April M&T Second Friday

Join us for April M&T Second Friday on Friday, April 8th! This month we'll be hosting an IN-PERSON Second Friday! Experience the exhibition opening of Edreys Wajed: The Bridge, a screening and discussion of Buffalo’s Black Arts Renaissance of the 1970s with producer Doug Ruffin, as well as drop-in art-making with our education team!

On the Second Friday of every month, thanks to the support of M&T Bank, the Burchfield Penney hosts something great! From openings and happy hours, programs, concerts, screenings or other special events, visitors experience the best of the Burchfield Penney. Admission is free!

EXHIBITION OPENING | EDREYS WAJED: THE BRIDGE
April 8, 2022 - June 26, 2022
Key Bank /First Niagara Foundation Gallery and Norman E. Mack II Rotunda

Edreys Wajed is a multidisciplinary creative artist based in Buffalo New York. He is an active draftsman, painter, jeweler, designer, curator, hip-hop emcee and producer under the pseudonym Billy Drease Williams. He is also an educator and the co-proprietor of the entrepreneurial creative venture Eat Off Art with his partner and wife Alexa Wajed. He is a father, and the son of creative artists spanning at least three generations in Buffalo. His work has been featured by the Albright Knox in their Freedom Wall project completed in 2017, and by the Buffalo Sabres who presented his modified logo Breaking Barriers in 2021 honoring Val James, the National Hockey Leagues’ first African American player who made his NHL debut with the team in 1981. 

For the exhibition The Bridge Wajed has created works that explore the culture and language of Hip Hop, a musical genre with roots that go back more than fifty years, almost exactly paralleling his life, with important early moments in the genre taking place just months before his birth.  In an artist statement he states:        

I probe and meander proficiently through music, video, theater, metalsmithing, illustration, and painting, seeing art as language with which I am multilingual. I investigate humanity through storytelling, consumerism and social justice, with an affinity for the beauty of human error in handmade objects, mark-making and documenting human experience.

Works produced for this exhibition explore encoded language unique to Hip Hop culture, and the different forms of nonverbal communication used by those within it. Wajed seeks to decode parts of this language and create a bridge to make it more accessible, presenting work with a visual aesthetic that warmly invites the outsider in while also welcoming home individuals with similar lived experiences.  

DROP-IN ART-MAKING
Friday, April 8th, 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Conference Room

Join our Education team for drop-in art-making activities! This month we will be creating weavings based on Wilhelmina Godfrey's fiber piece in the Totemic exhibition!

BUFFALO'S BLACK ARTS RENAISSANCE SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
Friday, April 8th, 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm **
Auditorium

From the late-1960s through the mid-1970s, Buffalo’s Black communities experienced an artistic renaissance with the formation of numerous cultural institutions committed to bringing the arts to the inner city. These organizations included the African American Cultural Center, the Center for Positive Thought, the Ujima Theatre Company, and the Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, among many others. In conjunction with the exhibition Founders, which explores the founding and early history of the Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, the Burchfield Penney will present a screening of the documentary "Buffalo’s Black Arts Renaissance of the 1970s," produced by Doug Ruffin and the Buffalo History Channel. The film explores the history and impact of this renaissance through an in-depth conversation with Gail Wells, co-founder of the Black Dance Workshop. Following the screening will be a Q&A session with the filmmaker.

The founder of Urban Legacy Filmworks, parent company to the Buffalo History Channel, Doug Ruffin has spent the last 25 years capturing and chronicling the city’s rich African American history through his work as a documentary filmmaker, content creator, and historian. His productions include rare, archival footage and interviews that highlight the stories, organizations, and individuals that have contributed to the rich legacy of Buffalo’s black communities. This is the second in a series of screenings with Ruffin to explore his unique and vital lens on our region’s history.