Event Calendar
Parallel Play June
Parallel Play is a time for artists and creatives to come together and make things with a group! Bring a project, or start one here – we’ll have some basic supplies.
4square June
4SQUARE is BACK!
4 Performances, 4 Visual Artists, 4 Vendors, 4 Games, 4 Activities, Djs, Food, and MORE all 4 U! At BICA on May 10th.
Tickets Coming Soon
Open Essex 2024
The Essex Street Art Center comes alive each year for Open Essex! Galleries are open, food and beverages are served, and artists take over the parking lot with installations and work for sale. Mark your calendars for this fun and free event.
Movie Night
Join BICA School for a movie night hosted by Silas Rubeck! 🍿🎥
June 26th at 7pm
$5-$10 suggested donation.
SHOWING:
The Brothers Quay Shorts
Mom Debbies Last Day at Work
Figure Drawing June
Figure Drawing with BICA School is back! Presented in collaboration with WNY Man-made Men.
Some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨 feel free to bring your own as well!
RSVP Required!
Figure Drawing July
Figure Drawing with BICA School is back! Presented in collaboration with WNY Man-made Men.
Some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨 feel free to bring your own as well!
RSVP Required!
Parallel Play July
Parallel Play is a time for artists and creatives to come together and make things with a group! Bring a project, or start one here – we’ll have some basic supplies.
Parallel Play August
Parallel Play is a time for artists and creatives to come together and make things with a group! Bring a project, or start one here – we’ll have some basic supplies.
4square May
4SQUARE is BACK!
4 Performances, 4 Visual Artists, 4 Vendors, 4 Games, 4 Activities, Djs, Food, and MORE all 4 U! At BICA on May 10th.
Figure Drawing May
Figure Drawing with BICA School is back!
Some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨 feel free to bring your own as well!
RSVP Required!
Figure Drawing April
Figure Drawing with BICA School is back!
Some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨 feel free to bring your own as well!
RSVP Required!
Idoine & Stephanie Davidson Launch Event
Launch Event with Idoine & Stephanie Davidson
10 Minutes: Architects & Designers in Conversation
8 pm » Q&A moderated by Georg Rafailidis
Artist Led Walkthrough of Silent Terminalia
Alex Boeschenstein will lead a walkthrough and talk about his new exhibition, Silent Terminalia.
Alex Boeschenstein (b. 1988, Cleveland, OH), is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Austin, TX. He received a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Art at the University of Washington in 2015 and an MFA in Transmedia and Print at the University of Texas in 2022. Recent solo exhibitions include Visionary Rumor at the Roswell Museum in Roswell, NM, and Too Many Cunning Passages at Glass Box Gallery in Seattle, WA. He has exhibited work nationally at the Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas, and Gallery 4Culture in Seattle, WA, amongst others. Alex has received numerous accolades, including the Milnor Roberts Merit Scholarship through the University of Washington, the Centrum Emerging Artist Residency in Fort Worden, WA, and the M.K. Hage Endowed Scholarship in Fine Arts through the University of Texas, Austin. Public collections featuring his work include the University of Washington Print Collection and the University of Washington Life Sciences Building.
Alex Boeschenstein Opening Reception
Join us in celebration of our new exhibition, Alex Boeschenstein: Silent Terminalia.
Alex Boeschenstein (b. 1988, Cleveland, OH), is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Austin, TX. He received a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Art at the University of Washington in 2015 and an MFA in Transmedia and Print at the University of Texas in 2022. Recent solo exhibitions include Visionary Rumor at the Roswell Museum in Roswell, NM, and Too Many Cunning Passages at Glass Box Gallery in Seattle, WA. He has exhibited work nationally at the Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas, and Gallery 4Culture in Seattle, WA, amongst others. Alex has received numerous accolades, including the Milnor Roberts Merit Scholarship through the University of Washington, the Centrum Emerging Artist Residency in Fort Worden, WA, and the M.K. Hage Endowed Scholarship in Fine Arts through the University of Texas, Austin. Public collections featuring his work include the University of Washington Print Collection and the University of Washington Life Sciences Building.
