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Kenan Center to present exhibition of watercolors from Gerald Mead Collection

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Thu, Jun 8th 2017 11:40 am
Works span more than 100 years of artists with Western New York connection
The Kenan Center House gallery, Lockport, will present the exhibit, "Masterworks: Watercolors from the Gerald Mead Collection," June 25 through July 30.
 
This survey exhibition, selected from the encyclopedic art collection of Mead, a noted Buffalo artist and educator, consists of over 75 watercolors dating from 1880 to 2017, by artists associated with Western New York by birth or residency.
 
Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. weekdays and 2-5 p.m. Saturday. The gallery will be closed July 4 and 21. It will be open during the Kenan Center's "Community Day," July 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Kenan Center House Gallery is located at 433 Locust St. Admission is free.
 
The media of watercolor has been uniquely tied to the history of the Kenan Center House Gallery. That history ranges from the first exhibition in 1966 that featured Charles Rand Penney's collection of works by renowned watercolorist Charles Burchfield to periodic regional and national exhibitions organized by the Niagara Frontier Watercolor Society, and career retrospectives by the region's most celebrated watercolorists such as Rita Auerbach, Margaret Martin, Norine Spurling and Joe Whalen.
 
This exhibition, intended to be a historic and contemporary survey, consists of more than 75 watercolors by artists who are associated with Western New York by birth or residency. The works have been selected from the extensive collection of Mead.
 
Historically, the artworks range from an early 20th century watercolor by Raphael Beck, a Lockport artist who designed the seal for the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo in 1901, to an award-winning painting created in 2016 by E. Jane Stoddard, a signature member of the National Watercolor Society. Also included are illustrations utilizing watercolor by renowned wood craftsman Wendell Castle, noted graphic novelist John Jennings, and emerging young illustrators such as Rob Benigno and Ton Van Dusen.
 
Other artists who are represented in this survey exhibition in addition to those mentioned above are Robert Blair, Malcolm Bonney, Don Burns, Annie Crawford, Edwin Dickinson, Eugene Dyczkowski, Philip Elliott, Ammi Farnham, Patrick Foran, Bill Gates, Walter Garver, Will Harris, Ray Hassard, Tom Holt, Ani Hoover, Hugh Laidman, Alicia Malik, Manning McCandlish, Wes Olmsted, Joseph Orffeo, Catherine Parker, David Pratt, Russell Ram, Martha Burchfield Richter, Charles Rohrbach, Claire Shuttleworth, Carol Siracuse, Martha Visser't Hooft, James Vullo, John Wade Jr., and Patrick Willett among others.
 
Mead is an award-winning artist, educator, arts writer and independent curator who is a leading authority on Western New York art and serves on the boards of several arts organizations in Buffalo. Since 1987, he has assembled a collection of over 1,100 artworks by artists associated with this region.
 
Thematic exhibitions from the Gerald Mead Collection have been presented at numerous college galleries and other public venues, most recently at SUNY Fredonia and the Springville Center for the Arts. He has also lent works from his collection for major exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Castellani Art Museum, UB Art Galleries, CEPA and Hallwalls, and frequently lectures on art and collecting.
 
For information, visit www.kenancenter.org.

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