Celebrating Erie County (2022)

Unearthing Erie County
Unearthing Erie County: Faces & Places from the CEPA Archive
A city and its school, UB school of architecture
A City and its School - UB School of Architecture & Planning
Great Day in Jazz
Great Day in Jazz

Since its inception, CEPA, has made a point to capture  the photographic memory of Erie County. In conjunction with Erie County’s Bicentennial Committee – EC200, CEPA, through generous support from Erie County, and sponsorship from The Baird Foundation, The M&T Charitable Foundation, The John R. Oishei Foundation, and Largo Capital , CEPA will make this collection available to the public through exhibition, permanent digital archiving, and publication. 

In the spirit EC200, CEPA is hosting multiple events that celebrate local history, art, design, and culture. The collaborating organizations include the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and the Western New York Minority Media Professionals. We invite the community to  3 concurrent events, free to the public: 

  • The opening reception for Unearthing Erie County, Faces & Places of the CEPA Archives is on April 8, 2022 from 5-8 pm. The exhibition will include historic Buffalo photographs as well as new work created by contemporary artists, Alex Cassetti, Cathay Panebianco, and Gerald Mead, inspired by CEPA’s archive collection. 
  • The soft opening of A City and its School is on April 5, 2022 4-6 pm. The official opening is also occurring on April 8, 2022 from 5-8 pm. Please come out and celebrate not only CEPA’s fantastic photo archives, but also the School of Architecture and Planning’s investment in its host city over the past 50 years.
  • Celebrating its 10th Anniversary this month, CEPA Gallery will be hosting a staple event in Buffalo’s music scene, the Great Day in Jazz on Saturday, April 16, 2022 from 2-6 pm. Join CEPA for a reception, fun photo opportunities, and some lively jazz performances.

All three events will be taking place in the historic Market Arcade Building located at 617 Main St in Buffalo. The exhibitions will be on view  until April 30, 2022.

See below for more information about each of the exhibits and events

Exhibit Location

CEPA Gallery
FOCUS & FLUX Gallery
617 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14203

Exhibit Dates

Friday, April 8, 2022
through
Saturday, May 19, 2022
Opening Reception Friday, April 8, 2022, 5:00-8:00pm
Great Day in Jazz Event: April 16, 2022, 2:00-6:00pm

Admission
Free to the public

Exhibit Times

Wednesday, Friday, Saturday
12:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
Thursday
4:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.

UNEARTHING ERIE COUNTY: FACES & PLACES FROM THE CEPA ARCHIVES
Industrial Photo Archive

Celebrating 200 Years of Erie County

Unearthing Erie County: Faces & Places from the CEPA Archives

Curated by Véronique Côté

Exhibition opens April 8, 2022, Opening Reception 5:00-8:00pm

“Old photographs are one of the best and most lasting ways for us to under­stand the past. They present a moment in time, perfectly described, exactly as that moment appeared to the maker of the image.”

Scott Rucker for CEPA Gallery, 1980.

Since its inception, The Center for Exploratory & Perceptual Arts, has made a point to capture the photographic memory of Erie County. Over almost 50 years, through various projects such as “Buffalo’s Photographic Past” initiated in 1979, or “Portraits of Buffalo” in 1977, CEPA has preserved historical images taken in the area through public collaboration and deep dive in local basements. Through the years we have amassed an historically significant collection of faces, buildings, and localities. Only a fraction are presented here.

However, CEPA is not a collecting institution, and until recently, we did not have the infrastructure to allow the public to access this vast collection. In conjunction with the Bicentennial Celebration of Erie County, through generous support from Bicentennial Committee – EC200, Erie County, and sponsorship from The Baird Foundation, The M&T Charitable Foundation, The John R. Oishei Foundation, and many others listed below, CEPA will now make this collection available to the public through exhibition, archiving, and digitization.

With a new Archives Associate Fellow now on board, CEPA is ready to start sharing our unearthed beauties with the local community in a selection of photographs showing the rich history of Erie County, its faces and its places. This is just a preview of what our collection can be once fully interpreted.

