Bits by Bits: Companion Guide

This exhibition presents new work by six artists from Starlight Studio and Art Gallery, a progressive art studio in Buffalo, NY that supports artists with disabilities/disabled artists in developing independent, self-directed art practices. Rather than organizing around a shared theme, Bits by Bits highlights individual voices—each artist working toward ambitious, personally meaningful projects developed over several months with curatorial and production support.

Mathew Sharp’s paintings blend expressive color fields with playful figures—eyes, ears, and other surprises that emerge from abstraction. Larell Potter explores moral extremes—good and evil, angels and devils—through darkly humorous drawings that channel the energy of graphic novels and animation. Shamika Long builds intricate backgrounds filled with repeating patterns, layered with carefully rendered animals and internal organs. Angelina Blackmer conjures cozy, witchy interiors and dreamlike landscapes using colored pencil and marker. Andy Calderon layers prints with bold colors, faces, animals, and floral forms, creating intuitive compositions that feel symbolic and immediate. Kelly Evans blends goth sparkle with emotional realism, creating portraits—both personal and iconic—that invite deeper looking.

Together, these six artists present distinct visions shaped by experimentation, ambition, and voice. In bringing their work into a gallery setting, Bits by Bits invites viewers to consider what artistic agency looks like when it’s supported and allowed to grow over time.

This exhibition was made possible through the support of Starlight Teaching Artists Lily Booth, Sussan Giallombardo, Olivia Long, and Maggie Parks; Carrie Marcotte, Starlight Program Director; Jason Seeley, UB Art Galleries Preparator; and Anna Wager, UB Art Galleries Curator of Exhibitions.

Bits by Bits is curated by Cléa Massiani and Emily Ebba Reynolds.

Born 1987; lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

Gifted in revitalizing the overlooked, Larell Potter reclaims discarded materials and transforms them into glistening treasures. Influenced by television imagery, he creates a personal visual language from everyday castoffs.

In The Big Picture, a large-scale work composed of four interconnected panels, Potter maps out a world of layered identities, relationships, and moral tensions. Figures shift between self-portraits, family members, friends, and pop-culture icons—grappling with themes of good, evil, and the many shades in between. Like a puzzle, the composition unfolds across time and space, with visual connections mirrored by a handwritten key on the back that offers further insight into Potter’s story.

Life is art. Everything is art, and everything that is, is art.

Potter’s work has been exhibited at Starlight Gallery, The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, and Eleven Twenty Projects. Potter joined Starlight in 2013.

Born 1983; lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

Shamika Long’s art reflects her personality—spiritual, peaceful, complex, and strong. Influenced by video games, animation, and graphic design, her work also draws inspiration from gospel, R&B, hip hop, and oldies music.

For Bits by Bits, Long collaborated with curators to create a full-wall installation beginning with a bold background pattern of her own design. Over this foundation, she layers intricate drawings of animals, insects, and organs—subjects she’s drawn to and enjoys rendering with care. The interplay of surface and structure evokes traditions of layered patterning seen in the work of artists like Mickalene Thomas and Yinka Shonibare, grounding Long’s approach within a broader lineage of Black visual culture.

Doing my art makes me feel great and it’s a positive thing in my life.

Long’s work has been exhibited at Starlight Gallery and Eleven Twenty Projects. Long joined Starlight in 2012.

Born 1972; lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

Mathew Sharp works on large surfaces, typically paper or canvas. His drawings and paintings feature bright colors and multiple layers, using materials such as acrylic paint, oil pastels, and paint markers.

In the paintings for this exhibition, Sharp builds dynamic compositions where fields of color collide with imaginative, ambiguous figures—bunnies, cats, cartoon eyes—that fill the surface. Intentionally installed in conversation with works by Joan Mitchell and Sam Francis in the Lightwell Gallery below, his paintings enter a contemporary dialogue with the legacy of Abstract Expressionism.

I like doing my art and being with staff and my artist friends!

Sharp’s work has been exhibited at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Starlight Gallery, Evergreen Health, and Eleven Twenty Projects. Sharp joined Starlight in 2009.

Born 1974; lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

Andrew Calderon explores collage and painting, often incorporating cultural and personal references. He blends vivid color with floral shapes, abstract forms, and text, and more recently has experimented with mixed media on monoprints.

A modern orator—both poet and painter—Calderon treats subtext as the central lyrical subject to be transcribed. His interest in merging storyboards with visual art often results in bold depictions of faces, skulls, and animals—rendered as vanitas, anatomical legends, or symbolic figures. The immediacy of Calderon’s process reveals a practice rooted in instinct, where images take on the presence of characters. Personal moments also enter the work, including portraits of his girlfriend, whom Calderon met at Starlight Studio.

I live for my creative spirit. I tend to live my life based on what my imagination is telling me. To have control of my creativity and to be guided by it.

Calderon’s work has been exhibited at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Starlight Gallery, the Getty Gallery, and Eleven Twenty Projects. He Joined Starlight in 2005.

Born 1999; lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

Angelina Blackmer creates fantastical and inviting settings with great care. She primarily works on paper using marker, pencil, and watercolor to bring imagined places to life.

In these works, Blackmer constructs cozy, magical spaces—both interior and exterior—that invite solitude and imagination. Devoid of people but rich with atmosphere, her drawings feel like stages for daydreams, evoking what writer Gaston Bachelard called “the oneiric house”—a protected space for dreaming, like a hut in the woods or a hidden room in the mind.

Art brings out my creative spirit by capturing those places in my head on paper.

This is Blackmer’s first exhibition outside of Starlight Gallery. She joined Starlight in 2022.

Born 1993; lives and works in Hamburg, NY.

Kelly Evans brings a raw inquisitiveness to her work, combining images and words—she also writes poetry—with a quiet yet astute presence. Often drawing from pop culture, her portrait-based pieces reflect personal stories with a signature sparkle.

Evans’s realism is paired with a strong sense of emotional depth: her work—despite the glitter—tells stories of loss, resilience, and introspection. Painted on small wood boards that carry the aura of cherished heirlooms, she presents the figures who have shaped her life and career, from family members to icons like Boy George. Her grandmother and David Bowie coexist in her work as punk North Stars—intimate, influential, and deeply human.

My art is reflective of my life’s stories and sparkles like the glitter in my artwork.

Evans’s work has been exhibited at Starlight Gallery, the Getty Gallery, and Eleven Twenty Projects. She joined Starlight in 2014.