The Gusto Blog

It's the eighth day of the 2012 Buffalo Infringement Festival, and things are heating up in Allentown. Check out my suggestions below, or wade through the official schedule. Either way, today's a good day to get out there and Infringe:

• Franklin LaVoie, the gifted artist and storyteller behind "Incident at Deer Lick" has also been giving a performance of three Celtic stories. You can check that out today at noon in Westside Stories. LaVoie will also present "Incident at Deer Lick" in the same venue at 5 p.m.

• Sticking with the storytelling theme, the five-minute short story open mic "Buffalore" is slated for 5 p.m. at Sp@ce 224.

• At 6 p.m., Montreal-based singer-songwriter Elgin Skye performs at Night House. Here's the description of her work from the Infringement website: "Elgin-Skye McLaren lives in Montreal where she writes poems, songs and lonely love letters. Armed with an electric guitar and a looping pedal, she plays lo-fi indie-pop with a style reminiscent of artists such as Regina Spektor, Bjork, and Braids. Elgin-Skye’s politeness and humble disposition betray her booming, buoyant voice. Her songs are thoughtful reflections on love, loss, and woodland creatures. Her sets may include, but are not limited to: clapping, whistling, cooing, singing, stomping."

• From 7 to 8 p.m., the Montrealers from Optative Theatre Laboratories presents "Car Stories," the Infringement show that started it all, near The Melting Point on Allen Street. If you haven't experienced this unorthodox style of theater -- in which the back set of the car is the theater and the front seat is the stage -- you can catch the show today, Friday or Saturday.

• For you night owls, head over to Roxy's at midnight to catch a performance of Buffalo burlesque group The Stripteasers performing their show "Thank God for Lesbians."

--Colin Dabkowski

Tonight there's plenty of action happening in the Infringement Festival's non-Allentown outposts (not to say Allentown itself isn't hopping like mad with Infringement activities), including Main (St)udios, The Vault, Wasteland Studios and Filigree's. After checking out the very cool, extremely funny "Reader's Theater" at Burning Books, I took a short tour of the first three of those venues. Here a little of what I saw:

Above, artist Tara Sasiadek paints the face of Nicole Kujawski outside Main (St)udios, where a small crowd was gathered as the evening's art opening wound down. This space is also the site of a recently completed mural that's been turning heads in the up-and-coming neighborhood on Main Street.

After that I headed to Wasteland Studios, where I encountered this magnificent piece of homemade couture...

Continue reading "Wandering the Infringement outposts" »

Later this week, look for my Gusto story on the upcoming Infringement Festival, which runs in an estimated 72 venues from July 26 to Aug. 5. In the meantime, check out the festival's full (and very much subject-to-change) schedule, just posted at infringebuffalo.org.

--Colin Dabkowski

Earlier this evening, members of Buffalo's cultural community dominated an hour-long public hearing of Buffalo Common Council. The cultural funding advocates, responding to a city budget that includes no funding for the arts, echoed and in many cases built upon the eloquent arguments of last year's Erie County cultural funding crisis.

Together, they made a strong collective case for the restoration of a small and stable level of funding to benefit the myriad cultural organizations within its limits. Buffalo cut the majority of arts funding out of its budget during the economic downturn that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and has not restored it since --though, after much haggling, it did provide emergency funding to arts groups during last year's county funding crisis.

Some highlights from the evening's remarks follow. (Please excuse the shaky camera work and note that most speakers or their organizations are members of the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance.)

Tod Kniazuk, executive director of the Arts Services Initiative:

Fortunato Pezzimenti, producing director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company:

Meg Quinn, artistic director of Theatre of Youth

Laurie Dean Torrell, executive director of Just Buffalo Literary Center:

Randall Kramer, executive and artistic director of MusicalFare Theatre:

Edmund Cardoni, executive driector of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center:

Jamie Moses, publisher of Artvoice:

Molly Quckenbush, executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site:

James Lanker, president of the Give for Greatness board and University at Buffalo professor:

--Colin Dabkowski

Henry Hitchings, the British critic and author of "The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English" and "The Language Wars: A History of Proper English" will give a talk at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Saturn Club. The event, to be held in the club's second-floor lounge, is sponsored by Buffalo's branch of the international English-Speaking Union and costs $10 per person.

--Colin Dabkowski

Vincent O’Neill takes part in the celebration of Charles Dickens and his works. Sharon Cantillon/News file photo

On the last international tour he took before his death, Charles Dickens stopped in Buffalo for two popular readings of his work. (His tour manager was terrified, according to his report of the trip, that a "rowdy element" of Western New Yorkers would overtake the affair, though it did not. Dickens himself was "much struck by the absence of female beauty from the readings.")

Since that visit -- researched and re-created by local actor, meteorologist and Dickens enthusiast Mike Randall for his annual performance of "A Christmas Carol" -- Western New York hasn’t let go of its appetite for the popular and prolific chronicler of Victorian society and its seedy underbelly.

This afternoon (March 25) at 2, prompted by the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth in February, a group of local actors will give a reading of Dickens’ works in the Burchfield Penney Art Center (1300 Elmwood Ave.). The roster includes Megan Callahan, Morgan Chard, Wendy Hall, Jimmy Janowski, John Kaczorowski, Patrick Moltane, Vincent O’Neill, Adam Rath, Eric Rawski, Doug Weyand and Katie White. They’ll read excerpts from "The Pickwick Papers," "Oliver Twist," "David Copperfield," "Bleak House" and "Great Expectations."

