Event Calendar
Papermaking Workshop
Papermaking workshop with Mia Brown-Seguin.
September 6th, 2025 3-6pm
Be prepared to get a little messy as we play with pulp, learn how to form sheets of paper, and add inclusions.
Materials provided!
Suggested donation $5-10
Ages 8 & up
Optional: bring your own “inclusions” (collage materials and/or small paper thin objects)
The Window Won’t Shut All the Way, Opening Reception
Alexa Kanarowski: The Window Won’t Shut All the Way
09.05.25 – 09.24.25
Opening Reception Friday, September 5, 7-10PM
When we look out a window, does the landscape look back in? The Window Won’t Shut All the Way investigates the meaning of glass, and the inability to fully separate ourselves from what we see.
Photographic media imposed on glass forms grapples with the passage of time and the vernacular landscape. Squares and grids appear repeatedly throughout the work. Often altered or in a sense of decay, the grid is reminiscent of city blocks and the changes they undergo over time. By using imperfect squares, the work takes on a confused identity. Highlighting the transparent qualities of glass with a muted color scheme, Kanarowski engages the viewer in both what is and what has been. The expected language of stained glass is subverted to engage with the simple language of a plain window, and the landscape that is seen through a window. Much of the glass is found, further solidifying the connection between the built environment, the work, and ghosts of a time gone by.
Combined with glass, Kanarowski uses the technique of Polaroid emulsion lifts to create ghostly images. Whether pasted on the surface of a piece or sandwiched between glass like a sample between microscope slides, the photographs become a part of the glass and emphasize its fragility.
The process of Polaroid emulsion lifts makes physical the notion of time. Because they are taken with a Polaroid camera, the images must be transferred to glass within hours of their exposure. The process itself is prone to unexpected results, allowing the one-of-a-kind image to take on its own form and autonomy. Shooting in the square format of Polaroids places further emphasis on the grid like structures that appear throughout the work, while encouraging a simplistic approach to composition.
This body of work also engages in tensions between art and craft. Working with a craft like stained glass, Kanarowski both accedes to and distances herself from the rules of the media. Her reliance on grids brings her back to a motif that is often present in her practice, quilts and patchwork. In Refuse Quilt, Kanarowski takes this quite literally, crafting a quilt out of the waste products of Polaroid Emulsion lifts, and the haunting ephemeral landscapes they produce.
Alexa Kanarowski is a photographer based in Buffalo, New York. Through investigating systems that combine to make our present moment, she focuses on the landscape, cultural, and systemic patchworks that contribute to defining the everchanging now. Frequently working in photo series, Kanarowski creates quilt-like narratives that are sensitive to memory, labor, and landscape. In addition to photobooks, her practice encompasses craft practices, using stained glass and sewing to further elucidate the patchwork nature of the contemporary moment.
Kanarowski is a member of the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art’s BICA School. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornell University, and her work has been exhibited throughout New York State, such as a solo show at the Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, NY). She has been the recipient of multiple awards and grants, including the Edith Adams and Walter King Stone Memorial Prize and the Gibian Rosewater Traveling Research Award.
Reading Group: The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required
Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you’ve read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We’ll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.
Read ahead if you can, but there’s no pressure to be an expert—just bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.
→ Ngai, Sianne. “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (Summer 2005): 811–847.
Why do we describe some things as “cute”? And what happens when the avant-garde—the sharp, strange, and experimental—gets tangled up with the soft, sweet, and small?
In this session, we’ll read Sianne Ngai’s “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” a smart and surprisingly fun essay that explores how aesthetic categories like “cute” shape the way we perceive objects, bodies, and artworks. Ngai digs into everything from Kant to Keane paintings to unpack what cuteness reveals about power, vulnerability, and our deeply weird relationship with things.
Bring your thoughts, your questions, or your love/hate feelings about Sanrio characters. We’re here for all of it.
23, Opening reception
Palmer Segner: 23
Opening Reception, August 15, 7-10pm
BICA School Project Space
In addition to being a picture making process, photography is also a game. The point of this game, as John Szarkowski said, “is to know, love, and serve sight, and the basic strategic problem is to find a new kind of clarity within the prickly thickets of unordered sensation.” These photographs were made along the route of the number 23 bus over the course of a few days in March 2025 and are presented here as a series of 20x24” C-Prints.
