Common Currents

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.

Featuring the work of:

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.

At the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Common Currents is made possible through the generosity of an Anonymous Family Foundation; Cynthia Baird Stark and the Cameron and Jane Baird Foundation; The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation; and Shelley Drake in loving memory of Kenneth Drake.