Closing Reception: First Friday, June 7   6-9 p.m. Hors‘douvres and refreshments served

Where: ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art – 148 Elmwood Avenue – Buffalo, NY

All events are free and open to the public

#notwhite collective is a group of 14 women artists elevating the stories of the others. Those who do not fit neatly in the consensus boxes, neatly in cultural categories.

#notwhite collective is a bi/multi-racial/cultural, immigrant or descendants of immigrants. They have come together, to question, to investigate, dig deep into what identity is within and without the construct and context of white – not in skin color, but as a system of oppression, a system they do not align ourselves with. In lieu of police brutality, calls for bans, for walls, they hope to provide an artistic platform for difficult discussions on the complexities of cultural identity in America to move us towards humanity.

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. -Theodore Roethke

By photolangelle on April 6, 2019

Don’t miss tonight’s event of poetry and spoken word at ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art – from #notwhitevollective – you’ll feel sorry if you miss it! 

¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art (148 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo NY 14201).

Pittsburgh-based #notwhite collective and Buffalo poets celebrate National Poetry Month

The Pittsburgh-based #notwhite collective, a group of 12 women artists of bi/multi-racial/cultural, immigrant- or descendant-of-immigrants backgrounds, will present an evening of poetry and spoken word with Buffalo poets on Saturday, April 6, from 7-9 p.m.

The event kicks off the first weekend of National Poetry Month and is presented in conjuction with the Buffalo premiere of the collective’s art exhibit, In Between the Middle the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art.

Performers include Buffalo artists Danielle AJ, Bianca L. McGraw and N’gana, who will be joined by #notwhite collective members: Madame Dolores, HollyHood, Fran Flaherty, Carolina Loyola-Garcia, Liana Maneese, Maritza Mosquera and Sara Tang. The event is open to the public, and ASL interpretation will be provided. Visit www.notwhitecollective.com or ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art for more information.

Closing Reception: First Friday June 7   6 – 9 p.m.

Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments served

from the #notwhite collective

April 5 through June 7, 2019

Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 6-9 p.m.

Spoken Word Performances: Saturday, April 6  7-9 p.m.

Closing Reception: Friday, June 7  6-9 p.m. Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments served

Where: ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art – 148 Elmwood Avenue – Buffalo, NY

All events are free and open to the public

April 5: In Between the Middle Exhibit Opening Reception

Friday, April 5, 2019, 6-9 p.m.

A Buffalo premiere of the #notwhite collective

Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments served

April 6: Betwixt & Between: An night of poetry and spoken word

Saturday, April 6, 2019, 7-9 p.m.

Pittsburgh-based #notwhite collective and Buffalo poets celebrate National Poetry Month

The Pittsburgh-based #notwhite collective, a group of 12 women artists of bi/multi-racial/cultural, immigrant- or descendant-of-immigrants backgrounds, will present an evening of poetry and spoken word with Buffalo poets on Saturday, April 6, from 7-9 p.m. The event kicks off the first weekend of National Poetry Month and is presented in conjuction with the Buffalo premiere of the collective’s art exhibit, In Between the Middle at the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art (148 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo NY 14201) which runs through June 7, 2019.

Performers include Buffalo artists Danielle AJ, Bianca L. McGraw and N’gana, who will be joined by #notwhite collective members: Madame Dolores, HollyHood, Fran Flaherty, Carolina Loyola-Garcia, Liana Maneese, Maritza Mosquera and Sara Tang. The event is open to the public, and ASL interpretation will be provided. Visit www.notwhitecollective.com for more information.

artist bios

Danielle AJ is a 22 year old poet, actress and writer based in Buffalo, NY, who strongly believes in the power of expression and how it effects communities and builds bridges and breaks systems. She loves the simple pleasures like writing love poems, knitting and eating full cartons ice cream in bed.

Madame Dolores is a multi-platform, multi-disciplinary artist employing sound, vision, text, and performance as storytelling tools creating radical, controversial cultural engagements. At the root of her practice are questions about our humanity as she rewrites new mythologies. A recipient of the Pittsburgh Business Times WomenFirst award in 2017, she has received awards, grants and commissions from The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, August Wilson Center, Advancing the Black Arts, Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and the Trinidad Theater Festival among others.

Amber Michelle Epps is a multidisciplinary artist who creates work using various found and discarded objects from nature and other unexpected places such as thrift stores. The work that she creates is inspired by spirituality, humanism, and the occult. Amber, also known as HollyHood–the “mom of Pittsburgh hip hop”–recently released her newest album Yellow Jacket.

Fran Flaherty is a deaf artist living in Pittsburgh for over 25 years. As a first generation immigrant from the Philippines, her work is centered in issues surrounding migrant family relations and assimilation, maternal feminism, disability aesthetics, and social work. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Studio Arts Program, Fran’s work has been shown nationally and internationally. She was recently named in Art 511 Magazine’s “Top Ten NYC Artists Now.”

