GO ART!

After a thorough and time-consuming process that involves a peer review panel of dozens of applications, the first round of 2024 statewide community regrant program recipients for 2024 have been chosen, Educator and SCR Director Mary Jo Whitman says.

GO Art! will be regranting $336,000 to artists and nonprofit organizations for projects and programs throughout Genesee and Orleans counties, with the first round wrapping up in November, and the second round opening up just after Christmas and closing Feb. 17.

While the SCR program is not new, the grant funding sometimes gets mistaken for GO Art! money, which is not the case, Whitman said. The Genesee-Orleans Council on the Arts (GO Art!) acts solely as administrator of the funds to disperse them to the grant recipients chosen by the panel. 

"I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the programming. A lot of people kind of mistake the idea that we get the funding, which we do not, we're not allowed to use any of the funding toward our programming. So much of the programming that we do is completely separate from this,” Whitman said during an interview with The Batavian. “We may administer it, and we have to make sure that it goes into the hands of the nonprofits and artists. So things like Picnic in the Park, for example, is one thing we got a lot of flack on as, you know, when we weren't getting as much funding for Picnic in the Park, and it just wasn't feasible for us to host it anymore. We've definitely heard a lot of comments about that — a backlash of how we're funding all these other projects.

“But we can't fund Picnic in the Park, we can't use the money for Picnic in the Park; it’s a completely different strain of money. We're not allowed to use that."

The Statewide Community Regrant Program (SCR) is a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts that was developed in 1977 to ensure that the state’s cultural funding would reach every part of New York State. The cornerstone of SCR is its focus on local decision decision-making through a transparent and competitive peer review panel process, she said. Local artists and nonprofits submit their projects for consideration and are reviewed, chosen and submitted to the GO Art! Board. 

So, instead of giving GO ART! money for its own programs, creative as they may be, this money goes to many individual artists and nonprofits for various projects, including outdoor murals, musical concerts, dramatic presentations, festivals and light displays. 

The panel selected 46 applications for up to $5,000 each in categories of Community Arts (Reach) and Arts Education (Spark), and $2,500 for Individual Artist Commissions (Ripple). The categories and recipients are as follows:

REACH -- The GO ART! Community Arts Grants (Reach Grants) provide seed grants to individual artists, collectives and arts organizations for projects and activities that enable Genesee and Orleans County communities to experience and engage with the performing, literary, media, and visual arts.

Each year the program supports arts projects, including concerts, performances, public art, exhibitions, screenings, festivals, workshops, readings, and more. 

REACH Recipients:

• Batavia Concert Band - $5,000 for 2024 Music in the Park Summer Concert Series
• Haxton Memorial Library - $5,000 for Talented Thursdays
• Alexander Volunteer Fire Department Band - $4,837 for Community Performances
• The Elba Betterment Committee - $4550 for EBC Presents ...
• Oakfield Betterment Committee Inc. - $5,000 for Oakfield Labor Daze
• Genesee Chorale Inc. - $5,000 for 2024 Genesee Chorale Season
• Village of Bergen - $2,300 for the Hickory Park Concert Series
• Rebecca A. O’Donnell with Community Partner, Warrior House of WNY Inc. - $4,000 for Creative
• Community Connections at the Goose
• Batavia Business Improvement District - $5,000 for Jackson Square Concert Series
• David F. Burke with Community Partner, Warrior House of WNY Inc. - $2,500 for Wings Mural for The Goose
• Heather Kathleen Davis with Community Partner, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church - $3,100 for Opera on the Oatka
• Genesee Symphony Orchestra - $5,000 for The Genesee Symphony Orchestra’s 78th Season
• Byron-Bergen Public Library - $5,000 for Arts in our Community
• Amanda M. Taylor with Community Partner, City of Batavia Fire Department - $5,000 for Main Street
• Fire Hydrant Murals
• Bergen Business and Civic Association - $5,000 for Bergen Park Festival
• Woodward Memorial Library - $4,979 for Art All Year, Take Two
• St. Mark’s Episcopal Church - $2,415 for Music at St. Mark’s
• Kathlyn Baker with Community Partner, Warrior House of WNY Inc. - $5,000 for Art Exploration Project
• Genesee, Livingston, Orleans, Wyoming OUT!, Inc.- $5,000 for GLOW OUT! Pride Festival 2024
• Village of Corfu - $5,000 for Corfu Farmers Market 2024 Music Series
• GLOW YMCA, Inc. - $1,000 for GLOW Corporate Street Beat
• Gillam-Grant Community Center - $4,640 for A Spectrum of Art
• The Batavia Players, Inc. - $5,000 for the 2024 Season
• Marianne Skye with Community Partner, Warrior House of WNY - $5,000 for Groovy Moves-Family
• Music and Movement
• Lee-Whedon Memorial Library - $5,000 for Finally Fridays! 2024
• Yates Community Library - $5,000 for Yates Community Library - More Than Just Books
• Friends of Boxwood Cemetery - $5,000 for Boxwood at Night 2024
• The Cobblestone Society - $5,000 for The Cobblestone Museum Arts Series for 2024
• Lyndonville Lions Club - $5,000 for I Hear the Music
• Village of Holley - $3,000 for Village of Holley Canal Concert Series
• Community Free Library - $5,000 for Continuation of Myron Holley Erie Canal Mural
• Care Net Center of Greater Orleans - $5,000 for Artists and Their Styles
• C. W. Bill Lattin with Fiscal Sponsor, The Cobblestone Society - $5,000 for Architecture Destroyed In
• Orleans County, N.Y.
• Village of Holley - $2,000 for Festival Series 2024
• Canalside Radio Inc. - $5,000 for Harmonizing Communities: The Canalside Radio Initiative
• William Schutt with Community Partner, Village of Albion - $5,000 for Lighting the Erie Canal
• Hoag Library of the Swan Library Association - $5,000 for 2024 Hoag Music Series

• Michelle Cryer with Community Partner, Town of Carlton - $5,000 for Carlton Mural at the Cove

  RIPPLE -- The GO ART! Individual Artist Commission (Ripple Grant) supports local, artist-initiated activity, and highlights the role of artists as important members of the community. The Commission is for artistic projects with outstanding artistic merit that work within a community setting. 

