Julia Bottoms-Douglas, whose exhibition Tinted: A Visual Statement on Color, Identity, and Representation is on view at Buffalo Art Studio through June 2, 2017. The discussion will begin at 6:00 pm, followed by a Q&A session. The event is sponsored in part by Open Buffalo and is part of M&T Bank Fourth Fridays at Tri-main Center.

Panel participants include filmmaker Korey Green, who has directed more than 10 short films and a host of music videos, commercials, and a feature documentary titled The Experience; Bianca L. McGraw, a Pure Ink Poetry Slam Co-Host and Event Coordinator, Higher Education Advocate, and international practicing multimedia installation/performance artist; Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., full professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo and founding director of the U.B. Center for Urban Studies; and Julia Douglas-Bottoms, visual artist, creative entrepreneur, and a contributor for Afropunk Media. Moderators Max Anderson (Open Buffalo) and Shirley Verrico (Buffalo Arts Studio) will pose questions investigating the impact of the arts as an effective form of activism. Participants will be encouraged to help formulate a list of best practices as well as lessons learned.