A Short (yet meandering) History of Gallery West
Photographs of Jerry and Ron's home in Buffalo, taken by the author.
(Sometime in the mid-80s . . . )
Ron and Jerry took their usual table, table four, at the Roseland Restaurant –– a favorite haunt of mafia and artistic types alike on Buffalo’s West Side. Roseland’s Old World red sauce was enough to smooth over otherwise significant differences in lifestyle. Its patrons and staff were like family.
Roseland’s owner, Jim Romanello, spotted Ron and Jerry, an openly gay couple[1] and former gallerists, and was excited to show off a new purchase –– an original Larry Bell artwork proudly displayed on the restaurant’s south wall. Larry, Jerry’s twin brother, was an artist of local repute. But Romanello’s acquisition wasn’t a work by Larry Bell (born 1940) but one by Larry Bell (born 1939) of Los Angeles. Working concurrently to Larry of Buffalo, as well as southern California contemporaries Robert Irwin and Ed Ruscha, LA’s Larry achieved a level of fame and prestige that Buffalo’s Larry did (and would) not know.
It was a good laugh and no doubt a good purchase, for that particular work’s valuation would only grow.
Larry Bell, Certified Fragments #403107, (undated). Acrylic and combined papers, 20 x 26 inches.
Buffalo’s Larry, or Lawrence J. Bell, was an artist and art educator. He taught art in the Niagara Falls School District from 1964 until his retirement in 1995, and held the title of director of the Buffalo Society of Artists for the years 1977, 1983, and 1987. He was also a co-director of Ron and Jerry’s gallery, Gallery West, which ran from 1968 through 1973. It was one of the first gallery spaces in Buffalo to be run by artists. Photographer Russell Drisch[2], interior designer Marilyn McTaggart[3], and local educator Tony Gabrielli were additional co-owners.
Though the gallery and its constituents have left few traces on formal histories of galleries of the time, they were formative to renewed interest in Buffalo’s art scene, specifically as a scene of revolt. The lore of bigger art institutions all too often overshadows the labor of a few dedicated eccentrics.
Photographs of Jerry and Ron's home in Buffalo, taken by the author.
(September of 1969 . . . )
Gallery West hosts the first of nine exhibitions entitled International Graphic Exhibition. The first of the series highlights works by artists Claisse, Soto, and House. This information comes from an article in the September 22 edition of The University at Buffalo’s student newspaper, The Spectrum.
Larry Bell gives this quote: “You do not have to be a huge museum to exhibit works of art, we are doing it here.” Gallery West stood as an alternative and a riposte to the fairly recently renamed Albright-Knox (the “Knox” was added in 1962 after an addition was funded by the blue-blooded Seymour H. Knox II).
We can surmise that the Claisse named in the article is Geneviève Claisse whose distinct style of punchy cutouts revolts against an austere constructivism.
The Soto who, according to the article, adds “simple lines and touches of yellow” to “a stark black background” is very likely Jesús Rafael Soto’s Light Trap (1965), a work of Op art now in the collection of the Tate Modern in London, prophesizes the artist’s later move toward kinetic sculptures. George House, the only artist name given in full, and whose surname is a common noun, evades further discovery through Google search. He is at a disadvantage there.
In attendance was one “Jackson Pollock,” who is quoted as saying, “I’m happy to see such enthusiasm and interest aroused in Buffalo.” The article’s writer meant, of course, Jack Pollock, the Torontonian art dealer and not everyone’s favorite household splishy-splashy boy. The closest Jackson Pollock ever got to Buffalo was in the form of Convergence (1952), which typically hangs in one of the many hallowed halls of the Albright-Knox thanks to the aforementioned Seymour H.
Jack Pollock collaborated with Buffalo’s Gallery West on several occasions. He would go on to represent Ken Danby, David Hockney, and Willem de Kooning.
Larry Bell, A View from the 18th Story, 1988. Photo montage and collage, 24 x 30 inches. Photo: Gary Wolf.
(April of 1970 . . . )
Gallery West hosts an opening for the young artist Cathy Senitt-Harbison (now Senitt). The April 6 edition of The Spectrum sees the music editor stretching his skills to art openings. He writes:
“The exhibit will continue to create intrique (sic), mischief and controversy thru April 19th. It should prove to be quite a shining jewel in the cultural depravity known as Buffalo.”
From this early sign of his aptitude in marketing, the writer goes on to what is now celebrating year thirty of his public relations firm based out of Miami. Clearly, Buffalo wasn’t depraved enough.
Photographs of Jerry and Ron's home in Buffalo, taken by the author.
(February of 1971 . . . )
Called to the task of writing on Gallery West, M.P. Silverblatt did (nearly) anything but. Silverblatt (who later professionally adopts his first name, Michael) writes a full-fledged manifesto as substitute for what was likely an art opening assignment.
“Do not bespatter your canvas with blood, your actors with gore, your prose with guts unless you can align your blood, your guts, your gore to some sort of new statement. With proper goading, even gonorrhea can be fascinating; without a new perception, more likely it will put us all to sleep.”
After a bit more of this verbal Jackson Pollock-esque besplattering, “news” of Gallery West is made mention of.
“It is worthless to write an article about the Gallery West. I could write until I’m blue in the face, and you still wouldn’t go downtown to the gallery. But they say to me up here ‘Write about the Gallery West, write about the Gallery West.’ Such conversation being of extremely limited fascination, I reluctantly complyed (sic). Here it is. The Gallery West is a neat, exciting place.
They are at 311 Bryant Street.[4] They are experimental, they are sometimes misguided, often misguided, usually misguided, nearly always misguided, but I think they know that.”
