Art in the Open Program 2023

Welcome to the Center for the Arts (UBCFA), where art is made and experienced at the University at Buffalo. Each Fall, we open our doors for guests to explore and see a variety of art in action and on display in the UBCFA, the hub of a bustling arts community where dancers, actors, filmmakers, musicians, and artists come to create and perform. Art in the Open is a chance for guests to meet university artists and go behind the scenes to get a glimpse of the art being made at UB.

Evening Performances

5 p.m.             Doors and Studios Open

• Enjoy vocal, dance, music and musical theatre performances
• Explore studios, performance, art-making spaces and labs
• See art exhibitions
• Drop in on rehearsals to experience works in process
• Tour behind the scenes and visit installations
• Meet the artists at UB throughout your journey
• Complete your metro card & enter to win tickets to CFA Performances

6:00 p.m.        Screenings Begin

• View films and digital projects

7 p.m.             Studios close and Performances continue in Atrium

• Join the artists, meet fellow UB students and guests for mingling!

This event is FREE and open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while supplies last.

Presented by the Center for the Arts in collaboration with the departments of Art, Arts Management, UB Art Galleries, Media Study, Music, and Theatre and Dance.

5 p.m.              Live DJ Performance: Moe Prime

5:30 p.m.        “Renascence”, Department of Theatre and Dance, Music Theatre 

Music Director and piano accompaniment: Matt Marco
Director: James Beaudry
Costume Design: Sam Lyko
Performing selections from the musical including Lament (Allinee NeGron),

When the Year Grows Old (Caroline Jameson, Allinee NeGron), Afternoon on A Hill (Conley Egnor, Valentina Rodriguez, Kyra Orgass), Time Does Not Bring Relief (Kyra Orgass)

5:45 p.m.        Pianist, Yinuo Huang, Department of Music

6 p.m.               The Buffalo Chips, University at Buffalo

Ensemble members performing: John DellaContrada, Zack Farnam, Matt Beebe, Greg Wynter; Ryan Butler, Cole Krieger, Alex Louis, Sam Stolber

UB's premier lower voices a cappella group performing Eight Days a Week, by the Beatles (Arranged by John DellaContrada), I Want You to Want Me, by Cheap Trick (Arranged by Jeremy Meyers) and Crazy Little Thing Called Love, by Queen (Soloist: Ryan Butler)

6:15 p.m.        Lazuli by Zodiaque Dance Company, Department of Theatre and Dance

Choreography: Autumn Eckman
Dancers: Fino, Gorny, Hankinson, Hassouna, Healey, Liguori, Mandik, Wingo, Wythe, Understudy: Tran
Rehearsal Assistant: Eck
Music: “Rhapsody in Blue” Performed by Nicola Frisardi. Composed by George Gershwin.
Costume Design: Zechariah Saenz; Sound Coordinator: Chris Ochman
See Zodiaque perform a selection from their 49th season.

6:30 p.m.        UB Guitar Ensemble, Department of Music

6:45 p.m.        Forging, by Zodiaque Dance Company, Department of Theatre and Dance

Choreography: Kerry Ring
Dancers: Gorny, Harrison (Guest Performer), Hartke, Liguori, Wingo, Wythe
Understudy: White; Rehearsal Assistant: Eck;
Music: “Kronetics” by Joel Christian Goffin, “Alive” by David Charrier 
Set Design: Jacob Clouse Costume Design: Zechariah Saenz Sound Coordinator: Chris Ochman
See Zodiaque perform a selection from their 49th season.

7 p.m.              Live DJ: Moe Prime

Open Studios Close & Artists join guests in the atrium.

@7:30 p.m.     Good night, we look forward to seeing you again at Spring Into Art on 4/30/24! 

Futura 2000: Breaking Out, Subway Wall

In dialogue with UB Art Galleries exhibition Futura 2000: Breaking Out, this mural installation is a place for visitors to tag themselves and be a part of a collaborative environment. This places all of us in the conversation with Futura and the vast history—and present—of street art.

Edreys: Back Together Again, Mural Walls

Futura 2000: Breaking Out, UB Art Galleries exhibition, First Floor Gallery

Eat, Sleep, Art, Repeat, Art-making workshop, Edreys & Alexa Wajed, Eat Off Art, Second Floor Gallery

Clashing Fragments, a duo exhibition by Department of Art MFA Candidates Ligia Sato and Misael Hernandez, Project Space (155)

Salem Browning, MFA (130)           

“My studio is filled with blue as I continue my image-based practice through cyanotype contact prints on silk.”

Jonathan Bolt, MFA (133)

            Open Studio

H Boone, MFA (138)

“I turn the euphoria of trans metamorphosis into tangible objects by sculpting and painting transgender bodies in a state of flux. Digital and physical mediums are blurred, visually and materially complicating the gender binary.”

Graphic Design, Art & Technology Lab (142)      

Demonstrations of six-needle digital embroidery, and other tools for implementation of graphic designs.

