The Burchfield-Penney Art Center announces its fall 2005 exhibition schedule:
Design in the Roycroft Era
May 14 – October 2, 2005
Selections from the newest acquisitions for the Roycroft Collection are featured with furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley and Charles Rohlfs; fabric designed by William Morris; wallpapers designed by Morris & Company and the M. H. Birge & Sons Company; Deldare Ware produced by Buffalo Pottery; and simple household objects aestheticized by Heintz Art Metal and master craftsman Karl Kipp in the early 20th century. The exhibition is enhanced with examples from our collection of Buffalo’s Photo-Pictorialists, such as Clara E. Sipprell, Rose Clark and Edward B. Sides, as well as turn-of-the-century painters such as Alexis Jean Fournier, Lars G. Sellstedt, and Raphael Beck.
Selected Works by Virginia Cuthbert
August 21 – October 8, 2005
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center presents a selection of works by the versatile artist, Virginia Cuthbert. From her generation, Cuthbert was one of Buffalo’s most revered artists, known for her proficiency as a painter and her spirited camaraderie as a friend. The artist studied with artists working in a range of styles, including Charles Hawthorne, Colin Gill, George Luks, and Alexander Kostellow. Her work initially was stylistically aligned with the Ash Can School; however, she is best known for her interpretation of a style referred to as Magic Realism.
The Power of Observation
May 7 – October 23, 2005
Charles E. Burchfield possessed extraordinary powers of observation of the natural world that he translated into timeless artworks. While some serve as historic documents of early to mid-twentieth century American landscapes before the spread of urban and suburban development, others serve as universal confirmation of the awe-inspiring world that surrounds us. This exhibition features Burchfield’s nature drawings, including some works acquired by the Burchfield-Penney during the past few years that have never been shown before as well as the first public display of View from our Front Porch at Salem, Ohio, the jolting vision of a sunburst during a rain and snowstorm painted in 1917.
Concerning Heritage
May 28 – October 30, 2005
Following the theme underlying Art on the Hyphen: Cuban-American Artists of Western New York, in which artists expressed their experiences relating both to their ethnic heritage and their current concerns living in the United States, this exhibition of work from the collection will feature work by artists of various ethnic backgrounds. Native Americans, African Americans, Eastern European immigrants, and Latino artists from several different countries are among those to be represented. Artists include George Campos, Craig Centri?, Wilhelmina Godfrey, Ana Maria Hidalgo, Norman Jimerson, Arnold Mesches, Richard Nephew, Roberto Pacheco, Endi Poskovic, Walter A. Prochownick, Alberto Rey, Jolene Rickard, Jeanette Shropshire and Jeffrey Thomas.
Gail McCarthy: Fire and Light
Sylvia L. Rosen Gallery
August 13, 2005 – February 5, 2006
Ceramic artist Gail McCarthy has distinguished herself by producing sumptuous lustered vessels and wall-hung tile murals. Her patient process requires multiple kiln firings to produce iridescent, metallic luster finishes whose colors radiate with prismatic complexity. A selection of her work is presented with support from the Sylvia L. Rosen Endowment to mark her long career in this region.
Abstraction
August 27 – November 20, 2005
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is proud to present an exhibition that illustrates developments in twentieth-century abstraction by many of Western New York’s most accomplished artists. Participating in the richinternational history of this aesthetic movement, our region’s artists have pursued the full gamut of conceptual and technical perspectives. Their work parallels the progress made when art became more psychologically symbolic to express the radical historical and technological changes occurring in the world. Artists represented include Robert Flock, Charles Clough, Alan Van Every, Yoonsook Ryang and Sheldon Berlyn.
The James Blue Room
August 27 – November 20
James Blue Room at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center will focus on Blue’s career with installed video and audio recordings selected from Blue’s interviews with other directors, as well as selections from The Frontier and The Territory programs.