RIPPLE Recipients:

• David F. Burke - $2,500 for the Extension to Harvester Center Hallway Mural
• Thomas Jennings - $2,500 for the Missing Man - The Vince Welnick Story
• Joshua Lang - $2,500 for the Suite de Ballet Mvt 3
• Eric Weatherbee - $2,500 for The Humble Bard Presents

SPARK -- The Arts Education Program (Spark Grant) supports arts education projects for youth and/or senior learners. Emphasis is placed on the depth and quality of the creative process through which participants learn through or about the arts. Projects must focus on the exploration of art and the artistic process.

SPARK Recipients:

• Linda Fix with Fiscal Sponsor, BCSD Foundation Community Schools - $5,000 for #It Takes A Village
• Bart Dentino with Community Partner, Oakfield-Alabama Central School District - $4,815 for The Spaces Between the Leaves
• Judd Sunshine with Community Partner, Ronald L. Sodoma Elementary School - $4,200 for Erie Canal Songwriting Project

These projects go way beyond one piece of artwork, Whitman said, as it draws community members to a locale and that can spur an economic and social ripple effect.

“We just really want to see as much art programming as possible in our community. We go to audit events. For example, there'll be a concert series, we're going to the concert series, we'll be talking to some of the audience members, and they talk about how they come to see this concert series every week, and when they're there, they go, ‘everybody eats at this restaurant all the time.’ So it really forms a sense of community, that helps get people out, penetrating these different local establishments," she said. "And it's much bigger than just funding a little project, it really helps with economic development, it helps bring people to the area, being situated right between Rochester and Buffalo. There's no reason why we can't have people coming into the area from both sides of  the city to enjoy the programming that is being offered.”

Another example of how a project can impact more than just the artist and a small segment of spectators are the workshops offered to the public that provide opportunities for folks who otherwise would not be able to partake in that form of art medium, she said.

“And it really gives the community a chance to really learn about different mediums or just even have the opportunity to take the workshop.  I know for myself, I grew up in Orleans County, and as a child, I was always interested in arts, but we never really had the opportunities to take these workshops," she said. "These classes will now, you know, they're able to provide them, and most of them are free. If there's any cost to them, they're very minimal, so it makes the arts accessible, I guess, is the easiest way to put that.”

She is happy that not only is GO Art! one of the partnering organizations with the state agency, but it is “actually one of the top-funded organizations in the state.”

Artists, nonprofits, and municipalities seeking funding for arts-related projects, programming, and events in Genesee and Orleans Counties are encouraged to apply to the second round of SCR funding through GO ART!.

For more information on applying for the program, go to: www.goart.org/grants or contact Mary Jo Whitman at mjwhitman@goart.org. These grants are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.  

Press Release:

Do-Re-Mi Preschool Music and Movement class

This class is designed for children ages 2 through 5, alongside their parent or favorite person. This session will have class on Saturday mornings from 10-10:45 a.m. in January (6, 13, 20, 27) at GO ART! in Batavia. 

We will focus on seasonal song, play, motor and locomotor movement, instrumental exploration, vocal and rhythmic call and response, listening activities, storytime, and fun! The curriculum is designed to engage young learners through play and exploration while providing a safe and nurturing space for them to discover and grow important skills, such as language, cognition, and physical development, as well as support and encourage social and emotional learning. 

Chelsea Miller is instructing this session and she has been teaching music in various capacities since 2015. She has received a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from SUNY Fredonia, as well as a Master’s Degree in French Horn Performance from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 

Currently, Chelsea teaches instrumental music to grades 4-12 at Elba Central School. To register your little one for this amazing class please visit https://goart.org/programming/exlporeart/exlporeart-children/, call (585) 343-9313, or email Jodi at jfisher@goart.org. 

Game Night

Grab a friend and come on in to GO ART! on the first Wednesday of each month for our Game Night! Game night runs from 6-9 p.m. so bring your favorite game or see what we have to offer. From classic board games, and strategy games to card games there is something for everyone. Tavern 2.o.1 will be open.

Do you have any (board, strategy, or card) games you never play and are in good to excellent condition you don't want cluttering up your house anymore? We would be happy to take them off your hands and add them to our collection. Please call (585) 343-9313 or email info@goart.org.

Press Release:

GO ART! is asking the community to submit stories for our antique photos in our new Bethany Arts & Antiques Gallery.

Our executive director has painstakingly procured many antique black and white and reverse colored photographs in antique oval frames, numbered them and put them on display in our newest gallery. We are asking the community members to stop in to GO ART! check out the photographs and if you are so moved submit a story about one or more of the photos. 

After GO ART! staff reviews each story we will publish one for each of the photographs to our website. These stories can be created in your imagination or a memory about a relative. Either way, visit our website at https://goart.org/baagallery/ or come in and scan the QR code in the gallery to submit your story.

Press Release:

Want to try out a new routine? Always wanted to try comedy? Read a poem? Come in for the 4th Friday Open Mic Night at GO ART! Sign ups start at 6:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7 p.m.

Open Mic is followed by a comedy performance hosted by Dave Mollahan with headliner Alex Mallory. Tickets are only $10 at the door (free if you participated in the open mic) per person for an evening full of laughs. Grab your friends, grab a drink and get ready for a fun night.

GO ART!'s annual member and staff art show opened on Thursday evening.

The show runs through Feb. 3.

Artists with work on display are:

• Justin Reynolds
• Rebecca LaFevre
• Rich Della Costa
• Mary Bryant
• Julie A Lambert
• Jodi Fisher
• Dan Hogan
• Bryan Wright
• Donald Fryling
• David Burke
• Mary Jo Whitman
• Madeleine Rush
• Judy Wenrich

Press Release:

The Batavia Society of Artists is hosting artist Julie Lambert on Tuesday, Nov. 14 starting at 7 p.m. at Go Art!/Seymour Place, 201 E. Main St., Batavia. She will be demonstrating papermaking art. 

Non-members are welcome with a $5 fee. Light refreshments will be provided.  The Tavern 2.o.1. will be open for cash purchases.

Submitted photos of Julie Lambert's artwork.

A native of Rochester who has lived “everywhere” before settling down in Batavia eight years ago, Eric Zwieg could easily be described as a journeying artist.

Zwieg, who has more recently racked up academic degrees with no stopping in sight, spent his childhood in his grandmother’s cultural Chautauqua Institute surroundings, where he saw great jazz legends, later pursuing music performance in college before quitting after a year to indulge in the real thing — hitting the road for the next several years, forming his own bands, writing songs, recording albums, and scoring acting gigs for Indie movies. 

