Buffalo Rising Online

Dec 4th 2005, 2:50pm By queenseyes

Buffalo artist Ran Webber will be traveling to Florence, Italy to take part in the Florence Biennale (Biennale Internazionale DelliArte Contemporanea),where he was chosen to show four of his recent paintings. The Biennale is sponsored by the Vatican, UN and Ferrari Motors and is held in a 15th Century Renaissance Fortress (Fortessa da Basso), December 3-11, 2005. His flight leaves tomorrow, and we would like to wish him good luck and success in Italy.

Webberis work is unique in that they are done with fresco paint on paper. At a point in their creation they are put out in the environment, often floated in rivers and streams during his outdoor kayaking adventures, and then completed once they have undergone a ibaptismi in which they are soaked, crumpled, dissolved, and often torn.

His method involves re-creating them after they have been humbled by nature. This icreative rituali is his analogy for life where: ionce we have entered the river of life we become weathered, aged and sometimes nearly destroyed in the process, we then have the opportunity, with craft and design, to become whole and completed and be made beautiful in the end. Art provides the opportunity to complete our selves; Art without beauty and meaning reflects a life without beauty and meaning. Now that is conceptual!i

Ran Webber moved from Niagara Falls to Buffalo in 1973 then recently returned from Arizona State University where he studied architecture. He rented two offices spaces in the Franklin Building at the corner of Franklin and Allen Streets (above the current iNeoi, then the Marakesh Boutique). Soon afterwards he convinced the owners (Benderson Development Corp.) to let him manage the building. Within a year he had opened the second floor offices as artists studios and an exhibition space called Gallery Wilde as part of the larger-scoped Franklin Street Art Project. To attract attention to the ithen innocuous and blighted commercial corneri he began painting large iSupergraphicsi on the grafitti-covered walls throughout the neighborhood. Over several years the building became a hub of creative activity in the Allentown and downtown Buffalo area. Gallery Wilde featured exhibitions mostly for graduate Fine Art Professionals in the WNY area. Anthony Bannon (current Executive Director of the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY), then the art critic for the Buffalo News lauded the center and gallery as a imuch needed and respectable creative oasis in the blighted urban areai. Gallery Wilde held several exchange shows and fund-raising functions in conjunction with the then, formative, Hallwalls Art Center.

During the 1980is, Webber worked as an Artist in Residence for the Buffalo Arts Development Services, painting his iSupergraphicsi throughout the city and then later for the Allentown Association under a federal CETA grant to create a 84 page publication outlining the cultural, social and architectural development of Buffalois Historic Allentown Area. Also, during this period Webber exhibited widely on his own and often with a group of buffalo artists calling themselves the REDHOTS. Anthony Bannon termed their exhibition iRed Hotsi at the Alamo Gallery, Beck Hall/ UB/ Main Street Campus as his choice for iHighlights for the Year/1983.i

Over the years Ran has shown his paintings in many local, national and international art exhibitions. During the past two years He has shown in the 69th Cooperstown National Exhibition(Award of Merit) and at The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum (Resurrections and Re-inventions).

During 2005, Ran had a one person show entitled iBaptized in the Geneseei in Rochester at the Bausch and Lomb Library Building as part of its 2005 Family Sunday Series. This Past summer he was invited to show his work at the New York Independent Film Festival in NYC and was selected to show in the 2005 SoHo-Chelsea International Art Exhibition, juried by Mr. Ira Goldberg, director of the Art Students League in NYC.

His work can be viewed on the Web at www.ranwebber.artspan.com or by performing a iGoogle Searchi for iart of ran webberi. His studio is at 528 Elmwood/ 2nd Floor.

In coming weeks Buffalo Rising will be showing segments a movie based on Ran's creations and on the process that they undergo in becoming the unusual works of art that you today.