The Work of James Blue: A Retrospective, October 13-16, 2005, pays tribute to the work and life of influential filmmaker James Blue (1930-1980). Known internationally for his ground-breaking documentary films, Blue was an artist, an educator, an avid film historian, and an advocate of experimentation in the non-fiction form. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on October 10, 1930, he traveled the world filming the lives of real people facing devastating social change in places such as Algeria, Colombia, and Kenya.
In 1961, Blue made his first and only feature length film The Olive Trees of Justice, which won the Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962. A professor at the University at Buffalo?s Department of Media Study in the early 1970s, Blue influenced a generation of media makers and worked tirelessly to promote the craft of telling true stories with moving images.
24/12: A.J. Fries and Taeyoul Ryu
October 15 – November 6, 2005
Opening Reception: Friday, October 14, 2005 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Within a year’s time, the recent work of twenty-four artists will be shown in 24/12, a series of small solo exhibitions lasting a month each. The series will run from October 2005 through October 2006. All media will be featured for this staff-curated series intended to serve the community’s latest and greatest artists by showing exciting new work.
City Critique: Burchfield’s Commentary on the Early Twentieth Century Metropolis
October 29, 2005 – April 15, 2006
This exhibition will examine Charles E. Burchfield’s fascination with the city as a symbol for American growth during the first three decades of the 20th century. Coming from the small town of Salem, Ohio, Burchfield was overwhelmed on his first trip to New York City in 1916 to attend the National Academy of Design on a scholarship. While Burchfield didn’t stay to complete the first semester, his art student instincts were fully engaged as he documented his observations of street scenes with a series of small drawings. Radically different from the countryside and woods near his home, New York nevertheless seemed to be both a mammoth, densely populated metropolis featuring new skyscrapers, such as the Woolworth Building, as well as a village with parks, trees, gas street lights, strolling pedestrians, and a parade. After just two months, he sought refuge back in Salem.
Five years later, needing to support himself, Burchfield moved to Buffalo, New York in November 1921 to become an assistant designer at M. H. Birge & Sons, a quality wallpaper company at 390 Niagara Street. He observed ethnic neighborhoods on his daily walk to work. After living in four different apartments, he moved to the suburb of Gardenville in April 1925. While riding the bus to work, he decided the city possessed potential subjects for paintings; but he lacked the time he needed to devote to new artwork. After resigning in August 1929 as head of the design department and an accomplished designer of unique wallpapers, Burchfield fully embraced painting as his life’s ambition. Lake Erie had been visible from the Birge building, so the waterfront captured his attention. Grain elevators, cargo ships, iron bridges, commercial urban buildings, and older, dilapidated dwellings inspired his romanticized realism. He relished urban decay for its weathered beauty—in a strange way it reflected the power of nature over human intervention. Many Burchfield enthusiasts consider his urban Middle Period to be his greatest, bringing American subjects to an art world that previously had valued only European art.
A Life in the Arts: Ed Bisone
November 5, 2005 – January 1, 2006
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 10, 2005 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
The Burchfield-Penney presents a retrospective of the career of Ed Bisone.
24/12: Christy Rupp and Peter Sowiski
November 12 – December 4, 2005
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 10, 2005
The second installment in the Burchfield-Penney's 24/12 series features new work by Peter Sowiski and Christy Rupp.
About the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is a museum dedicated to the art and vision of Charles E. Burchfield and distinguished artists of Buffalo Niagara and Western New York State. Through its affiliation with Buffalo State College, the museum encourages learning and celebrates our richly creative and diverse community. For more information, call (716) 878-6011 or visit www.burchfield-penney.org.
About the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is accredited by the American Association of Museums and is supported in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional operating support is provided by the Elizabeth Elser Doolittle Trust, the James Carey Evans Endowment, the Mary A. H. Rumsey Foundation and the Burchfield-Penney's members and friends.
24/12 is presented through the generosity of the New York State Council on the Arts, The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program–supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, and Monica Angle and Sam Magavern II. Gail McCarthy: Fire and Light is supported through the generosity of the Sylvia L. Rosen Endowment.