Honest to Goodness Art

In Western New York, as in communities throughout the country, there is a grass-roots tradition of picture-making that transcends differences and binds its people together in a common spirit and image of human experience. These are pictures that delight in the obvious themes of everyday people in society and in nature and celebrate their varied cultural backgrounds, ethnic origins, religions, philosophies, and specific events both tragic and wonderous.

“Hones to Goodness Art” featured eight local painters: Juan Cavazos, Sally Cook, Tanya Ganson, James C. Litz, Rosario Provenza, Bridgette Robinson, Eleanor Rudolph, and Stanley A. Szeluga. While the exhibition explored the folk tradition of picture making in our region, it also was a primary resource for an art education project supported by a grant from the Arts in Education Program of the New York State Council on the Arts. The exhibition was curated by James Hartel, education curator at the Center, as a resource for a curriculum development project with the Alden Central Schools entitled “The Contents of Art: Social Structures.” Through this program, students will study social studies and local history in context with art lessons. As another extension of this project, artists from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds will visit students in the Alden classrooms.

All eight artists in the exhibition make pictures that represent a broad-based sampling of the different peoples who compose our region’s rich cultural, ethnic and social diversity. Half of this group are women and half are men. The youngest, Juan Cavazos, is 24 years of age and the oldest, Tanya Ganson, is 79. Of the group, four are retired from occupations unrelated to art. Eleanor Rudolph was a legal secretary, Rosario Provenza and Stanley Szeluga were both industrial workers, and Tanya Ganson was a social worker. Of those not retired, only one, James Litz, earns enough from his artwork to support himself. The other three, Juan Cavazos, Sally Cook and Bridgette Robinson support themselves primarily through other work.

The pictures by these people are mostly about themselves, offering evidence of their cultural values and ethnic origins. Of Polish descent, Stanley Szeluga paints about Poland, its history, and people. Tanya Ganson immigrated to Buffalo from the Ukraine as a teenager and paints about her childhood memories of the Russian Revolution. Bridgette Robinson is an Afro-American who expresses the simple virtues of her life in the Fruitbelt neighborhood of Buffalo where she grew up. Juan Cavazos came to Buffalo from Mexico and portrays both his inner and outer visions specific to his life as a migrant farm worker. Sally Cook is Anglo-American and paints pictures about domestic life, fantasy, and neighborhood friends. Eleanor Rudolph’s grandfather came to the rural outskirts of Amherst from Germany; this farmland and the plain lifestyle of its people are the subjects of her paintings. James Litz is of Irish and German descent and paints idyllic scenes tempered by his appreciation of the uncomplicated past. All eight live in Western New York and contribute their individual visions to reinforce and enrich the cultural fabric of this diverse community.

This exhibition is supported by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Visual Artist Program, the City of Buffalo, and the County of Erie. — James Hartel