Each month for the past year, 15-20 local and regional artists have exhibited their work at the College Street Gallery (which recently celebrated its 12-year anniversary), and it’s time to celebrate. The Co-op’s first anniversary celebration will be held during Allentown’s monthly First Friday Gallery Walk on Friday (Nov. 6). Besides College Street, particiating galleries this month include Allen Street Hardware, Betty’s Restaurant, Buffalo Big Print, El Buen Amigo, El Museo, Hallwalls, Hero Design Studio, Indigo, Kepa3, Merge Restaurant, Sp@ce 224, Starlight Studio, Studio Hart, and Sugar City.

Venues are scattered throughout the Elmwood/Allen area, all the way to Tupper and Delaware (where Hallwalls is, at Babeville). Back to College Street, where this month’s exhibitors number 18, the reception goes on from 5-10 pm and it’s as good a place (or better) as any to start.

The New Atlantic Booksellers Association named Buffalo Lockjaw, by former Buffalonian Greg Ames, one of its books of the year last Friday. Congratulations to Greg; you can read an interview with him here.

Local photographer Scott Gable recently spent two months traveling in India, and he’s posted some terrific pictures here.

There’s also the Allentown Artfest Music festival at Nietzsche’s (248 Allen St.), all day and night on Saturday starting at 2pm, and all day on Sunday from 2-9pm, a different band every hour.
Sonic Garden plays at The Bend (250 Allen St.) right next door, on Sunday from 2-6pm.

Tonight at 7:30pm at the Albright-Knox, UB professors Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian present Death Row, their 1979 film about men in Texas prisons waiting to be executed. It’s an important film, and rarely shown on a big screen. Plus, on the way to the auditorium, you’ll walk through Cummins Wide, an exhibition of photos Jackson took in Arkansas prisons in the early 1970s. There will be a discussion of the film afterward.

Here’s an interview with Jackson about his prison work.

Starting Sunday, Feruary 15, the Castellani Museum on the campus of Niagara University hosts an exhibition of prints by Kara Walker, done in the style of the artist’s famous cut-out silhouettes treating sexual relationships, violence, and racial iconography in the antebellum South. Beautiful and scathing, Walker’s work first gained attention in the mid 1990s. She was the subject of a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 2007. The image above comes from that.

The work is on loan to the Castellani from the collection of the Albright-Knox. The show runs through May 31, and there’s an opening reception on Sunday, February 22.

Lux Interior, the inimitable frontman for horror-punk band the Cramps, has died.

Garbage Man

you ain’t no punk, you punk. you wanna talk about the real junk? if i ever slip, i’ll be banned ’cause i’m your garbageman. well you can’t dig me you can’t dig nothin’. do you want the real thing, or are you just talkin’? do you understand? i’m your garbageman. yeah, somethin’ from the garage and down the driveway. now get outta your mind and get outta my way. now do you understand? do you understand? louie, louie, louie, lou-i the bird’s the word and do you know why? you gotta beat it with a stick. you gotta beat it ’til it’s thick. you gotta live until you’re dead. you gotta rock ’til you see red. now do you understand? do you understand? i’m a garbageman. aw, jump on and ride… yeah it’s just what you need when you’re down in the dumps. one half hillbilly and one half punk. big long legs and one big mouth. the hottest thing from the north to come out of the south. do you understand? do you understand? woo, i can’t lose with the stuff i use, and you don’t choose no substitutes. so stick out your can ’cause i’m your garbageman. louie, louie, louie, lou-i the bird’s the word and do you know why? you gotta beat it with a stick. you gotta beat it ’til it’s thick. you gotta live until you’re dead. you gotta rock ’til you see red. now do you understand? do you understand? do you understand? all right, hop off.

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AKAG curator Douglas Dreishspoon on the Action Abstraction show, which opens next weekend.