Prints from collector Gerald Mead’s collection at Niagara County Community College

work by Barbara Rowe, from the collection of Gerald Mead and on exhibition at Niagara County Community College

If you ever doubted Buffalo’s status as a major hub of American art, you should see the modestly titled Western New York Impressions exhibition at NCCC Art Gallery. This densely hung, salon-style show features prints by 62 artists, spanning 120 years, connected only by the fact that each of them has lived, studied, taught, exhibited, or settled here at some point during their career.

Provided by local art collector Gerald Mead, the exhibition features many well-known names, including Carlo Nisita, Robert Longo, Harvey Breverman, Cindy Sherman, Julian Montague, Jackie Felix, Scott McCarney, Michael Zwack, and Donald Robertson.

The linear, chronological arrangement of the exhibit enables the viewer to track the history and development of the Western New York area, printmaking techniques, and art itself over the years. The 1888 copper etching Brock’s Monument from River Road, Niagara on the Lake, by Amos W. Sangster, a pastoral landscape from the preindustrial era, gives way to etchings and intaglios of churches from the 1920s and 1930s. Gradually elements of industrialism creep in, like Kevin B. O’Callahan’s Conveyor from 1937. Eventually, photography is introduced, and then color, as the art becomes more abstract. In this way, we are carried from woodcuts to Op Art and beyond.

Virtually all printmaking techniques are featured, including woodcuts, etchings, digital prints, cyanotypes, lithographs, engravings, silkscreens, et cetera.

Along the way, we are treated to some spectacular pieces, exemplifying disparate eras and movements of art. Allan D’Arcangelo’s Modern Superhighway through Countryside is a 1969 screenprint extending the lines from a picture postcard, as if suggesting the extensive sullying of America’s wilderness still to come. Bonnie Gordon’s 1981 Words about Photography is an excellent example of pre-digital text art. Talking Heads, a 1986 lithograph by Robert Longo, is an iridescent snapshot of David Byrne in full “Big Suit” glory. Scott McCarney’s digital print, Autobiography #6, is a collection of name tags that he’s accumulated during his travels as an internationally recognized book artist.

Barbara Rowe’s Lost and Found is an inkjet print depicting local school districts as Lego pieces in various states of orientation and disrepair, a reminder of the dysfunctional nature of our educational system.

Truly, there is something for everyone in this exhibition. The journey from Brock’s Monument to the final piece, David Andree’s 2008 Travel (Shaped by Time), is as long and dizzying as is required to properly represent the history of this region and its artists.

This brilliant, expansive exhibition ends February 27, so you’ll have to move quickly to catch it, but I’m sure you won’t regret it.

—becky moda