Carolina Loyola-Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator. She works primarily in media arts, including single-channel video art, video installations, video design for theater, digital printmaking, documentary, and has ventured into performance through theater and dance. Her work has been shown in the United States and abroad, and has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Heinz Endowments among others.

Bianca L. McGraw is a Pure Ink Poetry Slam Co-Host and Event Coordinator, Higher Education Advocate and international practicing multimedia installation/performance artist that uses art, poetry, performance and space as a vehicle for discussion about identity, diversity and perspectives while exploring personal, societal and communal experiences.

Brazilian born, Pittsburgh raised Liana Maneese is an award-winning activist, artist, visionary entrepreneur, and catalyst for new and creative ways to engage. She is an Afro-Brazilian transracial adoptee on a mission to excite folks around the power of personal responsibility, knowledge of self, and how that power can be harnessed to change the world. Adopting Identity: The Exploration of Lies, Luck, and Legitimacy, raises questions about interracial relationships and building emotional resiliency.

Maritza Mosquera is a visual artist, poet, painter, and cook whose creations often accompany dialogues with community. Her written and visual work has been presented regionally and nationally, as well as in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ireland, and Chile. Her work has been funded by the Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative of the Pittsburgh Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Americans for The Arts, The Buncher Foundation, The Snow Foundation and Arts Midwest.

Marielle (She/They) stage name N’gana, is a Buffalo native and mother of two, who enjoys writing and performing her work that is reflective of her experiences as a queer black femme. Since 2016 N’gana has been organizing with her political home Black Love Resist in the Rust /Just Resisting, a local people of color community organization dedicated to dismantling the white supremacist hetro- patriarchal society by empowering , educating and healing Black and Brown  people. She believes one of the greatest acts of resistance is finding healing through artistic expression. She currently co- facilitates Black Magnolias, a Black and People of Color creative writing workshop with Richie Willis and is a Contributing writer for FlaggrantCity.com, an online blog site https://flagrantcity.com/author/noirdelacreme/

Sara Tang is an artist, illustrator, and creative facilitator who has called many places home, including Pittsburgh. Tang is the founder of the creative collaborations community Sip n’ Sketch Pittsburgh. She has worked with those who have been affected by cancer and other life experiences in creative therapy excavation workshops. She has studied the arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and with Immanuel Icons. draw-me-in.com

#notwhite collective is a group of 14 women artists elevating the stories of the others. Those who do not fit neatly in the consensus boxes, neatly in cultural categories.

#notwhite collective is a bi/multi-racial/cultural, immigrant or descendants of immigrants. They have come together, to question, to investigate, dig deep into what identity is within and without the construct and context of white – not in skin color, but as a system of oppression, a system they do not align ourselves with. In lieu of police brutality, calls for bans, for walls, they hope to provide an artistic platform for difficult discussions on the complexities of cultural identity in America to move us towards humanity.

From a video shot on February 16, 2018 at Pittsburgh, PA’s South Side Brew House Gallery:

www.facebook.com/notwhitecollective/

instagram: notwhitecollective

Premier Solo Exhibit by Johanna C. Dominguez

Opened: Friday, September 14, 6 p.m.- 9 p.m. with a wine and hors d‘oeuvres Reception

Closed: Friday, November 2

Where: ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art – 148 Elmwood Avenue – Buffalo, NY

After the November 2016 election, Johanna Dominguez felt compelled to do something. Something ended up picking up her camera and documenting the different local rallies and efforts of activists across Western New York. She has combined these images with images she has taken abroad to bring together this show. The series of photographs have been taken between 2016 – 2018. There are many threats facing both people and animals today, and while these threats may seem specific, Dominguez’s work shows that the world is a lot smaller than we think.

Many may think “Water is Life” is specific to Standing Rock, but through Dominguez’s lens we see that this issue spreads far beyond the Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy corporations are capitalizing on and suppressing people across the globe. Habitats and ecosystems are also under siege both locally and abroad. It is not all doom and gloom though. There’s people and efforts out there to try and reclaim what was lost. One World: Issues Across & Through Skins shows the many positive efforts to make a space for life.

Photo: © Johanna C. Dominguez

Dominguez wishes to point out that her camera is simply a vehicle and that the true stars are those within the photographs. They are the warriors. They are the changemakers. They are the ones on the frontlines fighting every day.

                             Marilyn Anderson’s new book (en inglés y español)

                                              Feature by Orin Langelle

Grabados del libro Guardianes de las artes Images of the book Guardians of the Arts

Amherst, NY, 26 October 2017–Artist and author Marilyn Anderson gave a presentation to the Weaver’s Guild of Buffalo at the Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village on her new book Guardianes de las artes / Guardians of the Arts.