Zombie, Anthony Butler, BFA (1 minute)

Created as an artistic response to global wealth inequality. Utilizing frame by frame animation, masking, keying and manipulated video to create a mixture of ironic images meant to confront this social injustice.

Just Like Mother Used To Make, Ashley Manigo, MFA (4 mins 39 seconds)

An alternative representation and subversion of a woman in her domestic domain.

Try Not To Listen To The Masses, Sara Dembski (6 minutes 12 seconds)

The timeline of this video shows the progress of a woman’s life, and the voiceover is from the world around her. This piece is to show that regardless of what a woman does with her life, the world will always have something negative to say about it even if it is natural or something she can control.

Cruzando, Olu Akanbi, MFA (6 minutes 18 seconds)

A love letter from mother to son is set against the backdrop of changing seasons and urban landscapes.

Open Afterword, James Pardue (MFA), Will Ryan & Dante Galliano (3 minutes 33 seconds)

Short experimental film that echoes to a time of loss.

Visual Poetry: Overwhelmed, Liya Mena (2 minutes 6 seconds)

Overwhelming is nothing but overwhelming. - Eileen Myles

A Crimson After, Jack Kincaid, MFA (5 minutes 21 seconds)

An exploration of landscapes fused with effects and macro footage.

Shattered Reflection, Mohammed Azman (MA), Sarah Clark, & Dior Gillins (5 minutes 47 seconds)

Therapists are not the know-all, cure-all. Sometimes, they too suffer. Follow the road to destruction with this mysterious therapist. Perhaps her birthday wish will come through. Shattered Reflection is a drama, narrative, horror film that is about the well being of people and their mental health. Sometimes, people have doubts about themselves and their relationships with others. Sometimes, the best of us need help.

Falling, Blake Barit, MFA (11 minutes)

Digital re-presentation of the hypnotizing nature of a forbidden love affair.

The Beauty of The Hijab, Mohammed Azman MA, (4 minutes 10 seconds)

Are they really oppressed, or maybe this is what true freedom is? Learn a thing or two about what it means to be unchained and unstoppable. If this is what they want despite the criticism, then maybe that is true freedom. And no one can change that. The Beauty of The Hijab is a mini-documentary composed of primarily archival/found footage regarding the debate on whether or not Hijabs (Islamic term for veil) is allowed in educational institutions. Take a few minutes to listen from the perspective of Hijabis who are proud and blessed to be able to represent themselves as symbols of freedom.

Surface Explorations: Landscape as a Medium, Jack Kincaid, MFA (2 minutes 28 seconds)

An exploration of surfaces and landscapes as a flowing medium through motion.

Mandala, DMS 110 Fall 2023 Lab 2 (5 minutes)

A compilation of computer animations created as classwork in this semester's DMS 110 - Programming for the Arts. Students wrote code to create colorful and evolving patterns based on a simple mandala prompt.

Recon of Outerland-236: A World in Unbecoming, Jack Kincaid, MFA (5 minutes 11 seconds)

A journey through an unnatural AI landscape, incorporating animation of isolated AI-generated assets, particle effects, and other practical effects.

The Glamour Is Gone but Not for Long: Mx. Ology’s Quest To Spread the Glamour in a Glamourless World, Jamie Hager, MFA (11 minutes 23 seconds)

When conservative President Bichael Showles announces that “glamour” and all forms of “glamourism” are now illegal in an effort to stop the corruption of the country’s children, self-proclaimed filthy drag performer Mx. Ology takes this news as an opportunity to start illegally creating and selling the abstract concept of glamour as an act of resistance and self-interest.

Misael Hernandez, MFA (207A)  

“My current work seeks to merge the use of landscape photographs and language. The work is an investigation into language as ownership and direction when navigating space.”

Kenny León Andino, MFA (207B)

Open Studio

Jimena Murabito, MFA (210)

“As a multidisciplinary artist, my practice is a fusion of various mediums, including sculpture, installation, performance, large-scale paint collages, poetry, video, and sound.”

Joey Goergen, MFA (210)   

“This is my studio space and working towards my thesis work.”

Joel Mulindwa, MFA (212)

“I'm currently working on pastel drawings showing different people in different vocations.

Dalton Carlson, MFA (212B)

Dalton Carlson is exploring the parallels between the domestication of humans and Atlantic Salmon through the creation of objects, paintings, and prints.

Samuel Krakowski, MFA (214A)

“Escapism is a theory of mental diversion from ordinary daily life, I am currently working in 3D animation software to create a satirical critique of the new space race and the pharmaceutical industry.”

Ligia Sato, MFA (214B)

“My photographic work embodies abstract and geometric compositions of daily urban architectural shapes, structures, textures, and colors. By representing everyday landscapes in a fragmented way, the intent is to provoke curiosity, instigate pause, and encourage a keener and more present observation of the urban space”

Cristiano Pereira, MFA (215)          

Showcasing work in progress in studio.