The opening reception for Unearthing Erie County, Faces & Places from the CEPA Archives is on April 8, 2022 from 5-8 pm. The exhibition will include historic Buffalo photographs as well as new work created by contemporary artists, Alex Cassetti, Cathay Panebianco, and Gerald Mead, inspired by CEPA’s archive collection. The show is located in the first floor Focus Gallery and will run until April 30, 2022.

CEPA needs your support to continue this endeavor. Contact Emma@cepagallery.org to donate old photos from your attic, or to volunteer to help.

A City and its School
A School and Its City

A City and its School

An exhibition on the urban landscapes of Buffalo and our work within them over the past 50 years

Since its founding in 1969, in the throes of Buffalo’s decline, the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning has engaged the city’s transitioning landscapes as spaces for experimentation and innovation. The work has not only fostered Buffalo’s renaissance but generated innovation at the global scale, revealing new possibilities in community-engaged teaching and research.

To honor the places and people of Buffalo – as sources of inspiration, sites of investigation, and partners in innovation – the School is hosting A City and its School, an installation of two internationally debuted exhibitions exploring the urban landscapes of Buffalo and the School’s work within them over the past 50 years. The exhibition, installed at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, will run from April 8 – May 1, 2022. A soft opening of the exhibition will take place on April 5 from 4 pm – 5:30 pm as part of the School of Architecture and Planning’s 50+ Anniversary Celebration on April 5-6, 2022, which includes a series of public events and exhibitions celebrating the work of faculty, students and alumni.

See it Through Buffalo

“See It Through Buffalo” and “Buffalo Constructing Buffalo: From Olmsted to Van Valkenburgh” were featured in the 2018 and 2021 editions of Time Space Existence, an international exhibition in Italy that runs in parallel with the Venice Architecture Biennale. Installed biennially by the European Cultural Centre, Time Space Existence convenes hundreds of architects, artists, designers and universities from around the world to provoke conversation on the most pressing challenges facing the discipline today. The School of Architecture and Planning was recognized in its invitation for rooting design and planning education in research and intensive engagement with its host region.

See It Through Buffalo is a documentary short and cinematic tribute to the varied urban landscapes of Buffalo, where faculty and students work hand-in-hand with the community to address issues such as energy-efficient design, economic development, food systems planning, and refugee resettlement. It was co-produced with noted Buffalo filmmaker John Paget of First+Main Films, and directed by Gregory Delaney, UB clinical assistant professor of architecture, for the 2018 Time Space Existence exhibition in Venice, Italy.

The 15-minute film is a pensive-yet-hopeful, intrepid-yet-candid glimpse of our city, and a bold visual expression of the history of the city and the work of our faculty and students. “See it Through Buffalo” offers an experience of the iconic and everyday sights and sounds of place, from wind turbines alongside abandoned industry, to the machines of new industry, to the delight of children at play in new urban landscapes. The immersive experience features a full-wall projection and a custom score by the award-winning Canadian composer Eli Bennett.

Since its debut in Venice, “See It Through Buffalo” has been screened at the Ford Foundation for Social Justice in New York City in 2019 as part of a panel conversation with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Yale School of Architecture. In 2020, the film was an official selection of the United Nations-Habitat “Better Cities Film Festival” in Abu Dhabi.

Credits:

Director:                                                  Gregory Delaney
Producer:                                                 John Paget, First+Main Films
Executive Producer:                           Robert Skerker
Director of Photography:                  John Paget
Editor:                                                      Thomas Warner
Associate Producer:                              Robert Shibley
Music Composer:                                  Eli Bennett
Sound Designer:                                    Daryl Bennett
Assistant Director:                                Korydon Smith
Timelapse Cinematographers:           John Paget, Thomas Warner
Aerial Cinematographer:                      Brandon Moran
Contributing Videographers:             Nathan Peracciny, Kyle Toth
Equipment Technicians:                     Gerard Kawczinski, Wade Georgi

CEPA Gallery installation directed by Gregory Delaney and Eric Burlingame (MS Arch ’18)

Buffalo Constructing Buffalo: From Olmsted to Van Valkenburgh

The “See It Through Buffalo” film screening will be installed alongside an exhibition showcasing the School’s engagement of more than 2,000 citizen voices in the planning of the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., Centennial Park emerging on Buffalo’s Lake Erie waterfront. “Buffalo Constructing Buffalo: From Olmsted to Van Valkenburgh,” featured in the 2021 edition of Time Space Existence, is a visual narrative interpreting the civic planning process behind the park, the foundation of city plans that informed it, and the best practices research that inspired it.

