John Tracey, Untitled, ceramic, 39x30x12 inches

The exhibition at the Burchfield-Penney is the first and only members’ show ever to have taken place at the current location, Rockwell Hall at Buffalo State College, before the move to the new Gwathmey Siegel building.

The exhibition has been the Burchfield’s most attended and houses the largest number of works the gallery has ever shown at once—nearly 300 pieces. The exhibition is also its most egalitarian. It was open to the entire membership of the Burchfield-Penney, non-juried, and as such it’s a true potpourri of the work of almost 300 different individuals, each allowed to enter in one piece. Artists from as far away as Nevada and North Carolina submitted work, but Western New York artists make up the bulk of the show. Themes and quality are wildly divergent. Landscapes, portraits, wearable art, mobiles—all are thrown in with politically charged pieces, next to monotypes, ceramics and videography.

There is a large variety of media represented by artists at all skill levels. A carefully crafted sculpture may sit in proximity to a beginner’s colored pencil drawing. One encounters minor pieces by well-known artists as well as better pieces by lesser-known creators. It’s an opportunity for the novice to exhibit in a museum setting as opposed to the more intimate confines of a gallery, as well as a chance for the more accomplished artists to access a large audience.

The exhibit is a refreshing argument for the breakdown in barriers between so called “high” and “low” art. For centuries the traditional view of art was an academic segregation of painting and sculpture—usually pieces done in watercolor, oil or fresco and three-dimensional portrayals created in marble, granite, wood or bronze. Here there is no distinguishing between the professional artist and the “outsider.” One of the most popular works, in fact, was created by one of the museum facilitators, who had never before made what is customarily defined as a “work of art.”

The planners of the show wanted to avoid a haphazard salon appearance, feeling that to display pieces floor to ceiling would be disrespectful to the works and artists. Pieces are rhythmically placed. An attempt to categorize them based on formal aspects was made to better organize the work thematically.

Prominently displayed in the Sylvia L. Rosen Gallery are craft works in ceramic, glass, fiber and textiles. Worth noting are Jane Jacobson’s etched stained-glass panel, Sunny Side Up, Rena Resiman’s mixed media Tapestry, Dianne Hull’s Dream Portals and Tullis Johnson’s Pharmakon LHOOQ. Johnson’s prototype for a fictional product is a sendup of the rarefied and impenetrable jargon of the art world and pharmaceutical industry. It also responds to the placebo effect of medication and art—one may not understand what a pill or artwork does, but if it’s being packaged and sold by the medical establishment or placed in a museum setting, it must be good and therefore sought after.

Other highlights of the show include Susan Copley’s lustrous abstract oil, A Thing for Red, and Mollie Atkinson’s steel sculpture Tuffy in Space, a whimsically curving creature that could have popped right out of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. Rose Popper’s Unfoldment is a bronze and marble work reminiscent of the Futurist Brancusi. Susan Ludwig’s watercolor, Elegant Decay, is a study of a rotting fish, organized in a triptych.

Inspired by the ceramicist Carrianne Hendrickson are Suzanne Goad’s Crokodilia and Joshua Milovich’s WhipperWill, gleefully sinister pottery pieces.

Other sculptures of interest are Wes Olmsted’s The Raft of the Medusa + Steverman and Lucas Jones’ Debacle, a multi-limbed steel composition supporting and entwined around a multicolored glass piece. Susan Nowak’s Not Yet is a poignant bronze of an old woman lifted and carried off by Death, while she screams and struggles against the Reaper.

Robert M. Gurn’s M.C. Escher Goes to the Getty is a photo assemblage of the stairs of the J. Paul Getty Museum, made to look like a Moebius strip, infinitely winding in upon itself.

Many pieces with political themes lend a contemporary air. Most of these are commentaries on current US military action, such as Charles D. Walter’s The Ulysses of War and LeRoi C. Johnson’s Satan’s Last Crusade.

The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is located at Rockwell Hall, 1300 Elmwood Avenue. The members exhibition will be on view until March 2.