Exhibiting Member Review Panel

Tara Bystran

Tara Bystran is an artist, entrepreneur, and philosopher who lives and works in Buffalo, NY. Their current painted body of work, Anthem / The Bandaged Place Project (I and II), are a meditation on the healing complexities of scar tissue.

The artist has studied philosophy, painting, and human development, and received their M.F.A. in Visual Arts from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is an Adjunct Professor of painting at Daemen University. They are a founding member and past President of non-profit Emerging Leaders in the Arts Buffalo (ELAB), which created City of Night, and served as Vice President to the Buffalo Society of Artists.

tarabystran.com/about

Joshua Nickerson

Joshua Nickerson is a self-taught artist who has been living and creating art in Western New York since 2007 and exhibiting his work since 2010. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout WNY, including Hallwalls Amid/In WNY, Buffalo Art Movement (BAM), Betty’s, El Museo, the Carnegie Art Center, Starlight Studios and Gallery, and more. He has also been featured in a solo show at the University of Pittsburgh Barco Gallery. Initially starting out as a painter (acrylic and mixed media on canvas) his studio practice transitioned to large-scale works on paper around 2015. His work is primarily abstract, with some bodies of work such as his recent Parking Space series interrogating the boundaries between abstraction and representation. He has long been inspired by the variation and repetition of basic forms and patterns within natural, subatomic, and anatomical systems and structures, and their relationship of these to human-produced systems and structures and the built environment. His work invites the viewer to notice and consider details and subtle variations, as well as their own role in the interpretation of the work and the interplay of perspective and the construction of reality. Joshua currently lives in the City of Buffalo.

Christina Buscarino

Christina is a Photographer who received her BS in Marketing and Advertising Communications, and Art History minor from the Fashion Institute of Technology.
She spent time in New York City working in Digital Marketing, and Photography with commercial brands and performing artists and has recently returned to Buffalo. Christina is Gallerist of the C. Stuart and Jane H. Hunt Art Gallery and Director of Hunt Residencies artist in residence program. Christina aims to grow representation of local artists within and out of Buffalo, NY.

Ellen Owens

Ellen Owens is the Director of the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University. Owens was formerly Director of Learning Programs at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology where she sat on the Executive Team and led three major departments. She also served as Director of Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, a vibrant museum and art gallery. Owens currently teaches Museum Studies at Niagara University; she was a professor in the University of the Arts Museum Studies graduate program for ten years. She sits on the Executive Committee for The Print Center.

Owens graduated with honors from Penn State University, earning a BA in Art Education and a BFA in Painting and Drawing. She received her MA in Museum Education from the University of the Arts; Executive Leadership certificates from the Getty Leadership Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Bryn Mawr College.

J. Tim Raymond

J. Tim Raymond was born in Kansas City, Missouri and has resided in Western New York since the early 1990s after starting an art career in Baltimore, New York, and Austin. Raymond is an exhibiting member of Buffalo Society of Artists and served as a docent at Albright Knox Art Gallery. A painter who sometimes works with collage and assemblage, Raymond was represented for a time by Jack Tilton Gallery in Manhattan and has exhibited widely throughout Western New York, including Sticks and Stones, a 2023 show at Hunt Gallery. He formerly worked as an Art Handler in Washington DC and Manhattan, an Art Instructor at University of Texas in Austin, and an Arts Specialist with People Inc. in Buffalo.  His reviews of local gallery exhibitions were featured in the former weekly print publications Art Voice and The Public. Additionally, he has been involved for several years with theater as an actor, set painter, and board member of the Subversive Theater Collective. He also appears in two short films by Stephen Graham: Memories of the Future (2018) and Nature, Nurture, Negligence (2022). timraymondstudio.com

Gary Wolfe

photo by Jeffery Barnes

Gary earned undergraduate degrees in Christian Ministries from Houghton College and in
Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Early in his thirty year career
working for local government in planning, development and administration of health and human
services to persons in need, Gary began producing and publicly showing his artwork with
encouraging success. This ultimately led to a return to school and the completion of a Master’s
Degree in Painting and Art History from the University of Buffalo.
Gary’s varied life experiences and career have influenced his art. The elderly, children with
disabilities, the disenfranchised and the poor, and more abstractly, the problem of pain,
suffering, vulnerability and alienation have consistently informed his work.
Gary has served as President of the Buffalo Society of Artists, has been an adjunct art instructor
at Daemen College and has served as a board member and consultant to local arts organizations.
Gary’s work has been shown in throughout the United States as well as in Canada. He continues
to live and work in Western New York.

William Vogel

William Vogel is the Art Coordinator at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he oversees the artist residency and exhibitions programs. Vogel was formerly the Executive Director of El Museo Francisco Oller y Diego Rivera, a nonprofit art space in Buffalo’s Allentown neighborhood, from 2017-2021. In addition, he has worked as an independent curator and consultant for artists and arts organizations, and has lectured on arts and health programs since 2020.

Originally from Long Island, Vogel has called Buffalo home for over 15 years. He has a B.A. in American Studies from the University at Buffalo.