Meg Knowles (b. 1960)

Walk played at the entrance of The Artists Among Us, the tribute to Burchfield-Penney Art Center members that was our last major exhibition in Rockwell Hall. In it, Knowles documents a span of time during which she and her cat undergo positive and negative changes in their lives. It has been shown at a number of film festivals, including 20th Annual Dallas Film & Video Festival, Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival (PDX Fest), the KLEX Festival in Kuala Lumpur, and won Best Experimental FIlm at the 34th Athens International Film & Video Festival, as well as in other settings like the Little Theater in Rochester, the Detroit Film Center, Pacific Cinematheque, the Women's Film Festival at the Market Arcade in Lockport, NY, among others.

Meg Knowles is an internationally recognized, award-winning documentary filmmaker and videographer who also is an associate professor of media production in the communication department of Buffalo State College. Among her many affiliations, she has been a member since 2002 of the Termite TV Collective with Dorothea Braemer, Carl Lee, Mike Kuetemeyer, and Anula Shetty. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Vassar College, 1982; M.A.H. in Media Study and Art History from the University at Buffalo, 1994; and M.F.A. in Film-Media Arts from Temple University, 2002.

Knowles’ work usually addresses social and political issues. For the inaugural Beyond/In Western New York 2005 exhibition at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Knowles exhibited Wet Spot (2004), an installation piece comprised of a video projection on a fish tank.  In her artist statement Knowles wrote:

“The social and physical landscape of Western New York provides me with a compelling means of intertwining history and memory with the public imagination. Recent conflicts arising from the available water supply in the Great Lakes (they contain twenty percent of fresh water on the planet), and our present and future stake in this resource as a basis of life, energy, and political power are the motivation for this undersea fantasy.”