A multi-layered story on the complex relationship between a school and its city, the exhibition captures the collective impact of hundreds of acts of planning, design and making in the city and region led by faculty, students and the citizens of Buffalo over the past half century. The story is presented as a series of illustrated story boards created by Buffalo-based visual artist Ariel Aberg-Riger. Dozens of planning reports, technical drawings and studies developed by the School allow visitors to explore the park’s planning process while copies of the city’s full planning framework reveal the collective vision for Buffalo’s future. A video on Imagine LaSalle produced by John Paget’s First + Main Films will also be shown as part of the exhibit.

Dean Robert G. Shibley is curator of “Buffalo Constructing Buffalo.” Exhibition design was led by former UB architecture faculty member Julia Jamrozik with assistance from UB architecture students Lukas Fetzko UB architecture students Stanicka Mathurin, Rutuja Shinde, and Christopher Sweeney. The visual narrative is by Ariel Aberg-Riger.

Lukas Fetzko (MArch ’20, BS Arch ’18) is directing the exhibition’s installation at the CEPA Gallery

The transformation of Buffalo’s LaSalle Park into a world-class waterfront park is the result of an historic gift to the city by the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, in partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, a New York-based landscape architecture firm, has led the park’s design. The City of Buffalo is an active project partner represented by its Division of Parks and Recreation, the Buffalo Urban Development Corporation, the Department of Community Services and Recreational Programming, and the Mayor’s Office of Strategic Planning. The University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning and one of its research centers, the UB Regional Institute, have been guiding the engagement process since 2018 to ensure broad and meaningful community input shape the park’s future.  

Great Day in Jazz

THE WESTERN NEW YORK MEDIA PROFESSIONALS INC AND CEPA GALLERY PRESENT GREAT DAY IN JAZZ, BUFFALO 2022.

Join us on Saturday, April 16, 2022 from 2PM to 6PM at the Historic Market Arcade Complex located at 617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY.

“GREAT DAY IN JAZZ BUFFALO 2022, SPONSORED by ZAMKRO HOMES

NET PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT WNYMMP MEDIA MENTORING PROGRAMS & CEPA GALLERY

BUFFALO –On Saturday, April 16, 2022, from 2 PM to 6 PM, Western New York Minority Media Professionals and CEPA Gallery will host “Great Day in Jazz Buffalo 2022” at the Historic Market Arcade Complex located at 617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY. The “Great Day in Jazz in Buffalo” photograph taken in April of 2012 featured the area’s most notable jazz musicians and is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The photo project was based on the landmark 1958 photograph “A Great Day in Harlem.” Buffalo jazz legend Elvin Shepherd was living and working in Harlem at the time of the photo but was unavailable on the day of the shoot. The photograph is Buffalo’s way of honoring him while helping to restore his former home into a living museum.

Doors will open at 2 PM, with a 3 PM photo premier and cocktail hour from 4 PM to 5 PM that features a performance by The Bobby Jones Trio. 

Limited Edition prints will be available at the event. Net proceeds will benefit the CEPA Gallery and the Sattler Broadway Theater Restoration Project.

Great Day in Jazz

Sponsors for Unearthing Erie County: Faces & Places from the CEPA Archives

Erie County Bicentennial Logo
Flying Bison
Red Beard
M&T Bank Logo
Oishei Foundation Logo
Stenclik Family Charitable Fund
Largo Logo

Sponsors for Great Day in Jazz

WNY Minority Media Professionals
Zamkro Homes
Great Day in Jazz
Erie County Logo