It's Infringement Festival weekend in Buffalo and every resident in or around the city is privy to visual, performing or media arts on nearly every corner. Getting in on the action is Lily Booth, Fontini Renzoni and Julio Martin as they open up Big Orbit Gallery this Saturday for their three solo shows.

Lily Booth has developed a process of collecting neglected domestic items during thrift store outings such as table runners, aprons and place mats (see lead image). "I work with found textiles which I gather while junking with my mother, grandmother and daughters," stated Booth. "These are hand-stitched domestic textiles which were used to adorn one's home, a homemaker's craft of times past. Each piece already has a personality to it, it is marked by the original creators hand, in the quality of the stitch, imagery used, and even color of floss. I work off of these things, inserting my own satirical commentary on issues that concern me. There is a whole lot one can say with imagery; I'm a visual person so the use of story telling by using picture is a great outlet." This will be Lily's first solo exhibition to date.

Disfigured but strong, Fontini Renzoni's complex and painstaking graphite on clay illustrations sit beside Booth's vintage household goods (see above image). "I intently draw the freak that I am and the impact is beautiful. Aware and sensitive, sometimes painfully, to human reactions to the strange and abnormal, I grew up developing an insatiable need to communicate what I'm capable of regardless of my appearance," said Renzoni of his work. "When I work in pencil, I see the raw movement of my hand in my work. I control it to build what I already see. My innate ability to do this excites me and there is a sense of freedom. When I begin a drawing, I do not have a final image in mind. I simply put lead to surface and start marking it with lines. A composition forms and I follow it until it is complete, stopping only when I feel full and when the piece is balanced and void of interruptions."

As the third solo artist, Julio Martin joins Booth and Renzoni with his physical appropriations of weather patterns. Having spent time observing how water sculpts the earth, Martin is able to reconstruct the careful grooves and mounds made by erosion and sedimentation (see above image). The act of sculpting is as cleansing for the artist as the water is for the earth. Martin stated for the press release, "I create vessels that serve as surfaces to induce rhythms in water. The moving water will sculpt and re-sculpt itself in a given water feature. From this I derive the concept of sculpting water, water as a sculptural medium and subject matter. The fluid element is the ideal bearer of movements; by virtue of movement it allows itself to be molded, casted and plasticized. I design in one hand the sculpted form in a fountain environment, and on the other the constant change of mass in the organic configuration of the moving water."

Much of the time spent crafting this article was dedicated to finding a commonality between the three artists exhibiting. Yes, these are three solo shows simply taking place under the same roof, but the small, open space demands that pieces sitting in close proximity to one another share a common thread in theme, material or process. In this case, one artist works in textiles, the next in concrete, slate, a variety of stones and copper; fiberglass, acrylic and epoxy resins, the last puts charcoal to paper or clay. They seem disconnected until you consider the organic, feminine shapes of most the work and the hint at a gender theme.

Renzoni's work is not girly, the patterns are atmospheric, the image smokey, but the soft lines and curves certainly lend themselves to delicate shapes. Martin's vessels for example, toy at the notion of fertility; a fluted sculpture nests an egg shape, his surfaces are curvaceous and smooth as skin. Of course Booth's work is symbolic of domestication, but her use of embroidery is offset by masculine images of weaponry and destruction. Bombs stitched into place mats tell a tale of conversion from domestic housewife to strong political figure. Overall the show seems like an odd blending but Big Orbit Curator Sean Donaher is ever challenging what we think we know about art exhibits. Join the Infringement Festival crowd this Saturday night as Donaher flexes his curator muscles to open three solo shows featuring Lily Booth, Fontini Renzoni and Julio Martin at Big Orbit Gallery, tonight at 8 p.m.


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Laura Duquette is a former ballerina who now dances with words and punctuation. She has a knack for asking questions faster than the speed of sound, and her interviews are often off the cuff and personal. She is Co-Owner of 12 Grain Studio, a Buffalo based creative firm that gives typical web design a kick in the ass.