My first encounter with the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology (BCAT) student artists participating in LEROI: Living in Color was early this year. We met at their center located on Main St. in Buffalo.
If you’re not aware of this amazing facility, it is based on a nationally recognized arts and training center, and it provides resilient learners needing targeted supports with educational and career-centered opportunities, in an environment of hope and discovery.
BCAT students were chosen to be part of my exhibition due to the organization’s mission to motivate high school youth to stay in school, explore their creativity and identity, and plan for their future through an arts and technology afterschool program.
The first day I spent with the teens involved with the program, my goal was twofold. First: to allow all of us to get to know one another. Second: for me to share information about my art so they could begin to form ideas on how they might create their “take” on my artists’ vision.
As I spoke to them about this project and offered suggestions of how they might interpret someone else’s work, I preached one of my guiding creative principles, “Take what you have and expand on it.” And as the project moved forward, that’s exactly what they did.
These kids blew me away with their digital interpretations of my art--- the ways they expanded their works that made them even more creative than my own!
I look forward to art lovers enjoying their work, as well as the work of all the students who are joining me in, “Living in Color.”
LEROI: Living in Color Exhibition includes the work of students from Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology (BCAT,) Buffalo Public Schools (BPS,) Just Buffalo Literary Center (JBLC,) and Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center. The exhibition will be on view at the Burchfield Penney Art Center through March 26, 2023, presented by M&T Bank, with additional support from organizations and individuals throughout the Western New York community.