About the Artists

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Kyle Butler

Kyle Butler is an artist who works in painting, video and audio and lives in Buffalo, New York. Butler was born and raised in rural Michigan. After completing his BFA at Central Michigan University in 2008, he moved to Buffalo where he earned his MFA in Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo.  In 2008, Kyle Butler worked as an Instructor of Record at the University of Buffalo. In 2010, he became a Sol Lewitt Apprentice for wall drawing #1268 at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, along with his work as an instructor at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. In 2012, Butler performed in a John Bock performance at the Albright Knox Art Gallery. In 2013, Butler worked as an instructor at Squeaky Wheel Productions. Butler is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Art at Villa Maria College. 

 

Adele Henderson  

Adele Henderson (b. 1955) grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska where she received her BFA at the University of Nebraska. After extensive travel and an MFA from Arizona State University she joined the University at Buffalo (State University of New York) Department of Art, where she has taught since 1987. She happily resides in Buffalo with her husband and muse Robert Hirsch and their dog Marty. 

 

Honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Works on Paper, in 1996 and residency fellowships including MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Brandywine Workshop, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Open Studio (Toronto) and the Electronic Arts Institute at Alfred University. Henderson's artwork has been exhibited in over 33 solo exhibitions across the US and over 160 national and international group exhibitions. A complete resume is available on request.

 

Henderson's work held in public collections includes, among others: Albright • Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Blanton Museum, Austin TX; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA; Burchfield-Penny Art Gallery, Buffalo NY; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Boston MA; Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Kennedy Museum of American Art, Athens, OH; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester NY; National Museum of American Art, Washington DC; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City MO; New York Public Library, New York NY; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale AZ; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln NE; and the Whitney Museum, New York NY.

 

Gerald Mead

Gerald Mead’s small scale, photographic and found material collages and assemblages are in the permanent collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, George Eastman Museum, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Castellani Art Museum, Oregon State University, Sprint Foundation, Taube Museum (Minot, SD), and the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction (Santa Fe, NM). They have also been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and in Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, Poland, Russia, and China, and are published in six collegiate textbooks. Mead has lectured on his work at Cambridge University and Chautauqua Institution and received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. He earned his MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo, is a Lecturer Emeritus of Art & Design at Buffalo State University and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Niagara University in 2020.  

 

Peter Sowiski

Peter Sowiski was born in 1949 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He received a BA in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 1971, and an MFA in Printmaking from Ohio State University in 1974.  He is primarily known as a pulp painter, with work in numerous collections in America.  Over the last fifty years he has shown in over two hundred exhibitions, and held over eighty-five workshop, lecture and visiting artist posts locally and internationally. He is an Emeritus Professor of Fine Arts at SUNY Buffalo State, where he taught from 1974- 2007, did stints as Chair of Fine Arts, of Design, and received the President’s Award for Excellence in Service to the College. He served three terms as President of The North American Hand Papermakers. He has worked at Abaca Press as chief screen printer since its inception in 1994. Since retiring, he continues messing up his studio in Buffalo.

 

virocode

virocode is the collaborative practice of Andrea Mancuso, Claudia D’Auria, and Peter D’Auria that explores the balance between the inorganic and the organic through an artmaking practice that seeks to capture and reveal blossoming inorganic life. 

virocode has been exhibiting work in photography, video, installation and the digital arts throughout the United States and in Europe including: The Museum of Modern Art and Paul Robeson Gallery in the New York City metropolitan region; Artist Television Access, Artspace, Southern Exposure Gallery, and the Emanuel Walter and Etholl McBean Galleries in San Francisco; The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, Diverseworks Art Space in Houston, Texas, The University of Arizona Art Gallery, in Tucson, Arizona, Impakt Festival in The Netherlands, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabruck, Germany and at the AKG Art Gallery, Burchfield-Penney Art Center, CEPA gallery, Squeaky Wheel and Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York. virocode began working together at the State University of New York at Buffalo, studying with Marion Faller, Paul Sharits and Tony Conrad.

 

Edreys Wajed

Edreys Wajed is celebrated for his work as a musician, poet, playwright, jewelry designer, graphic designer, educator, entrepreneur, and muralist (including as a contributor to Albright-Knox Public Art Initiative projects The Freedom Wall, 2017, and Love Black, 2020). After establishing himself as a self-trained barber as a teenager, Wajed built his early reputation on customized hats, clothes, and hand-designed logos, all before formally studying graphic design in college. His creativity, craftsmanship, and passion to inspire people are central to his spirit of entrepreneurship.

 

Most recently, Wajed has developed a new artistic presence and voice in the form of musically inspired paintings. Suffused with unique mark-making and rhythmic movement, examples of these works are in the collections of the Burchfield Penney Art Center and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.