Big Orbit - Exhibition Opening

BENEATH / SUSPICION  Excerpts from the notebook of T.D.H. Castle-Tunnel Master 2nd Class an immersive installation by GARY SCZERBANIEWICZ winner of big orbit's 2012 members' exhibition      opening reception SATURDAY, APRIL 27 from 8-11p.m.  BIG ORBIT GALLERY 30d essex street buffalo, new york 14213 712-4355    Sczerbaniewicz's practice involves an insatiable fascination with interior and often, uncanny architectural spaces such as tunnels, mineshafts, catacombs, sewers, fallout shelters, basements, crawlspaces, confessional booths, and myriad other forms of Subterranea. This passion articulates itself in the form of immersive installations and various other two and three-dimensional strategies (drawings, models, videos, etc.). The work asserts and demonstrates the connections between these spaces and their historical, psychological, sociological, or political stratas. Sczerbaniewicz states, "I seek to disorient the viewer in an attempt to break the staid and often detached, passive, and familiar approach to consuming artworks. I believe that it is only in this hermetic space where authentic communication between artist and viewer occurs. To this end I employ tactics of individual viewer experience, physical engagement (such as compelling the spectator to crawl, crouch, lay, or adopt an atypical posture within a viewing space), and use of scale shifts."    Vignette, 2010, mixed media installation/performance   Gary Sczerbaniewicz received his BFA in mixed media aculpture from Alfred University in 1995.  He will complete his MFA from the University of Buffalo's Visual Studies Department this May.  Beneath/Suspicion is Gary's MFA Thesis Exhibition, and continues a long history of technically masterful and psychologically impactful installations and performances. The exhibition runs through June 9, 2013

Squeaky Wheel - Regional Artist Access Residency

REGIONAL ARTIST ACCESS RESIDENCY PREMIERE
FRI., APR. 26TH @ 7:00 PM       LOCATION: SQUEAKY WHEEL

Squeaky Wheel’s Regional Artist Access Residency (RAAR!) program annually provides equipment and facility access to emerging media artists in the Western New York region. Join this year's residency participants as they premiere brand new projects. This event is free and open to the public.
 
 
THE ARTISTS + THEIR PROJECTS:
 
Kyle Butler is a visual artist from Michigan who currently lives in Buffalo, New York. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus in painting from Central Michigan University in 2008 and received his Master's degree in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo in the spring of 2010.
 
Shasti O'Leary Soudant has been a professional graphic designer and photographer for the last twenty-one years. She has one child, one spouse, one business and no pets. In her art practice, she employs a wide range of media, including photography, performance, sculpture, video, film, music, graphic design and mechanical engineering to explore and interrogate vanity, aging, sexuality and the ways in which we edit the self in reaction to culture, politics and emotion.
 
Through collaborative dual-channel video and performative sculpture, Kyleand Shasti will stage a large scale, involuntary snail migration to illustrate the slow tensions between historical and existential dichotomies that often result in frustrating truncations of, diversions from, and compromises in, a given life's trajectory.  The viewer is invited to impose their will onto the snails' disposition by initiating their trip from one end of the gallery (beginnings) to the other (conclusions). The viewers "help" at their own discretion, assuming the interjectionary role of life's unresolved dichotomies and provoking their consequence.
 
 
 
Lauren Rebecca Gay was born in beloved Buffalo. She went to the city’s public Montessori and City Honors School. Since graduating from Buffalo State college and receiving her certification to teach Secondary English she has been practicing the written word and art in the world at large. As a substitute teacher she has turned science classrooms into open mics. She invented POPPress in early 2012 as a self-publishing and creative endeavor specializing in hand-drawn, hand-bound goods; she strung together 81 books.
 
Isaac Johnson went to UB for too long and learned too little. Residing in lovely Buffalo, he reads and writes and films and watches. He has performed and screened work all over Buffalo and gets lost very easily. Very interested in everything, fearing nothing really ever gets done, Isaac will continue trying.
 
Lauren and Isaac's multimedia docu-fiction will provide an intimate look into a couple's 9 months of pregnancy and the resulting child's first month of life. Blending diary like video, poetry and performance, the border between documentation and artistic representation will be blurred in the protagonists' all encompassing yet subtly elliptical journey.
 
 
 
Emerging from the small but eclectic film scenes of Austin and Houston, Matthew Hardesty is a sometimes-resident of Buffalo, NY. A recent graduate of the Austin School of Film, he has been involved in dozens of short films and infamous features. Through working with budding artists like himself, he continues to shell out phenomenal expression in leagues of his own creativity while modestly waiting for the next big shot. 
 
Using the "Vow of Chastity" rules outlined by filmmaking group Dogme 95, Matthew is creating a short narrative video about sex and suicide.