Buffalo Rising Online

Aug 14th 2007, 11:00am By Cynnie Gaasch

The Beyond/In Western New York exhibition is an event that brings twelve Buffalo/Niagara region art spaces together to show the work of fifty artists who live and work within the Great Lakes region. That region extends out to include Toronto, Syracuse and Cleveland. The momentous weekend of openings that dot the area is not until the weekend of September 14th and 15th, but this Friday, August 17, the Albright Knox Art Gallery opens their portion of the exhibit as a preview of the show.

Buffalo Rising is taking the opportunity of this biennial survey of artists to showcase the Buffalo artists who are included in the exhibition(s). We are visiting these artists studios to learn about their working process, their art, their studios, and how they live and work in Buffalo. Amanda Besl is the first artist we will feature. Her work is exhibited at the Albright Knox during this show, so you can see it in person, starting this Friday.

In Besl's studio, we can see the magazine images she collects to work from when making her miniature oil paintings. In her work she investigates the memories of being an adolescent girl and the delicate place in the world that adolescence can be. Besl's process is interesting in that she starts with magazine images, but frequently changes the clothing of the young women in the painting. She does this in order to bring in more personal or more layered content. Besl keeps a dressmakers form in her studio, and while I was there “she” was wearing a floral bikini top.

I couldn’t help but shoot Besl’s second floor porch container garden for which she started nearly all of the plants from seed. What a lovely refuge in her Allentown apartment.

A full time artist, Besl grew up in Canastota, a small town in Central New York. Both her parents were art teachers, and always supported her in her pursuits. She attended SUNY Oswego for undergraduate work, beginning in fiction and completing a dual degree, including painting. She moved to New York, and worked at the Charles Cowles Gallery. The staff there helped her get into the Cranbrook Academy of Art for graduate school. It was there that she met a visiting critic who eventually connected her with a gallery in Belgium. Currently, Besl is showing her work regularly at Lyons Weir Gallery in New York, Aeroplastics Contemporary in Brussels, Artspace Witzenhausen in Amsterdam, and Galerie Zervudacki in Nice. She calls Buffalo home, and loves it.