“I really wasn’t getting out of it what I wanted. My mother had been an opera singer in college, so she really wanted me to get the schooling, but it wasn’t meant for me. I’d rather hang in the bars,” Zwieg said during an interview with The Batavian. “I worked really hard. I was very industrious,” he said, adding the piece that most aspiring artists can relate to. “I was a personal trainer, did restaurant jobs, gallery jobs, I used to light shows for galleries, anything to make a buck here and there. And it all added up to put food on the table and pay rent.”

He dabbled in writing by drafting his own audition scripts for the theater “to help me stand out a little bit, you know, instead of the same old, same old stuff they hear.” 

“So I was always trying to be creative in that respect. That got me the Indie film parts," he said. "They didn’t pay anything, but you’re working, and you’re doing what you really want to do.”

Since all of that, for the last seven years, he’s been in school full-time, earning a bachelor’s degree in writing in 2016 and his master’s in writing four years later. And “that’s where my writing really started to take on some importance in my life,” he said.

He then obtained his master’s in fine arts at Goddard College this July, which is when he completed the thesis he is using as the basis for his staged reading of “Passenger: A Billion Little Pieces.” It debuts at 7 p.m. Nov. 9 at GO Art!’s main gallery, 201 East Main St., Batavia.  

“It’s a fully hybrid memoir, which is important that people understand that, and it’s based on postmodern writing disciplines and elements, and postmodern literature, having started after World War II … I’m using all the literary elements, I really wanted to pull a card trick off here, not only on my mentors but on the readers,” he said. “I really want to fill it chock full of all this stuff that, it’s aesthetically beautiful to read, but they don’t know what’s going on. And so it kind of takes one to know one. So there’s so much hidden, but it’s stylistically very academic.”

This presentation was made possible with Zwieg’s fifth Ripple grant award through GO Art!

“Passenger: A Billion Little Pieces—postmodern reflections in an attempt at several literary sensibilities, attitudes, and genre” is a hybrid of prose, poetry (Haiku, prosaic, anaphoric, repetition, lyric, narrative), definitions, quotes, lists, font variations, cut-and-paste, liberal punctuation, foreign language, dramatic and film dialogue insertions, homage, pastiche, text colorization, watermarks, absurdum, images, page breaks, use of whitespace, academic annotations, object blocks, postmodern concepts (metafiction, unreliable narration, intertextuality, anti-authorism, rejection-embracement of high and low culturalism, nonlinear storyline), embedded dramaturgical direction, irony, metaphor, existential thought, epistemology, naïve realism, philosophical skepticism, parody-satire, unrealistic narratives, paradox, sarcasm, humor, multiple POVs, dreams within dreams, stories within stories, nonuse of page numbers, contractions, quotation marks, and a bit of memoir, be it faux, pragmatic or idealistic.

Those are a lot of varying elements. Given the academic basis of the reading, and you say so much is hidden, will the audience get it? 
Maybe not. They might not fully understand the big picture, he said, but will get the vignettes. 

“They’ll get the chapters, and they’ll see this guy Henry Grace’s character,” Zwieg said. “He’s an everyman. He’s kind of an island.”

As Zwieg described Grace, and his own existence over the last number of years, one might wonder if there’s also some autobiography in here as well. There is some loneliness. 

Passenger is a professional reading with paid performers featuring Richard Ferris, Stephen VanValkenburg and Zwieg. While there are no costumes or sets, and perhaps because of that, it’s the words — their nuance, their lilt, their palpable meaning, their pronunciation and embrace as delivered by the performers — that make this show, Zwieg said.  

He pays homage to his favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who founded City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. 

“I love these writers so much, you’re paying homage to them,” he said. I’m not trying to compare myself to them. I have my own twist on it too.”

Vonnegut is an American writer well known for his “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which Zwieg specifically referenced, and Foster Wallace is a postmodern novelist. His other muse, if it can be called that, was rock band Television’s album “Marquee Moon,” of which he painstakingly rifled through all eight tracks to pull references, quotes and footnotes that have significance for him. 

“There's a section when Henry falls in love with music as a teenager, right? And he goes to see that live band for the first time. So that's where this concept comes from Television. Unless you're a real music nerd, not a lot of people know about it. But this was at CBGBs in the mid-70s, which blew up with Blondie, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, on and on and on. It was just, that was the passion of music,” he said. “And so that's the connection to music for me. So the eight chapters, you know, See No Evil, Marquee Moon, whatever on down, are the track listings on that album. And there are quotes. There are footnotes throughout … there are seven or eight pages of footnotes that relate back to the photos, quotations, movie quotes, movie dialogue, all that stuff. 

"So I give credit to all those people. But there are a number of quotes from the lead singer and main songwriter on Television, who actually passed away just this year, Tom Verlaine. And so that's that energy I was trying to, you know, that element really means a lot to me.”

While working on each chapter, he would key in on one song and listen to it, he said, some 20 times in a four-hour period, to “define and pick a line out here that I can include in my prose texts somehow to make it that more of a convoluted postmodern type of experience.”

So there’s a lot going on, he said. An easy understatement. However, that’s the beauty of art and poetry and words, as Passenger’s own script states:  

You. You are. You are you. You have been.

You are. You will be forever. Breathe deeply. Listen. Allow life to be. Simple as a moment.

Fulfilling. The end is what you make it. Who are you? but existence without answers surrounded by suffering. 

Reaching for clarity in all things. Survival dependent upon the balance of randomness, choice, and the process of process. 

Journeys yet unfulfilled.

There will be a second show at 2 p.m. Nov. 11 at Pub Coffee Hub, 56 Harvester Ave., Batavia. There is no admission fee, and it is suggested for mature audiences only of age 17 and older. 

Press Release:

GO ART!’s Preschool Music and Movement class is back and open for registration. The cost for the four-week session is $40 (Non- Members) or $36 (Members). For more information and to register go to goart.org/programming/exlporeart/exlporeart-children/.

Do-Re-Mi will focus on seasonal song, play, motor and locomotor movement, instrumental exploration, vocal and rhythmic call and response, listening activities, storytime, and fun for children ages 2 through 5, alongside their parent or favorite person! 

The curriculum is designed to engage young learners through play and exploration while providing a safe and nurturing space for them to discover and grow important skills, such as language, cognition, and physical development, as well as support and encourage social and emotional learning. We are so excited to provide this opportunity and instill a love of music and the arts in our youngest community members!

