This exhibition highlighted work from classes on printmaking and community conducted by Olenka Bodnarskyj-Gunn, then a Buffalo State College graduate student in art education who was student teaching in the Ken-Ton School District (in the Buffalo suburbs). Seniors from teacher and ceramicist Matthew SaGurney’s Kenmore East High School class, as well as teacher Lavinia Kirdani’s fourth and fifth graders from the Charles A. Lindbergh Elementary School, also created the prints and collaborative murals. Students explored the role of community in their lives and their peers around the world, including studying a community of Ukrainian children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986.
After the Burchfield Penney, the murals traveled to the Ukraine to be permanently installed in the corridors of Zaluchya Orphanage and the Regional Children’s Unified Medical Center in Volyn, where child victims of Chernobyl have been treated. This project was made possible through the support of the Ken-Ton School District, the Children of Chernobyl Relief Fund, and the Ken-Ton community.