The young Michael Silverblatt, who is just now (as of 2022) retired from his lauded literary radio show Bookworm, was lucky enough to have studied under both John Barth and Donald Barthelme during their brief and briefer still tutelages at The University at Buffalo, and it shows.
I imagine current-day Michael is less enthralled by STDs.
(November of 2022 . . . )
Even among the best of microfiche-turned-PDFs, there was little to be found out about the art of Buffalo Larry, to whom we return, finally.
My friend Tom handed me a small pamphlet titled “Second Annual HISTORIC ALLENTOWN HOUSE & BUILDING TOUR.” It tells of a two-story frame house dating to 1878 and purchased by Jerry Ball (sic) and Ron Concilla in 1979 from the estate of Helen Blackwell, who married into the notable Blackwell family, but whose notoriety has since been eclipsed by the current-day chemist.
The pamphlet goes on to say, “Ron and Jerry have decorated in ‘mixed eclectic,’ with a particular interest in art.” This was that experimental . . . sometimes misguided, often misguided art of the former Gallery West. The house’s walls were covered in the art that once furnished the gallery, including many works by Buffalo’s Larry Bell.
Larry’s art doesn’t fit in with the kitsch surrealism of Senitt-Harbison nor the geometrical Op art abstraction of the International Graphic Exhibition per se. Most of his more than fifty known works are mixed media: photomontage, graphite, pastel crayon, swaths of white acrylic, as well as found objects.
There’s an archival aspect to the work, like in Window to Giuliano, with its layering of handwriting and arithmetic, tea-stained bits of broadsheet, a photo of an older woman leaning out a balcony window, and a butterfly “silk” or insert from a pack of Tokio Cigarettes c.1910–20. It’s a rendering of an earlier era made biographical.
One of my favorite pieces lives in an overlooked corner of the dining room –– a shadow box made from an old shipping crate stamped “FRAGILE” with packing peanuts framing a compartment containing a stained doll, a cork, a small amber jar with a single pill, a telegraph dated 1878, and other odds and ends.
House guests often found this piece depressing, hence why it lived where it did. To me, it balances ennui with silliness, like a lot of the art to which I gravitate. The items enclosed could pass as the beached possessions of a Titanic-like wreck, remnants of a life cut short, but the presentation is pleasantly twee. Several of the items have clearly been knocked loose from their original placements, and what was once an homage to a particular past now doubles as symbolic of its own.
Many of Larry’s works function as memoir. Certified Fragments #403107 shows his aptitude for blending long strips of paper with hand-drawn lines into a gestural weave. One paper bit in the corner reads “40.” Coupled with the off-center photo of Jerry, his fraternal twin, I can’t help but imagine this piece as a reaction to their shared 40th birthday. Another bit of paper reads only “fragment.”
There’s a similar humor to many of the pieces like in A View from the 18th Story, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the city of Buffalo. It’s a montage of repeated images of City Hall and Niagara Square interwoven with Liza Minelli show tickets, a ripped corner from a check signed by Jerry, a post-it note to Ron from someone named Sandy, and several mentionings of CCMC[5] (the company Jerry worked for). A handwritten message reads “Buffalo… ‘makes me want to shout.’” Like for so many of us, it was clearly a love-hate relationship.
Larry’s art makes many mentions of Ron and Jerry. Though neither was an artist, they remained patrons of the arts even after the gallery closed. Ron independently funded grants through the Buffalo Society of Artists. Ron independently funded several of its grants. Of the trinity (Ron, Jerry, and Larry), I only knew Ron personally. He passed away this February.[6] His wit was cutting, and his style unceasing. With his passing, Larry’s art lives in limbo.
A fraction of the surviving collection has been on display for the past month in the back room of the Art Dialogue Gallery on Linwood. That distinct yellowing of old paper blends so perfectly with the yellow-beige walls of the gallery. The pictures are cramped; two hang on a door vertically. It’s a sore sight if you want justice for the work. I imagine there was more care at the Gallery West, but maybe that’s the nostalgia talking.
When I asked the gallerist what was next in line for the unsold art, he suggested a nearby dentist’s office. As an alternative, I am working with BICA School to put on what will be the inaugural show at the new BICA Lab studio.
There’s really no better place for Larry’s art than the house itself, with its textured brown walls and chartreuse shag carpeting, its curated knickknacks, and its ordered disorder. It’s what the Frick Collection is for Renaissance art, but for a short period of art history for a small community of Buffalo.
This short history of an all-but-untraceable art lineage is in homage to the nearly always misguided way of making and caring for art.
The home now belongs to my aforementioned friend Tom, best friend to Ron and a former bartender at the Roseland. Remember the Roseland?
[1] Even after the Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s, Buffalo’s gay communities, I’ve been told, remained rather closeted. Ron and Jerry were part of the small, openly gay community to help kickstart the formal Pride Parade in the late 1980s.
[2] Drisch, an actor, moved to Buffalo in the early 70s to perform at Studio Arena Theatre, now Shea’s. It was here his passion for photography eclipsed that of acting.
[3] McTaggart headed her own graphic design firm for 50 years.
[4] 311 Bryant Street seems to have been usurped by an expanded floor plan for what is now Trattoria Aroma.
[5] Coordinated Care Management Corp. Before working as a healthcare program manager for CCMC, Jerry was a social worker. Ron also worked in healthcare in Disability Resources.
[6] Larry passed away in 2000. His brother Jerry passed away in 2008.
by D. Sloan
D. Sloan is a florist and photographer living in Buffalo, New York. She co-edits TRANSVERSALS journal (transversals.net).