In this session, we will have two different classes. One class will meet Monday evenings (November 6, 13, 20, 27) at GO ART! in Batavia from 6 - 6:45 p.m. and the other will meet Tuesday evenings (November 7, 14, 21, and 28) at the Hoag Library in Albion from 6 - 6:45 p.m. Pre-registration is required and space is limited.

People kept asking Barb Toal what Batavia Peace Garden was all about, and it was too great a concept for her to explain, so there was only one thing for her to do.

Write a book about it.

“The story is too big to tell, you know, it’s too hard to explain to people what it’s all about in five minutes,” said Toal, co-founder of the garden nestled around Holland Land Office Museum on West Main Street in Batavia. “And lots of people were asking me to tell them a little bit here, a little bit there. And I finally said, you know, if we don’t start documenting this, nobody’s gonna know what this is all about.”

And the "Friends of the Batavia Peace Garden" was born. There will be a book signing event, with light refreshments served, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday at GO Art!, 201 E. Main St., Batavia.

The garden’s evolution began with Toal’s idea and the vision being outlined in paperwork in 2010. “We had to build the integrity of our organization,” Toal said, and earn the respect of the community, as those early members forged ahead with their plans to be on and in the grounds of the museum.

“And without this community, we could have never been in there,” she said. “This community is incredible. The people, the donations, and how they care about the families who care about the community are just amazing. Because every cent that has ever gone into that garden is from this community.

“All these years later, 13 years later, we got our first grant tool to enroll … to do the mural on the water tank, and the path to the second phase of the garden, because the first phase is completed and full. And the second one has partially started, and the third has been designed.”

Whoa, hold on there Barb Toal. Folks need to know much more about the beginning phase. After all, that’s why the book was written. They wanted to know what this Peace Garden stuff was all about, right?

It originated after Toal visited International Peace Garden founder Paula Savage at her home. Toal was watching footage of peace gardens on a laptop and saw one in Italy and then one in Ireland. As it happened, she had seen both of them in person during prior trips. 

“I thought it was meant to be,” Toal said. “I bought into it. I wanted to get this garden put where it is, I fought like the devil. I wanted to get people to the museum. I was born and raised in Batavia and I wanted to show it off.”

Savage is also from Batavia, and “we both love our community” Toal said. She felt that Savage, with her International Peace Garden clout, could literally bring the idea home. 

Savage came up with the idea for a garden in 1990 as a way to honor the United States and Canada as the only two countries in the world that shared the longest undefended border for more than 200 years, and her vision was accepted and installed in Washington, D.C. in 1991.

Gardens were then presented worldwide, first to Poland, and then Germany, and Hungary, and one by one, 20 countries honored one another by choosing the next one in line for an international peace garden as a token of goodwill and, of course, world peace.

There was the eventual development of a trail of peace gardens for the bicentennial commemoration activities for the War of 1812 along Lake Ontario and the U.S. and Canadian border, aptly named the Bicentennial Peace Garden Trail.  

Toal had just retired, and Savage asked her to carry out a dream to create a memorial garden to honor their community. They both knew it would take “a large amount of creativity to connect world peace to our very own small hometown community,” Toal said.

An initial planning design phase began with a committee and volunteers, as they began to work toward their goals. Batavia became a site for an honorary International Peace Garden as part of the 400-mile War of 1812 Bicentennial Peace Garden trail from Buffalo to Plattsburgh. 

There was a garden groundbreaking in 2011. The book captures much of the progress before and since then with lots of photographs of volunteers and people who were integral to it all coming to fruition. There were those first three paying members. A cool metal globe crafted and installed by local businesses. Dignitaries, a drum and bugle corps. Scenes of digging up the earth and planting future growth. Painting benches and placing bricks. Flying flags, hands in cement, and solemn ceremonies. The Statue of Liberty. Smiles and celebrations. Re-enactment demonstrations, tours, and lessons. Fundraisers, and hotdog sales. A new shed, and longtime old friends.

Now that the first phase has been completed, which includes a painted mural on the water tank, Phase II of a soon-to-be installed arbor at the entrance, along with flags for more countries joining in spreading world peace are in the works. The second phase will also include interpretive panels that members are planning to dedicate some time next June, she said.

A third phase not quite so mapped out as of yet, is to potentially connect the ongoing garden trail to the city’s plans to develop Creek Park property behind the ice arena, she said. 

But for now, the book is on a shelf to tell the story that Toal wished to tell. 

“Because everybody goes, ‘I know the flags are there, what are they there for?’ They don’t know. But each one of those countries has an actual Peace Garden in it. And then, you know, so every year or two, or however the board chooses, another garden is added,” Toal said. “So that’s why when we designed this, to begin with, we knew that the first garden would be full of the flags we had to start with. So for the next stage of the second phase … there are flags on hold to go in there. But we can’t do anything until we get all the permissions from everybody. And then we’d add a flag each year to add more countries of the world trying to make peace, the countries that are trying to work peacefully together.” 

And rest assured, that garden members will continue to raise money to keep the effort going, from bricks and T-shirts to a seasonal hotdog stand, pins, and local flags. Even when they have a holiday get-together, board members pay their own way, she said, so as not to take money away from what’s to be spent on essentials for the garden. 

“When you love what you do it makes life so much easier; it’s a labor of love, more than a chore,” Toal said. “And we take pride in the garden.”

Proceeds from the book will go to Batavia Peace Garden. They may be purchased at GO Art!, Oliver’s Candies, and Holland Land Office Museum in Batavia. 

Press Release:

The Holland Land Office Museum is proud to announce the next edition of its Trivia Night @ the Museum on Thursday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. This month's topic the infamous gangster Al Capone. The event will be held at GO ART! at 201 E. Main St. in Batavia. Their Tavern 2.0 will also be open for anyone interested in a beverage. Admission is $5 or $3 for museum members. Please contact the museum at 585-343-4727 or hollandlandoffice@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

The Holland Land Office Museum is proud to announce the next edition of its concert series on Wednesday, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. The museum welcomes local rock duo Strummerz, you may also know them as No Blarney!, as they play all your favorite classic rock hits. Admission is $5 or $4 for museum members. Please contact the museum at 585-343-4727 or hollandlandoffice@gmail.com if you would like to attend. “This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by GO ART!”

Join us for the next edition of our Java with Joe E. morning presentation series on Thursday, Oct. 26 at 9 a.m. Our Curator Tyler Angora will be sharing his presentation to go along with the end of our Historic Batavia Cemetery exhibit, "Victorian Era Mourning." From Black dresses to black veils which made women sick, mourning has become a fascination of the past. Admission is free and coffee and donuts will be served. If you would like to attend please contact the museum at 585-343-4727 or hollandlandoffice@gmail.com.

