On Friday, May 11th Rochester Contemporary Art Center and Rochester Art Collectors will co-present a community discussion that directly addresses the place of regional art, artists and audiences in the global marketplace of ideas.
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​  The program will be held at RoCo during the Federico Solmi – The Good Samaritans exhibition that runs from April 6th through May 12th.

   The Good Samaritans is a solo exhibition comprised of several video installations by Italian artist Federico Solmi. His installations include different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings. Solmi employs bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present-day society. The exhibition includes a new text about Solmi’s work by Larry Ossei-Mensah, an independent curator and cultural critic.

   Think globally. Create, experience and collect locally ​will be open to the public. The program will begin at 6:00 pm with a social/mixer and will run until about 7:30pm. 

Tickets for this program are $2/each but free for members of Rochester Contemporary Art Center and Rochester Art Collectors. Reservations are requested. Click here to get the details and your reserve your seat(s).

   Look for more collaboration between Rochester Art Collectors and Rochester Contemporary Art Center leading up to the massive 6x6 exhibition in June.

   Rochester Art Collectors announced today that the group will utilize social media outlets Instagram & Facebook to bring more attention to the art found in private collections in our community.

​   Collectors who use Instagram will be asked to periodically post an image of the art displayed in their home or office to those social media sites along with #ROCtheArt and @rochesterartcollectors. The images posted on Instagram and Facebook and marked with #ROCtheArt will be searchable on those sites.

   A curated selection of #ROCtheArt posts will be added to Rochester Art Collectors' website. If you type ROCtheArt.org into your browser you will go right to the page. You will also be able to find the #ROCtheArt page on RochesterArtCollectors.org's main menu.

   We want to be sure people who post images of their art collection also tag those images with the artists' names and @rochesterartcollectors so viewers will be able to see more of the artists' work and find the Rochester Art Collector's Instagram account.

Here's how it will work:
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Post a photo of art from your collection created by someone other than yourself to Instagram.
Add #ROCtheArt in the comments
Tag @rochesterartcollectors so people can find us
And tag each artist so people can find the artists and buy their work!

   The organizers of Rochester Art Collectors are devoting the month of April to reaching out to various constituencies in the arts community around Rochester including both artists and gallerists.  When a new organization comes on the scene people are naturally curious and they usually have lots of questions. Rochester Art Collectors is providing opportunities to learn about the group and figure out how to fit in.

   Rochester Art Collectors organizers, Sarah Webb and Rome Celli have invited commercial gallery owners, managers and directors in the area to a meeting that will consider issues of special interest to gallerists. All the invited galleries have high quality exhibition spaces; a knowledgeable staff and well curated exhibition schedules putting them at the professional forefront of the Rochester Art Market.

   Celli and Webb will present information about Rochester Art Collectors to the assembled gallerists and answer questions about the group before opening up a conversation about the state of the art market in our area and ways to grow that market.

   Rochester Art Collectors believes thriving commercial art galleries are an essential ingredient in a successful art marketplace.  A vibrant array of commercial galleries encourages and nourishes a diverse community of collectors. A diverse community of collectors in turn encourages and nourishes the artists who live and work in our midst. In addition, strong commercial galleries provide artists with opportunities to ascend to the next level in their careers.

   Rochester Art Collectors' outreach efforts won't end in April. They will be ongoing over the course of the next year or more.

​​   Thanks to Rick & Robin Muto, owners of Axom Gallery at 176 Anderson Avenue in Rochester, for providing the group with a congenial space to meet and talk.

    Members of Rochester Art Collectors are invited to a special FREE preview for The Birth of the Universe exhibition at Flower City Arts Center this Thursday, April 5th.

   Members will  be treated to a special viewing of the exhibition BEFORE it opens to the public the next evening. Work in the exhibition will be available for sale during the preview.

                                       This is a Rochester Art Collectors "members-only" event.
                                                 Space is limited. Members may bring one guest.​
                                                                 Click here for your ticket(s).

​​   Ben Taylor's journey as a “thingmaker” (he doesn't like the word artist) began with Saturday classes at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. In college he found his way to the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, where he studied ceramics with Hall Riegger and sculpture with Gene Kloszewski. After graduating from Keene College he worked for a few months as an assistant to the school's Director, Fran Merritt.

   Ben studied conceptual art with Carl Florsheim at Temple University, where he received an MFA in sculpture. After graduation, he and his wife Evelyn joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Afghanistan.

   Upon his return to the US he took a position as an instructor at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, where he became interested in Zen meditation. He moved to Rochester in 1972 to join the Zen Center, and spent 25 years balancing career, family and volunteer work in refugee resettlement.

   In 1997 he began working on a series of black-and-white pen and ink drawings called The Birth of the Universe, some of which are being shown here. These large-scale original works (22.5"x30") will be available for sale.

​   This exhibition has been curated by Sally Wood Winslow.