By Ian Carlino:
This Friday, Grant Street is taking another step toward becoming a “can’t miss” destination in Buffalo.
The opening of “Art on Grant” in the Grant Street Gallery will showcase numerous artists and craftsmen from around Buffalo, with a special focus on the intimate, unique qualities of their handcrafted pieces. The gallery reminds owner and organizer Prish Moran of a time when not everything was mass-produced in a faraway country. “It really gives every artist the ability to show their work — old-world crafts that people are forgetting about, everything marked with their signature,” Moran said. “It’s something to pass down.” There will be 28 artists showing their work at the opening.
The gallery will be a major boost for Grant Street, and will certainly benefit from Sweet_ness 7’s skyrocketing popularity. In the past, the Grant Street Gallery had hosted openings for college students, but the bigger goal is to develop an arts community. Now, the gallery is a cooperative that will cost $25 per month for participants. “I don’t know why it can’t work,” Moran said. “The biggest thing is the community itself, it’s got the whole package: the international neighborhood, the coffee shop, it’s just a very alternative lifestyle that people seem to like.”
There are numerous other small galleries around Buffalo, but Moran thinks Art on Grant will have the life of its own that will compliment the overall art scene. The art spaces (Artspace) on Main Street, she said, are a good example of this: “I love Main Street and the artists’ community that was commercially built – these types of creative projects are necessary to have in different districts throughout Buffalo. We’re offering an inexpensive venue for multitudes of artists, many of whom are diverse in age and culture.”
The gallery will hold an opening on the first Friday of every month to display any new artists joining the cooperative.
June 4, 2010 from 6-9pm
Art on Grant
Grant Street Gallery
216 Grant Street @ Lafayette Avenue
Meet the Artists, enjoy live, local music by Andrew Reimers and Alex Foote (Free Henry)