The Holland Land Office Museum is proud to announce the next edition of its Guest Speaker Series on Thursday, Oct. 26 at 7 p.m. The museum welcomes Amy Truesdell, writer and consultant from Maine, who has fulfilled a lifelong goal to bring the over 100 letters of her great-great-grandfather to light of his time in the Civil War. Rollin Truesdell enlisted in the Union Army at Binghamton as part of the 27th NY Volunteers and fought in many pivotal battles, writing letters documenting his time in the Civil War. Admission is $5 or $3 for museum members. Please contact the museum at 585-343-4727 or hollandlandoffice@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

“This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by GO ART!”

Google "most important living artists," and Cindy Sherman is on that list.

In fact, in 2013, she was touted as one of the six great living artists.  

Some of her works have sold for millions, setting records for photographic prints. 

That notoriety helps make Sherman interesting to Gerald Mead, who has acquired 23 of her pictures, but that's only, at best, half the reason he collects her work. Mead's interest in Sherman is both parochial and personal. Sherman and Mead both attended Buffalo State University (though about a decade apart), and Mead's passion and specialty is collecting the works of Western New York artists.

He has more than 1,700 pieces in his collection.

"She's really kind of an icon in Buffalo," Mead said. "Her name is known far and wide as one of the most significant photographers, and she has that connection to Western New York. I was really familiar with her whole body of work, and because I was a curator at the Burchfield Penny, we had her works in our collection. It just became a special interest of mine when I first started collecting."

Over the next six weeks, art lovers from the area won't need to travel to London, Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, or even Buffalo, to see examples of Sherman's work. They can just take a little trip to GO ART! at 201 East Main St., Batavia, to see a portion of Mead's collection on display.

The show's run starts today (Wednesday) and concludes on Nov. 25, with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 19.

The show is a real coup for GO ART! said Mary Jo Whitman, education/SCR director for the arts council. She wrote her master's thesis on Sherman.

"I'm very excited to get to know a lot of people in this area who don't always get to travel out to the bigger museums to see this kind of work will get to see it," Whitman said. "It's exciting to be able to bring these works to people, essentially."

Whitman said Sherman's work is important to her because it speaks to her in a personal way, because in her work, Sherman presents herself as a chameleon, taking on different roles as the main subject of most of her photos.

Sherman started her rise in prominence with what is still probably her most famous body of work, Untitled Film Stills. 

The series was created mostly between 1977 and 1980, mostly in New York City, with the city as a backdrop, or in her apartment. The black and white prints mimic the kind of studio publicity shots that were once produced for film noir or French avante-garde movies. Sherman conceived of the shots -- only a few directly inspired by actual movies -- created the costumes, did her own makeup, and created the pose that seemed to capture the movie's star at a pivotal plot point. 

"I felt this immediate connection with her," Whitman said. "I think it's really this idea of, you know, the constructed identity that you can be so many different people. You're in social situations, you're in professional situations, and that kind of really dictates who you are at that moment and really how many different people you can be. I know, for myself, I feel that way. I grew up in a very small town as a country girl, and I went on to be an artist, I can be a crazy hippie at times, and I can be in galleries like this as the pretentious curator. So I play a lot of different roles. I think that I just kind of felt a kinship with her after seeing her work.

After Untitled Film Stills, Sherman moved on to other series that, again, feature her in various roles and characters, such as Fairy Tales, Disasters, Centerfolds, History Portraits, Clowns, and most recently, Instagram Portraits

Mead, whose collection started with "Letraset Art Sheet #1," a collage Sherman made from British clip art in 1966, which he won as a door prize at an afterparty in 1995 for the 20th Anniversary of Hallwalls Contemporary Art Gallery (which Sherman co-founded while at Buffalo State), said his goal has been to collect something of Sherman's from each of her eras and from each decade of her career.

"I've been able to do that over the course of 35 years," Mead said.

Sherman's work appeals to him, Mead said, for that same chameleon character that inspired Whitman to study her work.

"She's used herself as the subject, but she's converted and transformed herself into personalities, personas, characters," Mead said. "She doesn't consider them portraits of people generally because she's the subject of all of them. I think it can be fascinating to see how a person can use their own appearance and alter it to have such a wide spectrum of, again, personalities, personas characters."

Also, Mead said, each photo tells a story that also allows the viewer to help fill in the narrative.

"What's interesting about her work, too, is that it's meant to sort of evoke a response or a reaction because the person in it -- they're all actors or actresses, right? Is just being caught mid-performance. So when you're looking at it, you have to get out it, 'what happened before? What's going to happen right after?' She's telling the story. The interesting thing is, a lot of times, I think people sometimes look to see what the title is to figure out what exactly is going on, but they're all untitled. She intentionally has no title on them because she wants you to bring your own understanding and your own kind of reaction to it."

It's that nuance of story and character that is one reason people should come to see Sherman's work while its on display at GO ART!, Whitman said.

"It's just really cool," Whitman said. "She's got a great idea that's really unique. I mean, she plays all the roles. She is the artist. She's the model. She's the makeup artist. She's creating the work all based on herself. There's all these different guises that she has. It's really fascinating when you kind of break it down to what it took to make each individual work. You're gonna come in, and you're gonna see what looks like a portrait to you, but when you kind of break it down, like okay, this is her in every single portrait, and you will be able to tell it's the same person. So, it's just impressive."

Two new art projects at the GOOSE Community Center in Oakfield are not just visual embellishments to the Main Street property, founder Susan Zeliff says.

They are embodiments of what the center stands for and has become. 

One is a mural based on a quote that Zeliff chose: “This I have learned from the shadow of a tree, that my influence may fall where I will never be.”

“It spoke to me a lot about our community center and the people that support it,” Zeliff said. “They’re helping people that they may never come into contact with.”

She commissioned artist David Burke, thanks to a grant through GO Art!, to paint the mural on an exterior wall of the center. It features a large grassy area with a tree’s shadow and the quote. 

The easy part was knowing what to do, Burke said. He used a scaffold for the piece measuring about 10 feet high and 40 feet wide. It took about 35 hours over the course of three or four trips to complete it with rollers and brushes.

What’s it like to have pedestrians and motorists going by observing your handiwork?
“It’s great, I love it. Several people in Batavia have been doing murals and all over the country,” he said. “Murals are coming back. It’s exposing people to art. I just like the idea of teaching and art. I really kind of enjoy turning people onto the idea that anybody can make art; anyone has the capacity for making any kind of art or music.”