Admission is free.

-- Colin Dabkowski

The Small Press Book Fair returns to the Karpeles Manuscript Museum.  Charles Lewis/News file photo

The presses themselves are small, sure, but the book fair that local artist and print shop manager Christopher Fritton founded to showcase them is anything but. Every year, as the small press movement grows and vendors seek spots for Fritton’s annual Small Press Book Fair, he is surprised at the speed with which the space runs out. And this year, to no one’s surprise, the record has been shattered again for the sixth annual event.

The fair runs from noon to 6 p.m. today (March 24) in the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum (453 Porter Ave.) and features tables from well over 100 individual artists and presses from across the region. Participants include local outfits like BlazeVOX, the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection and Sugar City and farther-flung organizations and artists, including Houston-based Night Owls Poster Shop, Toronto-based Broken Pencil magazine and Philadelphia’s Little Beast Press, among scads of others.

As in past years, the schedule includes a series of workshops on letterpress, screen-printing and other topics today. It’s also complemented by a post-fair party featuring music by Jack Toft, Energy Club, Damian, UVB-76 and others at the Vault (702 Main St.) at 9 tonight.

Admission to the fair is free; find more info at www.buffalosmallpress.org.

-- Colin Dabkowski

Give for Greatness Executive Director Megan Callahan speaks in June, 2011 in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Photo by Charles Lewis / The Buffalo News.

Give for Greatness, the fundraising and arts advocacy organization launched last year during the Erie County cultural funding crisis, is hosting its first Students for the Arts festival this afternoon in Kleinhans Music Hall.

The event, meant to highlight the organization's incipient mentorship program and to spread the word about its 2012 fundraising campaign, features work by G4G mentors Jennifer Fitzery, Cassondra Argeros, Patrick Moltane, Jill Greenberg, Jim Bush, Sarah Haykel and Marcus Wise and many local students. Representatives from 18 local cultural groups will also be on hand so local sutdents can learn more about the educational opportunities they offer.

Visit G4G's website for more info.

--Colin Dabkowski

Tod A. Kniazuk, the first executive director of the Arts Services Initiative. Photo by Robert Kirkham / The Buffalo News.

The Arts Servcies Initiative, a broadly based organization (with no website!) that hopes to bring the concerns of arts and culture to the forefront of the Buffalo-Niagara region's agenda, has elected its first full board of directors.

The new board, announced on Tuesday by the organization's executive director Tod A. Kniazuk, contains the usual suspects from Western New York's art world as well as serveral members whose presence on the board speaks to its wider regional ambitions.

First, the more or less usual suspects, who hail mostly from Erie County's active cultural world or from institutions with longstanding arts affiliations:

E. Frits Abell, the preservationist and arts advocate who founded the Buffalo Expat Network and the fledgling Echo art fair.

Laurie Dean Torrell, longtime director of Just Buffalo Literary Center.

Paulette Harris, the accomplished artistic director of the Paul Robeson Theatre.

Sarah JM Kolberg, a consultant and adjunct professor in the University at Buffalo's Media Study department who formerly served on the staff of former New York State assemblyman Sam Hoyt.

Kate Koperski, director of the Castellani Art Museum since 2007.

Randall Kramer, co-chair of the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance and artistic and executive director of MusicalFare Theatre.

Gerald Mead, local artist, collector, curator and Buffalo State College professor.

Theresa Quinn, attorney with Magavern Magavern Grimm and local pianist and musical director.

JoAnne Schwartz, a vice president of community reinvestment with M&T Bank.

And now for the slightly less expected members of the inaugural ASI board.

James Allen, director of the Amherst Industrial Development Agency.

Mark McGovern, project manager with the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Irene Rykaszewski, director of the Lewiston Council on the Arts.

The inclusion of BNMC and AIDA officials speaks to the desire of the ASI's first director to spread the conversation about arts and culture beyond the echo chamber it sometimes inhabits. The inclusion of a Lewiston cultural figure is also a plus sign, in terms of casting a wider net that reaches beyond Erie County. This reads to me like good news, though in the future it would be good to see the balance tilt a little bit more to extra-cultural circles.

--Colin Dabkowski

Michael Basinski is the featured performer at Big Night

The next Big Night is upon us. The popular monthly cross-cultural event, launched by Michael Kelleher and Aaron Lowinger in 2009 and presented by Just Buffalo Literary Center, Talking Leaves Books and the Western New York Book Arts Center, gets going at 8 p.m. today (Feb. 25) in the Book Arts Center (468 Washington St.).

The featured performer is Michael Basinski, curator of the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection and a prolific poet with many publications to his name, including "Trailers," "Poems Popeye Papyrus" and "Strange Things Begin to Happen When a Meteor Crashes in the Arizona Desert." The evening will also feature music by local composer, musician and Burchfield Penney Art Center curator Don Metz, who recently collaborated with Basinski on a music project called "Funginii."

The evening, as usual, will feature food from local chef and BlazeVOX books publisher Geoffrey Gatza. Admission is a cool $5, or $4 for members of Just Buffalo, WNYBAC and CEPA Gallery. More information
is at www.justbuffalo.org.

-- Colin Dabkowski