Ali Lazik, MFA (216)

“Medical trauma, crossing of physical boundaries, and an internal struggle over the constant urge to perform a sunny disposition in order to provide others with what they need are the accelerants of my work. I get a chance to control aspects of life that I have extremely little control over; by narrating how viewers navigate my art. I find power in commanding how my work is viewed.”

Meagan Killian, MFA (217)  

"My work is made up of unique assimilations of reality, history, and my inquisition on the world around me."

Lydia Kegler, MFA (219A)   

“Paintings and textile / embroidery installation works in progress in my studio.”

Western Imperialism: The World is a Buffet, Daphne Pugliese, MS/MFA (CFA Bridge)

Sculpture which features a facsimile of a modern 120mm mortar munition transformed into a serving tray for dyed architectural rubble. Utensils are included.

The Fall of Eden, Marc-Eric C. Baan, BA (278)                                         

Done in Photoshop using mutable layers and transparencies to give an interoperation of the story of Genesis.

Crickets, Fire, Ice, Planes, Tim Georger & Ryan Bell, PHD (290)

5:30 & 6:30 - Tim Georger & Ryan Bell will be performing a 30 minute improvised electroacoustic piece using various sound sources and sound processing techniques including Logic effects, Max MSP patches, shortwave radio, & sound synthesis. Hanyu Liao will be providing projected visuals for the duration of the performance.

Index of a Painted Film, Blake Barit, MFA (265)

Installation presents a painted 16mm film in various forms as a way of indexing the material nature of tactile work.

Experiments in Ambient Music, Chris Hansen & Blake Barritt, PHD/MFA (278)

Blake and Chris will be performing a live experiment with ambient sound and video. Chris will be mixing ambient music and found sounds while Blake simultaneously projects and remixes live visuals from his archive.

ANIMATION SHOWCASE from DMS 332 (284)

Selected digital animations from the department of media study 2023.     

In the End We Become Our Avatars, Chris Hansen, PHD (276)

Short experimental film that explores the promise of immortal life through artificial intelligence. It uses AI imagery and narration to explore the concept of living forever through new technologies.

Chroma Key, Max Wilde, BA (286)

Chroma key is a puzzle platformer about swapping a colored lens to activate/deactivate objects in the world!

Virtual Worlds, DMS 438 Class (286)

A collection of interactive, explorable 3D environments created for the class "DMS 438 Virtual Worlds"

StepUp, Vishal Maganahalli Narendra, MA (286)

A development-in-progress project that is being meticulously crafted using the advanced PoseNet TensorFlow AI model, a cutting-edge technology that tracks and analyzes body movements. It is a browser game designed to promote movement and help you burn calories.

Z-Day, Ya-ko Fan, MA (286)

The background of the game is a zombie virus outbreak. One day, the player's character woke up and found that zombies occupied the world. After he was accidentally bitten by zombies, he discovered that even if he was bitten by zombies, he would not become a zombie, and the zombies still regarded him as the same kind. Players will make choices in the story to decide the direction of the story and how the story ends.

partner star, Dana Hunt-Locklear, MFA (286)

Interactive narrative in which one must answer the burning question- who is your soulmate?

Rock Paper Scissors Royale, Dave Pape, PHD (286)

Online battle royale of Rock Paper Scissors. Join by scanning QR codes at various locations.

(A.I.) V., Arcana Imaginative, Famous Clark, PHD (270)

An entangled experience between occultism and artificial intelligence generated through OpenAI’s GPT-3 system. Arcana Imaginative is experienced via engagement with a virtual phantasm or artificial intelligence trained on a system of 5 Card Tarot divination.

Try Harder: An Homage to Location on Space and Time, solo exhibition of Frederick Wright Jones, a 2010 MFA alumni of the UB Department of Art, Lower Gallery (B45)

Luke Gordon Williamson, MFA (B21)

            Open Studio

Aidelen Montoya, MFA (B35)

“Currently working with mycelium as biodegradable option for art canvases and addressing negative and positive self talk on a microbiome level.”

Chloe Koegel, MFA (B36)   

Open Studio     

Print Making Lab (B37)       

Demonstrations of relief printing on paper and fabric.

Drama Theatre

See the design and technical team working on a “Light Focus” for Outrage, an upcoming play presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance, opening November 16. Focus led by Lynne Koscielniak.

Mainstage

Visit our BIG theatre, and the home of Center for the Arts major touring performances and events. See how it feels to be on stage and also get a backstage tour led by Tom Tucker. Be sure to also take a photo at the stop!

Scene Shop

Stop by to see the set, props and painting in progress for Outrage, an upcoming play presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance, opening November 16. Led by Gina Boccolucci

Costume Shop

See a dyeing project in progress for Outrage, an upcoming play presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance, opening November 16. Led by Zechariah Saenz and Cindy Darling

Rehearsal Workshop (B83), MFA Dance Student Open Rehearsals

5-7 p.m.            Charity John, Joshua Ikechukwu
7-7:30 p.m.       Dani Schofer

Dance Studios (B82 & B84), Undergraduate Dance Rehearsals – TBD