MICROCOSMIC ARCHIVE: A History of Nichols by Gerald Mead
March 12 – May 11, 2010
Artist Reception: Sunday, March 14, 2 – 4 pm
Nichols School Gallery
Flickinger Performing Arts Center
1250 Amherst St., Buffalo 14216
This exhibition, a new body of work by well-known regional artist, educator and curator Gerald Mead, consists of a series of 50 small-scale collages that chronicle the 118-year history of Nichols School. The source material for the eloquent collages was duplicate material in the School’s archive and school related ephemera that was contributed by faculty, staff, students and alumni for use in the project. This vast resource of historic and contemporary material included yearbooks and other school publications, development brochures, event tickets and programs, school forms, student projects, photographs, filmstrips, awards and certificates, discarded library material and other various artifacts and mementos.
The material was organized and assiduously edited and each collage – contained within an antiquated aluminum slide mount salvaged from the school’s photography studio – was meticulously created to include fragments of material from disparate eras of the schools existence. The miniature works represent multiple aspects of the school and reference it’s architecture, traditions, iconic images, academics, sports and other extracurricular activities. Though small in scale, each six-square inch work encompasses a broad spectrum of time and experience and exists as a quasi-scientific image/text based documentation of the storied history of Nichols School.
