Join us for the dawn of EXIST, a lush outdoor festival bringing together some of Buffalo’s finest LGBTQA+ talent! We will be celebrating peace, love and humanity with a utopian themed evening of music, drag, burlesque and art. Come join us as we transform the heart of Allentown into paradise. This is a free event to coincide with the Pride Center of WNY‘s programming for Pride Week and Allentown First Friday Gallery Walk‘s first full summer event!

Performances by:

Curtis Lovell
Tina Panic Noise
Vidalia May
Cat McCarthy
Fifi Laflea
$1300 Cock
Tommy Vē

Sponsored By:
Block Club
Remedy House
Community Beer Works
and Pride Center of WNY

🌈 Gallery Programming 🌷

Pine Apple Company / Vulnerable: An Illustration Series By Kale Johnson: Vulnerable is a collection of ballpoint pen drawings by Kale Johnson that explores transness in a world that is unwelcoming and often hostile.

“In this series, I seek to express the mixture of alienation, fear, and hope that I and other young transgender people have in the face of a society going through cycles of change.”

– Kale Johnson

Kale is a local illustrator, comic artist and transman. You can see more of his work on Instagram at @coldwavekid or at kalejohnsonart.wixsite.com/kalejohnson.

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Caffèology / First Friday Opening reception for Tim Kujawski: Tim Kujawski will be displaying ‘Everything changes in an…’, a collection of his instant photographs from the past 5 years, for the month of June at Caffeology on Allen Street, he will have a brief talk about the history of instant photography, and have a slide show of his work with Polaroid’s line of instant slide film.

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Buffalo Big Print / The Thing Itself – First Friday Opening: Featuring amazing photography from the extremely talented Starr Ockenga. Entry to the event is free, as are complimentary beverages & hors d’oeuvres.

Starr Ockenga spent three decades creating a garden on an upstate New York hilltop facing a panoramic view of the Catskill Mountains. Starr quotes Willa Cather from O Pioneers: “We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it for a little while.”

Currently, Starr and her partner, Sean McElroy, are taming a raw piece of waterfront land on Lake Erie to collect, grow, and display plants native to Western New York.

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GCR audio / Jess Pfohl at GCR Audio Recording Studios: Music Is Art in conjunction with GCR Audio Recording Studios announces Jess Pfohl — Spoiled

Inhabiting Robby Takac‘s GCR Audio on Friday, June 1st, Jess Pfohl — Spoiled blurs the line between actuality and imagination by creating scenarios through visual art. Accompanying live entertainment will include a live studio recording session by HEARsay, featuring David Kane, Cathy Carfagna, and Michael Miskuly performing underground classics and original music.

The works on display are experimental in nature and use a combination of unusual materials executed in non-traditional techniques. The brightly colored pop art offers reflections on mental health issues, gun control and… flowers!

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Project 308 Gallery / VALUE by Alyssa Capri: In this series Capri explores the idea of value. Using commercial masking paper as her base layer she paints vibrant emotive figures, depicting intimacy in everyday moments. Beauty can be presented and represented in the unconventional. Materials which are hardworking, but not expensive, bleached, or revered serve not only as the backdrop of this series but are distinctly representative of its ethos. Inclusion of thread, fabric, and fibre from personal belongings imbues further personal connection, literally integrating herself into the painting. Things that have been discarded or disregarded because they are seemingly ‘less’ or ‘poor’ create beauty and evoke emotion. She hopes to touch her audience with these brown backdrops. Brown is beautiful. Woman is powerful. Poor are diligent, hearty, clever.

For questions contact: nataliebrown628@gmail.com

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Allen Street Dress Shop / JBWC@First Friday: Come listen to the stellar Just Buffalo Literary Center Youth Writers read their work before checking out Exist: Pride First Friday 2018 right outside the door!