Palmer Segner, b. 1990, is a photographer living and working in Buffalo, NY.
Reading Group: The Railway Journey
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required
Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you’ve read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We’ll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.
Read ahead if you can, but there’s no pressure to be an expert—just bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.
How did trains change how we see the world? And what does that have to do with art, technology, and even attention spans?
This week we’re reading Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey, an exploration of how the invention of the railroad reshaped time, space, and human perception in the 19th century. The book blends cultural theory, history, and a bit of poetic flair as it traces how technology altered everyday experience—and how those changes still echo in modern life.
It’s part historical study, part philosophical reflection, and all up for discussion. Come ready to share your thoughts or simply ride along with us.
Reading Group: Towards a New Laocoön
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required
Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you’ve read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We’ll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.
Read ahead if you can, but there’s no pressure to be an expert—just bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.
→ Greenberg, Clement. “Towards a New Laocoön.” Partisan Review 7, no. 4 (July–August 1940): 296–310.
* 07.30 this link has been updated, the previous link was to an abridged version of the same essay.
What’s the relationship between painting, music, and literature—and why did modernist art care so much about keeping them separate?
Join us as we dig into Clement Greenberg’s 1940 essay “Towards a New Laocoön”, a foundational (and famously opinionated) text in the history of modern art criticism. Greenberg argues that painting should embrace its “essential qualities”—like flatness and color—and resist the temptation to imitate other art forms. Whether you agree, disagree, or want to push the conversation in new directions, this session is all about engaging with the ideas that shaped 20th-century art—and maybe complicating them a little, too.
Let’s read, talk, and think together.
BICA School Info Session
Curious about BICA School? Come find out what it’s all about at our upcoming info session!
Meet current participants, hear firsthand experiences, and get a feel for our unique, community-driven approach to contemporary art education. We’ll give a short presentation covering what BICA School is, who it’s for, and how you can get involved. Whether you’re an artist, organizer, thinker, or all-around curious person—BICA School might be just the place for you.
This is your chance to ask questions, meet the folks who make BICA School what it is, and envision yourself in the mix.
Free to attend and open to all.
Bring your questions, your curiosity, and a friend!
The Debut, Opening reception
Kayleah Aldrich: THE DEBUT
Opening Reception, July 11, 7-10pm
BICA School Project Space
Exhibition runs July 11 - 22
Reading Group: Poetics of Space
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required
Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you’ve read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We’ll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.
Read ahead if you can, but there’s no pressure to be an expert—just bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.
For the first gathering in our summer reading group series we’ll be discussing Gaston Bachelard’s classic essay “The House, From Cellar to Garret, The Significance of the Hut” from The Poetics of Space.
Bachelard’s poetic and philosophical exploration of the spaces we inhabit invites us to see homes, rooms, and even corners as sites of imagination, memory, and meaning. It’s a beautiful starting point for thinking about the relationships between space, self, and creativity.
Whether you’ve read it deeply, skimmed it over coffee, or just want to listen in—come join the conversation. No pressure, no expertise required.
Let’s read, talk, and think together.
In the Garden of Eating
CD release with a performance by T.J. Borden & Steve Flato with guests Martin Freeman & Steve Baczkowski. Sugguested donation of $10-$20.
Transfeminist Provocations Against Feminism 3
Transfeminist Provocations Against Fascism: Transnational Abortion Struggles
Rachel Fallon & Jennifer Page
Baby's First: Solo Exhibition
baby’s first: solo exhibition ! september’s first friday !
september 6th, 2024 7-10pm in BICA project space
most of the physical works created for baby’s first will be on display.
Transfeminist Provocations Against Feminism 2
Transfeminist Provocations Against Fascism: Militant Humanities. The Fight Against Transnational Fascism
Jennifer Ponce de León
Transfeminist Provocations Against Feminism 1
Transfeminist Provocations Against Fascism: Rebellious Trans Identities from the Global South
Cole Rizki & Daniella Maldonano Salamanca