Anderson states in her newest book that it “aims to foster a deeper appreciation for the beauty and history of Guatemalan arts…to inspire respect, empathy and support for Guatemalan artists and artisans.”

The book is illustrated by forty-three prints of her work, that were ten years in the making. Her prints illustrate long established Guatemalan arts and crafts techniques, and were inspired by traditional wood cuts and used some of the most ancient of printmaking techniques. They are organized into sections defined by fabrication techniques and raw materials.

Her involvement with the arts and crafts of Guatemala began in the 1960s and her fascination with the process of weavers and weaving.

Carol Pirson (l) of the Weavers Guild of Buffalo, admires a weaving that Anderson is holding. photo: Langelle

Carol Pirson (l) of the Weavers Guild of Buffalo, admires a weaving that Anderson is holding. photo: Langelle

Anderson’s talk for the Weaver’s Guild of Buffalo not only weaved a story of her learning from the people who were the artisans and how they work and the different types of processes involved, but her backstory of the history in Guatemala that shed light on the repression artisans and others lived through.

As a documentary photographer I found this history, in her talk, and in the “Supplementary Essays” at the end of her book, a fascinating and necessary historical look at what is so often forgotten – or not even known by many in the U.S. The information in Guardianes de las artes / Guardians of the Arts is a behind the scenes look at culture, Mayan arts, and change and ecology – plus a section on weaving and survival during La Violencia.

So why does art need guardians?

La Violencia: The 1954 coup d’état, which overthrew the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz, brought repression to the people. [OL Note: the coup d’état was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).] The victims included trade unionists, leaders of cooperatives and peasants.  Armed resistance to the repression began in the 1960s.

During La Violencia, Mayas suffered massacres, bombing, dislocation and rape. photo: Langelle

During La Violencia, Mayas suffered massacres, bombing, dislocation and rape.  photo: Langelle

In the 80s extensive repression intensified, aimed especially at indigenous peoples.

“Nearly 500 Guatemalan communities were destroyed. Maya women and men from areas designated by the army as ‘subversive’ did not wear their traditional clothing whose patterns and colors identified their ethnic group and community,” Anderson explained.

She continued, “Hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled and found their way to safety in Mexico [many in Chiapas refugee camps] or other countries, leaving behind property, houses and animals. Through forests and over rivers and mountains, many Maya refugee women carried their backstrap looms. Even if they left their looms behind, they carried within themselves the knowledge to build and use new ones.”

Men and boys crocheted shoulder bags. Anderson shows an example of that work made in a Chiapas, Mexico refugee camp. photo: Langelle

Men and boys crocheted shoulder bags. Anderson shows an example of that work made in a Chiapas, Mexico refugee camp. photo: Langelle

Ecology and Arts and Crafts: Anderson describes in her book that “Guatemalan arts and crafts are connected to their environment…An holistic relationship existed between the earth, which gave the raw materials for the objects that artisans made, and the users of these objects.”

Sustaining Culture:

                                                   I will never stop wearing my traditional clothing until the day I die. – Desidria Camposeco of Jacaltenango, 1996

Anderson says Desidria’s wearing traditional clothing is a form of resistance. A commitment to one’s culture plays a part of resisting economic and political forces and confronts prejudice and consumerism.

“Mayas keep their culture alive in many ways: millions speak, write and appreciate the 22 Mayan languages; they understand the universe; the world and humans’ place in it through their cosmovisión; the ancient K’iche’ creation narrative, The Popol Vub, has continued importance to modern day Mayas; story-telling music, dance and plays are other examples of traditional culture that play an important part in the lives of many Mayas.” – Marilyn Anderson

So why does art need guardians?

Because without art, cultural identity can be lost or worse, destroyed, threatening the very fabric of peoples’ true history.

To order Marilyn Anderson’s new book Guardianes de las artes / Guardians of the Arts, Relief Prints, Coloring Books and Note Card sets, please go to www.proartemaya.org/ or email manderson@igc.org

From the Proto Arte Maya website:

The latest addition to the Pro Arte Maya Project is the book: Guardianes de las artes: grabados de artistas y artesanos de Guatemala/ Guardians of the Arts: Prints of Guatemalan Artists and Artisans.

Completed in 2016, work on this book has occupied Marilyn over the past ten years. Copies are available in the United States through this website as well as several bookstores and online stores. The publisher, Editorial Ediciones Del Pensativo, is located in Antigua, Guatemala and makes the book available in bookstores in Guatemala.

                                New York bookstores carrying the book include:

                     Greenwood Books, 123 East Avenue, in downtown Rochester
Before your Quiet Eyes, 439 Monroe Avenue, Rochester
Talking Leaves Books, 3158 Main Street and 951 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo (near Bidwell)