Eclipse
Looking for a safe, fun, place to watch the total solar eclipse? Look no further! In the front courtyard and parking lot at BICA we’ll be watching the eclipse together. We’ll have a very limited number of eclipse glasses, some supplies to make an eclipse viewing box, or you can bring your own to experience this momentous occasion together.
BYO Chair, food, drinks, art supplies, etc. Traffic is supposed to be really bad, so we encourage walking or biking to this event if you can!
Community Crit
Join BICA School for a casual open community critique!
We’ll speed crit through as many artworks as we can get to – all will be welcome to share feedback as well as work.
Ground rules will be set at the beginning of the crit, but respect for all, mindfulness to sharing space (both on the walls, and in speech), and within the time limits you may ask for the kind of feedback that will best suit you.
Spring Equinox Party
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ritualize the coming of the spring equinox with the intertwining of your favorite party powerhouses!
⭐@groupwork.fyi will bring us into equlibrium with a steady stream of deep beats
⭐absorb raw life forces from the drag performances of @thee.carrot.queen @shutup.fawna @therubygeorge @ptrishuwish @damsel.n.disdress @fat.chance.716 with host @thatgoblinbitch
⭐summon your new beginnings by dancing late into the night under our warehouse altar!
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pre-sale tickets $20 /at the door $25
32a essex st
march 16
9pm – late
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DJing, lights, and sound by @groupwork
more detailed schedule coming soon.
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⭐bica school is committed to creating a safe and inclusive space for everyone. please be on your best behavior and respect your fellow partygoers.
as always, these parties are fundraisers to raise rent for bica schoolers to continue to gather in the space to create, critique, and gather for the sake of art. thank you for your continued support!
Lee Hunter Artist Talk
Join us for an artist talk with Hermetic Drift artist Lee Hunter.
Lee Hunter is a multidisciplinary artist focused on how humans think about nature. Since 2015, they have been working on a durational worlding project called Cosmogenesis that includes photos, videos, sculptures, textiles, found objects, and writing. Hunter is a lifelong learner and enjoys reading across disciplines, their research is usually focused on nature, belief, and complex adaptive systems. Their work has been exhibited at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin; The Luminary, St. Louis, Missouri; Vox Populi, Pennsylvania; Berkeley Art Center, California; and Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Florida. They have been an artist in residence at Bemis Contemporary Art Center, Omaha, Ne; Illinois State University, Bloomington, IL; Palazzo Monti, Italy; ACRE, Wisconsin; and I-Park Foundation, Connecticut; and Vermont Studio Center, Vermont. Hunter earned a BS in arts & letters from Portland State University and an MFA in new genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. Hunter lives and works in Champaign, IL.
Opening Reception for Lee Hunter: Hermetic Drift
POSTPONED
New opening reception date is Friday, January 26, 2024, 7-10 PM
Join us to celebrate the opening of Lee Hunter’s exhibition Hermetic Drift in the main BICA gallery.
Nick Mass: Heartbreakers Opening Reception
Join us for the opening of Nick Mass: The Heartbreakers opening in the BICA School Project Space – including food cooked by the artist and the release of his new EP, Cigarette Vending Machine.
BICA SCHOOL WINTER ART MARKET
We’re back for our second annual Winter Market organized by BICA School!
Vendors and more details coming soon.
Maximilian Goldfarb Screening: Simon Ripoll-Hurier, "The Signal Line” (2023), exhibition version.
Simon Ripoll-Hurier, "The Signal Line” (2023), exhibition version.