Zeliff plans to apply for a GO Art! grant to bring in some art teachers, including Burke, for lessons, hopefully at the beginning of 2024, she said.

Those lessons will complement a host of activities, including chair yoga, which has doubled or tripled in attendance since first offered; a Family Fun Bingo night on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, drawing some 60 participants of all ages; a continuously growing food pantry that serves 80 to 90 families each month; a farm market that operates separately in the back of the building on Saturdays; and community room space that is rented out for special events. 

Zeliff has been turning to GO Art! more regularly with applications for grants, last year providing “different styles of art, an expressive kind of art,” she said, which featured Burke and Bill Shutt, who returned this year to provide the second latest piece of exterior artwork for the GOOSE at 33 South Main St.

He and Zeliff loosely talked about how his piece could somehow represent the site, and the symbol of hands came to him.

“I asked her the reason for the GOOSE, and she said to connect the GOOSE to the community and to resources and to connect businesses, connect organizations, etc. So that kind of led me to thinking about handshakes, and we’ve seen some of the logos of the four interconnected hands, so that was where the thought process for this piece came from,” he said. “The shapes came from recycled material … so all the hands are different. The material is all different, again, trying to show that we’re all made up of different pieces, and different parts, and we can all connect together.

“Connecting hands, connecting communities is what the GOOSE is all about,” Shutt said. 

A mechanic and welder fabricator for many years, Shutt was used to “making stuff” from the odds and ends of motorcycle parts and other materials that were the remains from an old farm, he said. 

“A lot of it was stuff around the house or around the shop. I've tinkered with cars and motorcycles. Probably five or six years ago was the first time that I really made something that was an art piece, per se. And that started off with old pieces, parts, motorcycle parts and car parts that I made into some musical instrument-inspired pieces,” he said.

He has crafted stringed musical instruments and other creations  — including some metal sculptures on boxes depicting the inequity of humanity outside of the GO Art! site in Batavia.

For the Oakfield project, he used galvanized tubing, stainless steel, chrome steel, motorcycle parts, and an old, high-pressure gas cylinder tubing. He appreciates using recycled materials and will be working on a project using part of an old Erie Canal lift bridge. 

Connecting hands is freshly tagged, so he hasn’t gotten a whole lot of feedback just yet, but “hopefully, the main message got across,” Shutt said. 

“If they see something positive out of it, it was a success,” he said. “It took about three months to complete. It was a lot of trial and error, a lot of R and D time, how I was going to make the hands, positions he hands. Sometimes the material dictates what you’re doing.”

Zeliff is pleased with both projects as an extension of yet continuing growth of the GOOSE center, which falls under the Warrior House program. Shutt’s artwork depicts one person standing with a “whole lot of hands behind them, and that’s my everyday,” she said. 

“I am very excited about all the activity that’s been happening within the community and just building relationships,” Zeliff said. “We do coffee hour on Wednesdays, and one year ago, it was me and one person, and now it’s two dozen people. It’s exciting to see the room become full.”

Press Release:

Artists, nonprofits, and municipalities seeking funding for arts-related projects, programming, and events in Genesee and Orleans Counties are encouraged to apply to the Statewide Community Regrant Program (SCR) through GO ART!. Applications are due by Nov 1st.

Applicants can apply for up to a total of $5000 in the categories of Community Arts and Arts Education, and $2500 for Individual Artist Commissions.

Eligibility:

Genesee and Orleans County nonprofit organizations, NYS incorporated nonprofits, agencies of local government (not New York State agencies), individual artists, groups or collectives, and unincorporated entities are eligible to apply.

• Individual artists, groups or collectives, and unincorporated entities applying for the Reach (Community) and Spark (Education) grants must have a Fiscal Sponsor or Community Partner
• Applicant, Community Partner, or Fiscal Sponsor must have a permanent address in the same county the project is taking place
• Applicants must be 18 years of age at the time of submission and may not be enrolled in a full-time degree program Applicants are required to attend an informational seminar prior to applying. 2023 grantees are exempt from the seminar requirement but are encouraged to attend.

Upcoming Seminars:

• Sept 18, Sept 25, Oct 2, & Oct 9 at 6:00pm, (virtual, Zoom)
• Oct 10 at 6pm, (in person, GO ART! 201 E Main St, Batavia)

Peer Review Panel:

Grantees are chosen by a peer review panel comprised of community members who live and/or work in Genesee or Orleans Counties and are familiar with the arts, local cultural activities, and the community.

For more information, to view guidelines, apply, sign up for a workshop, or nominate a panelist visit: www.goart.org/grants. For questions contact Mary Jo Whitman at mjwhitman@goart.org or Jodi Fisher at jfisher@goart.org.

Artist Dan Butler has worked on a variety of projects and mediums over the years, from murals on exterior brick walls, sunflowers on a silo, artwork on headstones, a propane tank, a Kitchen Aid mixer, wood barns, an American flag on the side of a garage, and the inside wall of a Harvester Avenue art project called The Harve.

Now he can add a labyrinth to his portfolio. 

Commissioned by Batavia First Presbyterian Church, it was much more of an undertaking than the Perry resident and business owner thought it would be.

“It was mainly figuring out what type of, like, I had no idea, and neither did Dr. Roula as far as what material that we needed to get, and we needed to find a source for it. And you know, we knew we wanted a big canvas, but what is it exactly called? How heavy is it? That kind of thing,” Butler said during an interview with The Batavian. “We eventually found a source and went with, I think, it was like a 13-pound duck cloth or something like that. And then, I had to come up with a design. We knew we wanted the seven-layer labyrinth design … when you actually see the labyrinth, it goes back on itself seven times. Well, there are seven rings anyway. And you can have all sorts of different things to it.”

Though that may have seemed the tough part, it was the easier task, compared to actually working on the project, he said. He had to find a space large enough to accommodate the fabric — 18 feet tall by 18 feet wide, and it had to lay flat for him to paint, and then dry and remain there while he continued with the creation.

You may have seen a labyrinth outdoors, with a combination of paths or passages for one to navigate and focus on from entry to exit. These exist in parks and gardens as a series of mazes, though they can also serve as a spiritual or meditative journey to walk around the circles from beginning to end and back again.

Butler’s understanding of the labyrinth is that it’s a tool to help the participant to focus while walking from step to step — or in this case, painted brick by brick — which can be meditative and draw one’s focus to a central point. These tools are said to be metaphors for personal journeys into the self and back into the world. 

