The Univesity at Buffalo Department of Arts organized a Western NY regional High School Exhibition called “Into the Open”. Its an exhibit of art created by the students in Western NY schools located in Buffalo. The exhibit can be viewed at the Room B45 Center of the Arts Building at the University at Buffalo. The exhibit will be open from the 13th of February till the 5th of March. Upon contact with the Art resource manager at the CfA, Mark Snyder, who played a major part in organizing this exhibit, we found that the exhibit is viewable from Tuesday to Thursday 1-6 PM and Friday and Saturday 12-3 PM.
The Exhibit had a variety of different artwork of multiple genres ranging from abstract art to contemporary art. On our visit to the exhibit on Saturday, we were expecting a crowd of viewers but to our surprise, we were the only people there. This is probably because we decided to visit during a Saturday. All of the art presented was beyond our expectations, there was a section solely dedicated to gun control. There was a display of a handgun made out of school supplies which implies the absence of gun control in schools and then there was another display which included live screen grabs of all the texts that took place during school shootings which had a profound impact on me as it showed the tense and scary situations the students were going through at the time.
It’s amazing to see a small room able to contain the minds and free expressions of all the students, The artworks presented had a dark tone to them, they mostly dealt with sadness, depression or a loss of someone. An example would be the artwork titled “Reality Check” by Alberta Joyce that shows a girl child progressing through life, What starts as a happy child ends up with a very depressed looking woman at the end showing all the hardship that she had to go through.
Other than regular art sculptures and paintings there were also some great photographs presented. A good example would be Jenna Hoffman’s “Invasion”, which shows a fantastic portrait of a girl with her face partially submerged in water and is covered by what looks like to be a tentacle.
There were also large landscape displays such as the abstract “Polmona” By George B, which depicts a large dark abstract landscape of what seems to be high winds.
Overall, I feel that this exhibit is a must view for someone even remotely interested in art, Mostly because it shows the amount of creativity stored within the young minds of students that attend the high school around us. Unfortunately, there was nobody available for comment on the event thus for more information on the exhibit such as viewing times, venue and content, you can get in touch with Mark Snyder in his office at room 129 CFA.
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