« Somewhere, perhaps in the unconscious mind, there exists what we will label “the Matrix”. The Matrix knows no boundaries and has no limitations – it contains all information about all things. »
(declassified CIA archive, 1988)
About 50 years ago, the CIA was looking for new ways to collect intelligence, and
launched a secret program on psychic vision and extrasensory perception. Is it a
coincidence that this happened at the same time and place as the creation of the
Internet? Are “the cloud” and “the Matrix” ethereal siblings? The Signal Line is a
film both on the San Francisco Bay Area and on Clairvoyance, and on how they
are somehow related. It is a sci-fi documentary on the edge between divination
and espionage, New Age and new tech, a film about the possibility of perceiving
the invisible, of seeing through walls, bodies, time and space, and a film about the
possibility of sharing these visions.
Maximilian Goldfarb Talk and Tour
Exhibiting artist Maximilian Goldfarb will lead a tour through his exhibition Numbers Station, talk about his practice, and answer audience questions.
Maximilian Goldfarb received his BFA from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. He completed his MS in Visual Studies in 2006 at MIT. Goldfarb is a maker of unsettled objects and soundscapes. Forms of production include books, sculptural installations, site-based artworks, experimental architectures, and radio programming. His work often includes publication formats as a way of incorporating drawings and visual research processes as a distributive aspect of works.
Goldfarb has completed object, text, and media works with support from the Harpo Foundation, the Elizabeth Graham Foundation, NYSCA, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Kaplan Institute, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Experimental Television Center. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in venues including, Sculpture Center, NY; Stadsgalerij, NL; Western Front, BC; White Columns, NY and The Drawing Center, NY. A recent fellow at MacDowell, several of his publications can be found at Printed Matter and Art Metropole. Goldfarb is co-author of Architectural Inventions (Laurence King Publishing), an archive of contemporary visionary architectural drawings. He is a collaborator of the Incident Report exhibition platform in Hudson, NY.
Bleed Like Me 2 - BICA School x Natty Wine Halloween Party
Natty Wine School x BICA School are back and bringing you another Halloween bash that you won’t want to miss!
Art? Dancing? Delicious food? Great company? Well we have what you need, all of it, everything. It's Halloweeen and we are partying for a good cause (and because we love to dance)! Face painting, tarot reading, spooky installations, amazing dj's and maybe some surprise performances all are on the list of entertianments for the evening.
Obviously we will be pouring some delicious bevvys for you, and tasty treats. We have a DJ lineup to keep us dancing into the night. And art! Did we mention art? Ya'll it's Halloween and we want to get weird. Wont you come get weird with us? The category is; Horror. Bring your best gore! Bring me zombie realness! Costumes are not required, but like come on, its Halloween.
Maximilian Goldfarb & Trash Strata Opening
Join us to celebrate the openings of two new exhibitions, Maximilian Goldfarb: Numbers Station in our main gallery, and Lucas Cook and Natalie Hayes's exhibition Trash Strata in the BICA School Project Space.
THIS JUST IN - We’re also launching the newest issue of Cornelia Magazine, Issue 13. Get your copy hot off the press!
INTER-AFFECTION Opening Reception
Join us to celebrate the opening of INTER-AFFECTION, an exhibition curated by Katie Hood Morgan and featuring works by Ryan Arthurs (Buffalo, NY), Eve Biddle (Wassaic, NY), Crystal Z. Campbell (Buffalo, NY, and Oklahoma), Paul Morgan (Los Angeles, CA), Eli Thorne (Kingston, NY), Olivia Long (Buffalo, NY), Casey Mark Schultz (Buffalo, NY), Rachel Shelton (Buffalo, NY), and Virocode (Buffalo, NY).
The curator and many of the artists will be in attendance.
Opening Reception for El Encanto de el Grito
Join us for the opening reception of
El Encanto de el Grito, una instalación de arte de chango4
About the exhibition
El Encanto De El Grito is a multidisciplinary art installation unveiling Puerto Rico's imperialism. Through disorienting sounds, visuals, and objects, the artist immerses viewers in an unsettling experience. The intentional discomfort mirrors the cognitive dissonance felt by those oppressed under colonial rule. This research-based and abstract approach challenges viewers to confront the lingering effects of imperialism.
