As the air hums with post-holidays and year-opening energies—an intermingling of anticipation and angst—most are getting back into solid work grooves, recovering from travel/visits, and perhaps planning big for the brand new year. Heading out on a late December afternoon, The Public sought out three Buffalo stories of those working in public places.
When I say “the year of the racist,” I’m not quite sure if I’m talking about 2014 or 2015. That’s up to us.
New York had its Cotton Club, Chicago its Grand Terrace, and New Orleans its Preservation Hall, but in Buffalo, the preeminent place to experience great jazz during the Great Depression was Ann Montgomery’s Little Harlem. The Little Harlem, 496 Michigan Avenue, was part of the “jazz triangle” that included the nearby Club Moonglo, Vendome, and still-active Colored Musicians Club—a few of the dozens of jazz clubs that once existed in Buffalo.
It’s easier to say what Inherent Vice isn’t than what it is.
Of course it’s a movie based on a novel by Thomas Pynchon, the first ever film adaptation of his work, but that doesn’t tell you much, as his densely contrived fiction is not the kind of stuff that sends you away thinking, “Damn, that would make a great movie!” Published in 2009, it is in many ways Pynchon’s most accessible novel: a detective story set in Los Angeles at the end of the 1960s.
Paul Feeley (1910-1966) had his first solo exhibit in the Palo Alto Public Library in 1927, when he was 17 years old; the show was drawings of his brothers. He was in a few other group shows in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until after he returned from World War II that he became the important and influential artist and teacher whose work is presented in this splendid exhibit.
One of Buffalo’s most admired and enduring leading ladies, Lisa Ludwig is currently appearing as Claire, the restless wife in A. R. Gurney’s Family Furniture, at the Kavinoky Theatre. As known for her personal sense of style as she is for her imposing stage presence and professionalism as an actor, Ludwig has played a wide range of roles—dramatic, comic, musical, classical—at the full range of Buffalo theaters, from the Kavinoky to the Robeson to BUA to MusicalFare to Jewish Rep.
Phillip Stearns’s installation on nuclear energy in the Burchfield Penney project room is something to see and contemplate. The work transforms the space into an enormous Geiger counter—comprising actually 92 individual Geiger counters, for the 92 electrons in the uranium atom—registering the ambient environment barrage of cosmic radiation in light flashes and audible crackle on a magnificent chandelier of hanging vertical bar lights.
As of New Year’s Day, the minimum wage in New York State is $8.75 an hour. By next New Year’s Day, the minimum wage will be $9 an hour. If the Coalition for Economic Justice and the AFL-CIO’s Richard Lipsitz had their way, the minimum wage would be $15 an hour. Today.
ANNE MUNTGES is a Buffalo-based artist who received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2005 and an MFA from the University at Buffalo in 2008. Her show, Skewed Perspective, opens January 12 at Jamestown’s Center Gallery, with a reception and talk on January 16, 6-8pm.
View her work at annemuntges.com
ROB LYNCH is a painter and musician. He received his Masters of Science and Bachelor of Science at SUNY Buffalo State. He teaches at Niagara Falls High School and is a painting instructor at Buffalo Arts Studio.
We had a lot of fun at The Public Launch Party at Hydraulic Hearth last month (and according to these photos, it looks like you all did too). Someone on our staff had the brilliant idea of putting up an “Ideas Board,” where attendees could post some ideas that they’d like The Public to consider in the future. Some of these ideas were very helpful. Some, not so much. Here is a selection of some of our favorites, and a gallery of our favorite photos from the event too. If you’ve got some brilliant ideas of your own, please feel free to leave them in the comments section.
[SCREENING] Called “the most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life” by no less than Ingmar Bergman, the 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason was all but lost for decades.
[FUN] For the 10th year running the Literacy New York Buffalo-Niagara (LNYBN) is using perhaps the greatest board game ever invented as a tool to raise awareness and funds to combat illiteracy. Guests are being asked to make a $20 donation which will go directly toward literacy programming in the Buffalo-Niagara region. It’s the first event of the Scrabble®Fest tournament season that goes all the way through March until the Finals at the Buffalo Central Library on Thursday, March 26.