Odyssey

In the last year the iXpress art program at Aspire of Western New York has included new media in its growing list of creative components. In addition to painting and ceramics, individuals with disabilities are now working with digital photography and screenprinting, poetry, songwriting and music composition, digital storytelling, radio plays, and narrative and experimental moving pictures. Furthermore, iXpress has partnered with The Buffalo Chamber Players, a musical ensemble whose performers are members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Creating and collecting their original graphic images, photographs, text, and excerpts of musical notation, and relying principally on the reproductive capacity of screenprinting, iXpress artists will assemble and compose their unique content onto canvases. The completed visual works, which will stand alone as striking visual pieces, will be then transformed into graphic (interpretative) and standard (literal) musical scores to be read and performed by The Buffalo Chamber Players.

Collaborative and multi-media, the exhibition coalesces visual media, text, music, and live performance into an Odyssey whereby individuals with disabilities see and hear creative representations of their exceptional experiences—the collective immensity of their literal and metaphorical travels, adventures, and relationships—reflected back at them and then outward to the greater community of Western New York.