The Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (Cleveland, OH), in partnership with The Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo, NY), is very proud to present Common Currents, a joint exhibition of work by visual artists from Northeast Ohio & Western New York that will be exhibited in Cleveland April 11 – June 21, 2025, and in Buffalo July 11, 2025 – November 2, 2025.
Cleveland and Buffalo have much in common, and not just their addresses on Lake Erie. These two once-thriving industrial cities are both engaged in a 21st-century reboot with the visual arts playing a key role in this renewal. These commonalities, accentuated by their physical proximity, led Cleveland artist, and AAWR board member, John A Sargent III and Buffalo artist Gary Wolfe to sketch out the beginnings of this collaborative exhibition in 2020. “We both recognized the need for artists to be seen outside of our respective cities,” says John Sargent.
Jurors Grace Chin, Executive Director of the Sculpture Center in Cleveland and Kyle Butler, Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Villa Maria College in Buffalo, reviewed hundreds of entries and made multiple in-person studio visits with an eye towards assembling a roster of 23 artists whose work would comprise the final exhibition.
Themes of exploration, transformation, reinvention, and the use and impact of technology infuse the collection, expressing through a variety of mediums the work of both cities to move out of their common Rust Belt pasts while also keeping mindful of how that past informs our perception and experience of the present.
Western New York Artists
Dennis Bertram
Lydia Boddie-Rice
Chantal Calato
Frani Evedon
Bob Fleming
Robert Hirsch
Sun Young Kang
Matt Kenyon
Robert Pitts
Paris Roselli
Mizin Shin
Jeffrey Vincent
Northeast Ohio Artists
Timothy Callaghan
Nicole Condon-Shih
Susan Danko
Jen P. Harris
Chauncey Hay
Michael Hornyak
R Kauff
Mark Keffer
Sarah Paul
Katy Richards
Jean Weigl (Archived Artist)
In Cleveland, this exhibition opens to the public on Friday, April 11, 2025 and is supported by The David Davis Art Foundation, The Galleries at Cleveland State University via an Ohio Arts Council(OAC) grant, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture(CAC),and the George Gund Foundation.