As they navigate the installation's intricate layers, they grapple with the complex dynamics of power and identity, inviting a deep reflection on the history and present realities of Puerto Rico. El Encanto De El Grito aims to unsettle and provoke, fostering empathy and understanding for those impacted by imperialism in Puerto Rico.
Open Essex
After a long winter, at Open Essex we're opening up our outdoor spaces for art! Come by for our open-air art fair, where artists will take over our parking lot with outdoor booth spaces. We'll also have food, music, activities for kids, and all kinds of surprises. This is a great opportunity to learn about what’s going on at Essex Art Center, BICA, BICA School and with artists who live and work in our neighborhood.
Installations and artworks for sale by JP4Hire, Sarah Fonzi, Casey Mark Schultz, Robert Rusch, Way2WavyBaby, Nando Alvarez-Perez, Alison from Earth, Shyanna Merced, Natalie Hayes & Lucas Cook, Kyla Kegler, Nick Mass, Chango, Stick Figure Guy and Emily Constantin
Food and Bev provided by Usonia Wine and Oralia, Northern Mexican Cuisine
All-day open rehearsal of The Frontier, a new work by Kyla Kegler
All-day DJ set by Chango4
A kid and adult friendly craft activity led by BICA School
H Boone: TRANS HUMAN Opening
Join us for the opening of H Boone: TRANS/HUMAN!
TRANS/HUMAN imagines a future where gender is untethered from the body and we are able to transform at will. H Boone creates glitched, biomorphic sculptures by augmenting 3D scans of Buffalo’s trans and gender-nonconforming community. The artist uploads bodies, modifies them digitally, then squirts them into the tangible through 3D printing. Shimmering and distorted, the digital/physical duality in these sculptures reflect the fluctuating nature of being gender nonconforming today. These works move beyond mere representation to glorify trans metamorphosis. This ongoing project reflects the artist’s desire to combine science fiction, queer world-building, and building trans community through art.
Sofía Córdova Virtual Artist Talk
Born in 1985 in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and currently based in Oakland, California, Sofía Córdova makes work that considers sci-fi as alternative history, dance music's liberatory dimensions, colonial contamination, climate change and migration, and most recently, revolution—historical and imagined—within the matrix of class, gender, race, late capitalism and its technologies. She is one half of the music duo and experimental sound outfit XUXA SANTAMARIA. Her work has been exhibited and performed internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tufts University Galleries, SFMOMA, the Arizona State University Museum, The Berkeley Art Museum, the Vincent Price Museum, the Wattis Institute, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Art Hub (Shanghai) and MEWO Kunsthalle (Germany). She has participated in residencies at Eyebeam, Headlands Center for the Arts, Mills College Museum, and the ASU Museum in Phoenix and composed and choreographed performances for the SF Arts Commission, Merce Cunningham Trust, and Soundwave Biennial. She is a recipient of a Creative Work Fund and has been the subject of a First Look feature in Art in America. Her work was recently featured in Aperture Magazine and forms part of the exhibition no existe un mundo posthuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Figure Drawing
BICA School is back with another Figure Drawing night on Sunday, May 21 at 6:30! As always, some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨
This takes place in our heated studio space in the Essex Street Art Center, with a suggested donation of $10.
Drawing will end around 9, then we’ll hang up our drawings and talk about them!
BICA School does Porchfest
It’s Porchfest, BICA School style! Come by for music, art, booze, fun, squirts, food, and more!
Poster: JP4Hire
Kelsey Sucena: Paralytic States (2023) Opening
Join us to celebrate the opening of Kelsey Sucena: Paralytic States (2023)!