Butler designed the labyrinth in keeping with a church theme, using gray rustic bricks — “stone bricks, kind of like the old school cathedral kind of thing,” he said — for the path, and four stained glass designs, one for each corner. 

The church leadership had selected four words for those designs: faith, peace, trust and love. A colorful heart represents the love. 

“But the hardest part to all of this was finding a space big enough to work on it. So I ended up doing it out in the field at my sister-in-law’s and primed it that way. Like we did like three coats of white, just because it's like a duck cloth. It's just like a beige canvas,” he said. “Then I tried doing a projector to try to line up the artwork to it, but I couldn't get it right in everything.”

So he had to get a little more creative, and he moved the project over to his very newly purchased business site, Image Out Graphics in Perry. Purchased in July, he’s just getting his feet wet at the property and has ample space to spread out and work on his designs and hand-painted craft. 

If it seems simple enough to draw and paint seven circles and four corner designs, everything had to be aligned with the right width out from the center, and each stone properly placed for feet to walk it. Upon completion, Butler tested it out to make sure it worked.

“I walked it plenty of times,” he said. “You’re focusing on trying to make sure you’re following the path correctly. You’re so focused on the path, you don’t think about anything else. It kind of resets you.”

He used acrylic paints and a sealant to preserve his hard labor, about 40 hours total. In hindsight, it was “definitely not that easy,” he said, and took longer than he had estimated. 

With his new business, Butler, 47, now has two full-time jobs, he said. He also works for GLOW Creatives as a visual artist for the Arts Councils of Genesee, Orleans, Wyoming and Livingston counties. That involves him in drawing caricatures at a farmers market, leading a regular drink and draw at a Perry brewery, organizing activities at Medina’s Day of the Dead, and “all sorts of visual media,” he said. 

He has painted a mural outside of the GO Art! building in Batavia, and inside the kitchen for a culinary program, as well as participated in The Harve’s Mad Hatter, large baby, caterpillar, and Cheshire cat displays at 56 Harvester Ave., Batavia. 

That’s how he obtained this gig — GO Art! Executive Director Gregory Hallock recommended him to First Presbyterian Church, Butler said. He had no prior experience with labyrinths, but he can now chalk up another medium and type of project under his belt as being done. 

The Rev. Roula Alkhouri said the church will be celebrating the work, “which we hope to use in community events to help people pray or meditate through walking,” she said. “Dan did a great job with this project.”

There will be a blessing ceremony at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the church, 300 East Main St., Batavia. Everyone is welcome to attend, and “join us in thanking artist Dan Butler for the fabric labyrinth he created for our community,” Alkhouri said. “You will also have the chance to walk the labyrinth.” 

A first-time Family Festival will follow at 5:30 p.m.

Submitted photos.

Now that school has begun, some local organizations are throwing a celebratory event to kick off the season right, with an evening of art, food, fun activities, and music, organizers say.

Batavia First Presbyterian Church will be hosting the event in collaboration with St. James Episcopal Church, GO Art! and Genesee County Youth Bureau.

“We have put a lot of thought into how to create a fun and engaging atmosphere for families and children," Genesee County Youth Bureau Director Daniel Calkins said. “Although the church has done these types of events before, this is the first time this particular event will be taking place. Pastor Roula and her congregation have been very open about wanting to give back to the community, and this event is an extension of that."

The event is set for 5:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday at First Presbyterian Church, 300 East Main St., Batavia.

“This is a free event for anybody that would like to come and enjoy the activities provided in an intentional showing of communal love,” Calkins said. “The Youth Bureau is excited to continue to grow through these events and partnerships. We are continually invested into showing Genesee County residents that we care about them and their families and want them to have fun and be provided for.”

The evening will include hamburgers, hotdogs, and chips, and ice cream from the Ice Cream and Chill truck. The Youth Bureau will have a tent outside with a cotton candy machine and all its sticky sweetness, plus there will be a bounce house for children to enjoy, a T-shirt tie-dye station offered by GO ART!, and BDC rock painting.

After the kids get creative painting rocks, they will be placed around town, and then whoever finds 20 of them and takes pictures to post on social media (tagged on the back of the rocks), will get a gift card as a prize. 

Other activities will include an art spinning paint station, yard games, including corn hole, ring toss, basketball, and colorful chalks for kids to use in the church parking lot. Children will have the opportunity to create their own art, which will be framed and displayed at the church for the next month. 

There will also be live music throughout the evening during this family-friendly event, the Rev. Roula Alkhouri said.

“We are really excited to help families celebrate the beginning of the school year and hope that families will enjoy a fun community evening,” Alkhouri said.

The event is free and open to the public.

Press Release:

Cindy Sherman: Works from the Gerald Mead Collection, will be on display at GO ART!, 201 E. Main Street in Batavia, October 4 – November 5th. A free, public reception will be held Oct 19, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Cindy Sherman is an internationally renowned artist whose ground-breaking photographs have examined themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Widely seen as one of the most important and influential artists in contemporary art, she gained recognition in the art world with her series of black-and-white photographs, “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80). 

A Buffalo State College alumnus, she played a crucial role in the formation of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center and CEPA Gallery during her time in Buffalo. Her work can be seen in collections at the Tate Gallery, London; the Museum of Modern Art; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

The work will be on loan from the Gerald Mead Collection. Dr. Gerald Mead, a noted independent curator, artist, and emeriti art educator based in Buffalo, has been collecting and exhibiting work by artists associated with WNY for over 35 years. This exhibition, Cindy Sherman: Works from the Gerald Mead Collection, consists of a brief survey of Cindy Sherman’s works dating from 1978 to 2017 from his collection. Included are works from several significant series of her career such as Untitled Film Stills, Fairy Tales, History Portraits, and Instagram.

GO ART! Gallery Hours: Wednesday: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., Thursday & Friday: 11 a.m. - 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. For more information contact Mary Jo Whitman at mjwhitman@goart.org

Press Release:

Brick Builder Club - GO ART! is running a free 4-week Brick Builders Club. The Club will take place starting Saturday, September 9, and run through September 30. This Club meets at GO ART! from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Building bricks are provided by GO ART! Brick Builders is open to ages 5 - 100+. 

Each week there will be a planned activity but it is fine if club members would like to free build. Because Club members will have to leave their creations at GO ART! each week's creations will be photographed and put up on our website (with parental permission).

