Bartow + Metzgar + Werberig, Terrakwa: An investigation of the Erie Canal Across Time and Geography

January 24 – March 8, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, January 24, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

The collaborative team Bartow+Metzgar+Werberig conducted a multi-year experimental drawing project to investigate the expression of time through a human-nonhuman drawing collaboration with trees. Their investigative process began in 2016 with a simple question — what is a nonhuman expression of time as it relates to the Erie Canal? The outcome produced 40 tree drawings (drawings made by trees) created with a simple drawing apparatus used to record atmospheric forces affecting a tree across time for a specific place. The artist team selected trees along the banks of the Erie Canal and its connected waterways. No two drawings are alike but when viewed as a collective offer a legibility that is provocative and speculative, and best perceived as perturbations rather than abstractions.

New York State’s Erie Canal is 351 miles long and runs from Albany, NY to Buffalo, NY. The canal is, in large part, a public space. It offers an ideal condition of the “commons,” a space where the artist team could conduct their work without the hindrance of land ownership, accessibility, or trespass to land.

Part of Waterfront View Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jay Carrier, Niagara it’s Great to be Here.

January 24 – March 8, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, January 24, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Jay Carrier is a visual artist born on Six Nations to Onondaga and Tuscarora parents, who currently lives and works in Niagara Falls, NY and holds a B.F.A. from the University of Illinois-Champlain. Carrier studied painting at The College of Santa Fe, New Mexico and in the MFA program from the University of Illinois. Carrier has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US and Canada, including Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY, the Castellani Art Museum, Niagara Falls, NY, Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Fenimore House Museum, Cooperstown, New York, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York, Woodland Cultural Center Museum, Brantford, Ontario, Canada, Chautauqua Center for Visual Arts Gallery, Chautauqua, New York and the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York.

Part of Waterfront View Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jump Start Biennial Exhibition

May 23 – June 14, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, May 23, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Every two years, the Buffalo Arts Studio community comes together to celebrate the amazing students in our Jump Start program. 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.

Buffalo Public School Art Educator Exhibition

May 23 – June 14, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, May 23, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Buffalo Arts Studio will host a Buffalo Public Schools Arts Teachers’ Exhibition curated by Michele Agosto, Director of Arts, Buffalo Public Schools. This exhibition features over 20 original works in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, fiber, and digital design. The community is invited to see the talented individuals who are shaping our future artists.

David Buck, Recollect

June 27 – August 8, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, June 27, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

David Buck has been a Studio Artist with Buffalo Arts Studio since 2006, working primarily in oil.

He works from photographs, concentrating on gesture and emotion rather than detail. Buck has used the idyllic aspects of his own rural adolescence as a catalyst. Buck’s paintings feature everyday activities such as picnics, yard work, or road trips. By recapturing and reinterpreting these fleeting moments, his works explore the way memory filters experience.

Frani Evedon, Into Madness

July 25 – September 5, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, July 25, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Into Madness is a series of twenty photographic works that address the artist’s experience with heroin addiction, Hepatitis C and the “cure” that almost killed her. Although Evedon’s heroin addiction lasted only a few years, its consequences persisted for 40 years. Evedon believes it is essential that she translate this experience into works that communicate the trap of sweet dreams and the ensuing nightmare that the “cure” activated.

Sam Modder, Solo Exhibition

August 22 – November 15, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, August 22, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Sam Modder (Tampa, FL), is a Nigerian-Sri Lankan artist who works figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media to portray larger-than-life Black, female characters taking up space in real and imagined worlds. Modder positions the work within the speculative practice of the Black imaginary—centering Black dreams and fantasies to create alternate spaces of both comfort and confrontation. The spaces she creates are less utopia and more speculative test lab, decentering broken realities and focusing instead on the imaginary to help understand and rethink oppressive structures.

Part of Unruly Spaces, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Davana Robedee, Biformity

August 22 – November 15, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, August 22 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Formal Artist Talk, Friday, September 26, 2025 5:00 – 8:00 pm.

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Davana Robedee (Syracuse, NY) will present large-scale textile works that use stitch-resist shibori techniques and indigo dye as a method of drawing. Each work is planned and executed over many months as Robedee grows and extracts the pigments from plants she cultivates.

Davana Robedee will give a formal artist talk on indigo dyeing to accompany her exhibition.

Part of Unruly Spaces, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jozef Bajus, Everything Stays

September 26 – November 8, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, September 26, 2025, 5:00—8:00 pm

Part of M&T Fourth Friday at Tri-Main

Jozef Bajus is an eco-activist artist who believes that art can and should change the environment for the better. Everything Stays is a series of new works utilizing materials Bajus has collected for various projects over the past 20 years. Bajus embraces the aesthetic potential in discarded materials, transforming them and breathing new life into these objects using the physics of light and gravity. This allows visitors movements to interact with the artwork as their presence impacts the artwork literally. The aim of Everything Stays, as with Bajus’ other work, is that when audiences recognizes the ways they can interact differently with these familiar items, they will be inspired to see the need to reduce, the power of reuse, and the potential of recycling in their everyday life.