Sucena will give a reading at 8:30
About the exhibition:
BICA School is pleased to present Paralytic States (2023), the first solo exhibition by artist and educator Kelsey Sucena, in the BICA School Project Space, curated by Nando Alvarez-Perez. Kelsey Sucena (she/they) is a trans* photographer, writer, editor, and former Park Ranger working at the intersection of photography and text. Her work is centered on the United States as a site for post-capitalist, queer, and critical reflection. Situating her own trans*feminine identity in negotiation with America’s physical, political, historical, and cultural landscapes, her practice documents her personal struggle with self-identification through periods of political upheaval.
First published as an experimental small-run postal exhibition in 2020, Paralytic States (2020) acted as a timely and intimate response to the presidential election cycle. It received attention as an honorable mention in the 2020 Essay Press book contest and as a finalist for the Lucie Foundation Photobook Prize in 2021. Here, Paralytic States is reconfigured and re-presented for the first time for public exhibition.
Paralytic States straddles the space between memoir and manifesto, utilizing a queer/closeted epistemology to consider questions of community, country, and identity. Taken together, the photographs and essays work in concert to produce an intertextual dialogue that is both intimate and political, riffing off of the long history of road trip photography and trans* memoir in order to complicate both genres. What emerges from that conversation is an uncertain document of the last few years.
Printed onto the surface of flags, this iteration of Paralytic States combines a selection of images with text in a kind of alternative publication. In conversation with both Pride and Gadsden flags, the dramatic composition captures the odd intersection of identity and ideology that flags are so often deployed to convey. Activated through a performative slideshow, the result is both political in scale, and personal in effect.
Beyond her practice, Kelsey is also a Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at Alfred University, Managing Editor of Photocaptionist, and a freelance writer/editor with various contributions to 10x10 Photobooks, Float Photo Magazine, Rocket Science, Aperture, Fifth Wheel Press, Strange Fire Collective, Humble Arts Foundation, From Here On Out, and Queer.Archive.Work. She is also a former Visual Information Specialist with the National Park Service on Fire Island. She received her MFA from Image Text Ithaca in 2020. Kelsey recently accepted a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor of Photography at Alfred University.
Sofía Córdova Opening
Join us for the opening reception of Sofía Córdova’s exhibition at BICA!
Figure Drawing
BICA School is back with another Figure Drawing night on Sunday, March 12th at 6:30! As always, some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨
This takes place in our heated studio space in the Essex Street Art Center, with a suggested donation of $10.
Drawing will end around 9, then we’ll hang up our drawings and talk about them!
RISO RISO Opening Reception
RISO RISO is an exhibition featuring prints from Buffalo’s first risograph printer. In collaboration with @bica_school, artist and printmaker Robert Rusch @robbie_roughneck is introducing risography to the Buffalo art scene, making a new medium accessible for printed matter such as print editions, posters, zines, and artist books.
The risograph is a digital screen printing technology that has gained popularity in the art world due to its bold fluorescent colors. The exhibition, RISO RISO, will feature works from local and national artists.
The opening will be on March 24th, 7 PM at the BICA School Space, 30 Essex St., Buffalo, NY
Participating artists:
Annie Klein
Arthur Renteria
Balst-off
Casey Mark
Chango
D. Sloan
Dena Springer
Gabriella Victoria
H Boone
Hannah Lin
Honey Henry
Joshua Nasca
Julia Dzwonkoski
Julian Montague
Karle Norman
Kwade Baker
Kyla Kegler
Lucas Cook
Mark Citerone
Nando Alvarez-Perez
Natalie Hayes
Nick Mass
Olivia Long
Otto Holly
Paul Knopf
Rachel Shelton
Robert Rusch
slutkitten
Spencer Cheek
W.T. Joshua
wavy
Yewon Kwon
Zach Nosbisch
Figure Drawing
BICA School is back with another Figure Drawing night on Sunday, March 12th at 6:30! As always, some basic drawing supplies and snacks provided 🧑🎨
This takes place in our heated studio space in the Essex Street Art Center, with a suggested donation of $10.
Drawing will end around 9, then we’ll hang up our drawings and talk about them!