Pillow Making Sewing Class - GO ART! is offering a Pillow Making Sewing Class with local quilter and sewing extraordinaire Peg Berhorn. The class will be held on Friday, September 15, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at GO ART!, 201 East Main St., Batavia. Open to participants age 12 and older, those who sign up should expect to attend both classes to complete the project. 

The cost is $20/person for non-GO ART! members and $18/per person for members, total, and all materials and tools will be provided. Contact GO ART! at 585-343-9313, email jfisher@goart.org, or sign up online at goart.org. Registration is requested by September 14. Participants will learn some of the basics of sewing if they do not already know how to sew and also complete a pillow to bring home!

Poetry and Prose Club - Starting Thursday, September 28 from 6-7 p.m. at GO ART! come and learn some of the basics of creative writing and participate in some fun creative writing activities (blackout poetry, object poetry, short stories and more) to get your creativity flowing or you can just come and network with other creative writers. There is no cost to participate in this program. Please bring a notebook with you (or a computer) to keep your work on.

Free Teen Animation Workshop - GO ART! is offering a 4-week Teen Animation Workshop for children 12-16 at the Hoag Library (134 S Main St, Albion, NY). This workshop will run on Saturdays from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. September 30, October 7, 21, and 28. 

This workshop is FREE but registration is required. To register your teen please contact GO ART! at 585-343-9313 or email jfisher@goart.org. Registration is requested by September 27. This workshop will be instructed by Jess Moffet, a recent graduate of RIT.

The Batavia Society of Artists is hosting artist Karen Crittenden at 7 p.m. this Tuesday at GO ART!/Seymour Place, 201 E. Main St., Batavia. 

Karen will be doing a hands-On Gelli Plates and Alcohol Inks demonstration.  All materials will be provided at no cost.  Refreshments are provided.  Non-members are welcome for a $5 fee.  The 2.o.1. Tavern will be open for cash purchases. 

Please join us for a fun and interesting evening of making art!  Any questions, please call Teresa Tamfer at 585-506-2465.

On a search for a fun fundraising activity that might draw in members of the community who don't typically support the arts, GO ART! Executive Directory Gregory Hallock hit upon a fanciful idea -- a dodgeball tournament.

After looking around a bit, Hallock realized there doesn't seem to be any other dodgeball tournaments in the area, so the idea also had the advantage of being unique.

So, GO ART! is hosting its inaugural dodgeball tournament on Saturday, Aug. 12 at the David M. McCarthy Ice Arena at 5 p.m.

Teams of six to eight people cost $200, which includes a beverage. There will be prizes for best team uniforms and best team name.

For those who are of an artistic bent -- and Hallock stresses, this is not required -- there will be a rap battle/poetry slam.

That helps keep the arts connected to the event, he said.

The event is sponsored by the David M. McCarthy Ice Arena and Eli Fish Brewing Co.

You can sign up your team online by clicking here.

"When we thought of the idea, it also immediately made us think of the dodgeball movie, and we realized that was all about being funny and having fun, so this is about being funny and having fun. It's the comedy side of arts," Hallock said.

As many forms of entertainment as there have been in this area — dramas, comedies, musicals, black box theater, high school, community and college productions, dance recitals, jazz, concert and jazz band, orchestra and vocal performances — there’s one that has yet to make it to the stage.

There hasn’t been an opera. And GO ART! Executive Director Gregory Hallock, in collaboration with Genesee Community College and Batavia Downs Gaming & Hotel, in collaboration with the Oliver G. & Sarah Sloan Bauman Fund for the Arts, has worked to make it happen at the end of this month.

“We don’t really have opera or ballets out here, so I began to contact opera and ballet companies, and I got a response from the Rochester City Ballet and Nickel City Opera,” Hallock said to The Batavian. “I talked to my former voice teacher, who said that both are the real deal. They had been looking to tour and are really excited about this opportunity.”

Rochester City Ballet is in the works for “The Nutcracker” later this fall, while Nickel City Opera, based in Buffalo, will be delivering “The Barber of Seville” at 7 p.m. Monday to the stage of Stuart Steiner Theatre at GCC, 1 College Road, Batavia.

Hallock, with days to spare, discovered in March that there was a grant available, and due in April, that could help make the costly production possible for Genesee County. Folks at GCC were willing and happy to provide the venue, he said, while Batavia Downs donated several rooms for the traveling performers.

“The Barber of Seville” is an opera buffa in two acts composed by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's 1775 French comedy The Barber of Seville. Rossini's version by the same name has proven “to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music and has been described as the opera buffa of all "opera buffas” after 200 years, according to the show’s press release.

Nickel City Opera’s founder and artistic director, Valerian Ruminski, describes the show as a chain of comedic antics, one after the other, and not what you’d expect from a full-fledged opera. It features Ruminski, a Metropolitan Opera basso, as “the old windbag Bartolo” who gets his comeuppance in a ruse so well-known, it was played out in a Looney Tunes episode of “Bugs Bunny” in the 1960s.

All of the performers are well-rehearsed professionals who arrive earlier that day to get ready, set, and go. A 21-member orchestra accompanies the action, and a full set delivered from New Jersey serves as the scenery to envelope the characters, action and song. Fair warning, this opera is based in Italian, but there will be large screens with supertitles of English for audience members to follow along.

Hallock sees the possible pitfalls of a Monday — it’s not your typical date night, to be sure. Then again, it’s not your typical date night, so make new plans, head out the door and kick off your week with a different kind of entertainment for yourselves.

Ruminski and Hallock encourage patrons to wear whatever they want, whether it’s a tuxedo or jeans and a sweatshirt, ballgown or yoga outfit  — there’s no pressure to conform to opera etiquette, they said.

“I’m just excited to bring this here and make this all happen,” Hallock said.

Likewise, Ruminski looks forward to bringing the full stage action to GCC, and he hopes to be able to do it on a yearly basis.

Nickel City Opera, Inc. was founded in 2003 by Valerian Ruminski, the show’s lead, and has produced over 20 operas, including the world premiere of “SHOT!” by Persis Vehar in 2016 at Shea’s Buffalo

Theatre. Other productions have included “La Boheme,” “Tosca,” “Don Pasquale,” and “The Marriage of Figaro.”

The opera company’s mission is to bring high-quality opera and events to Western New York,  and is launching an expansion project to further the arts in WNY and beyond.

Tickets may be purchased HERE or at GO ART!, 201 East Main St., Batavia. There is a discount available for students when tickets are purchased at GO ART!