Read the article by Queenseyes at www.buffalorising.com.
On Friday July 12, 2013 there is a rather unusual and exciting art/music performance coming to the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, with a range of performers unlike any others. ”I am currently doing art therapy with the iXpress art program through Aspire of WNY (FB),” Sarah Field Sonnenberg (iXpress Art Facilitator at Aspire of WNY) told me. “The event is called “Odyssey” and it focuses on imagery and text depicting the collective journey of a community of artists with cerebral palsy. There will also be an original musical performance by the Buffalo Chamber Players.”
Traditionally, the iXpress art program has incorporated painting and ceramics, but as times have changed so have the mediums with which individuals with disabilities work. Today’s programming provides access to digital photography and screenprinting, poetry, songwriting and music composition, digital storytelling, radio plays, and narrative and experimental moving pictures. The results can be seen first hand through newfound collaborations with art and music institutions such as the Burchfield-Penney and Buffalo Chamber Players.
“Comprising twenty-two large canvases and nine minutes of original music for a seven-piece chamber ensemble, Odyssey presents the memories, hopes, goals, fears, and desires of this highly diverse community of artists who are perhaps too often and too hastily identified as developmentally disabled.” -Alex Glenfield, Art Facilitator.