Oinktoberfest this weekend

Here's a press release I got from the folks organizing Oinktoberfest at the Great Pumpkin Farm in Clarence. I've never had the opportunity to go to the event, but it sure sounds fun! I have been to the Great Pumpkin Farm and it's a lot of fun


Sept 25th - Sept 27th
Las Vegas Style
What happens at Oink - Stays at Oink!

ALL WEEKEND
Sixty teams from across the Northeast, Canada, & as far away as Kansas will be converging on the Great Pumpkin Farm, located at 11199 Main St., Clarence, NY to compete in the 8th Oinktoberfest BBQ Cookoff.

There will be a taste of authentic BBQ with seven of the teams selling their award winning offerings. Enjoy your food with a refreshment from the beer tent featuring Yuengling, Guinness, Red Stripe, Harpoon, Smirnoff Ice, & Coca Cola products. The music is Las Vegas extravagant. Friday night's feature concert is a Motown Revue featuring Billy McEwen & Barbara St. Clair. Saturday, in keeping with the theme, features Fat Brat, The Diva Show Band and Rockyard. Sunday has the acoustic duo of JP and Squire & the afternoon will present the big band sounds of the JJ Swing Band.

Admission is $5.00 per person each day with discount tickets available at all Wegmans. Parking is free.

FRIDAY NIGHT
(Gates open 5pm) A Motown Revue featuring: The Legendary Billy McEwen & Barbara St. Clair 7:00pm - 10:00pm

SATURDAY (Gates open 10am)60 teams will compete in the KCBS sanctioned Cookoff that is also a New York State Championship. The contest is also part of the The Empire State BBQ Championship Series. The team with the highest cumulative total score from four of the seven New York State events will be crowned Empire State Champion at the last contest in Sayville, NY on Oct. 23 - 25, 2009.
Fat Brat 11:00am - 2:00pm The Diva Show Band 2:00pm - 5:00pm Awards Ceremony 5:00pm - 6:00pm Rockyard 6:00pm - 7:00pmS

UNDAY (Gates open 10am)At least 32 teams will be competing in the Outdoor Cooking Contest & Chili Cookoff.
JP and Squire 11.00am - 2:00pm JJ Swing Band 2:00pm - 5:00pm Awards Ceremony 5:00pm - 6:00pm

LINKS
Oinktoberfest
Great Pumpkin Farm
KCBS
The Empire State BBQ Championship Series

See you at the Oink
George Booth III & Katy Toth
September 25th - 27th
With Las Vegas Style
George, 716 759-4328 or 1 877 585-4328 or email
Katy, 716 759-8483 or email
Oinktoberfest 2009 at the Great Pumpkin Farm
11199 Main St.,
Clarence, NY 14031

More Wright stuff

Here's a press release I received about an upcoming exhibit

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S BUFFALO VENTURE IS SUBJECT OF ANDERSON GALLERY EXHIBITION

Multimedia is available with this article online athttp://www.buffalo.edu/news/10395
Release date: Friday, August 28, 2009
Contact: Patricia Donovan,
pdonovan@buffalo.edu
Phone: 716-645-4602
Fax: 716-645-3765

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo Venture: From the Larkin Building to Broadacre City," is an exhibition focused on the context in which Buffalo became a locus for Wright's architectural activities in the first decades of the 20th century.

It will be presented by the University at Buffalo Anderson Gallery Oct.2 to Dec. 30. The exhibition will be free of charge and open to the public in the Anderson, One Martha Jackson Place (off Englewood Avenue between Main Street and Kenmore Avenue).Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1-5 p.m. For information, call 716-829-3754.

The exhibition will present more than 130 objects, including those related to 22 buildings and projects -- 11 built works and 11unrealized projects -- that resulted from Wright's 32-year association with the forward-thinking executives of the Larkin Company, a once-prominent soap and mail order business based in Buffalo.

The exhibition will be open during the 2009 national conference of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, "Wright in the Drafting Room: Drawings for the Built and Unbuilt," which will take place in Buffalo Oct. 7-11. On Oct. 8, the Anderson Gallery will host a reception for conference attendees.

UB Gallery Director Sandra Olsen says, "The theme of the exhibition --Buffalo as the site of a remarkable patronage -- will be explicated through a diverse set of materials, including building models, plans,photographic documentation and, perhaps most important, numerous letters and other correspondence between Wright and his Buffalo clients."

Jack Quinan, Ph.D., curator of the exhibition, is one of the most important scholars working today on Wright and his work. An art historian and SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the UB Department of Visual Studies, he is the author of several books on the Wright-Buffalo connection, including "Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House: Architecture as Portraiture" (2004, Princeton Architectural Press).

Quinan says the exhibition will shed new light on Wright's many unrealized projects related to Larkin patrons, as well as on such well-known built projects as the Larkin Building, the Darwin D. Martin House and Graycliff, the Martin summer house in Derby, N.Y., outside Buffalo.

He says, "It will include original material and reproductions on loan from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West, the Getty Research Institute, the UB Archives, and original furniture from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites."

Quinan will produce a 30-page brochure on the exhibit and later, a book on the subject. He will be aided in these endeavors by the exhibit's consulting curator Molly S. Hutton, Ph.D.

"The opening will provide a context for the nearly completed restorations of the Darwin Martin House," he says, "a $50-million effort that encompasses the full six-building Martin complex and the Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion, a minimalist visitor center designed by award-winning architect Toshiko Mori.

"It also will contextualize the restoration of Graycliff, for which Mrs. Martin was the lead client," says Quinan.

According to Olsen, this is the first time this material has been assembled and presented for scholarly re-evaluation and public education. She says the Anderson will offer a variety of educational programs in connection with the exhibit, among them a lecture series and tours conducted by the docents of Wright's Darwin Martin House.

"The title of the exhibition," says Quinan, "was chosen to demonstrate the length of Wright's involvement with his Buffalo clients and the tenacity with which those clients -- especially Darwin Martin --patronized and sustained him between the twin pinnacles of his career,the Prairie period (1900-1910) and the final decades (1937-1959) during which he designed Fallingwater, the Johnson's Wax Building, Taliesin West and the Guggenheim Museum.

"It refers specifically to two of Wright's innovative designs.

The first is the remarkable five-story, red brick Larkin Administration Building (1904-50) designed for the Larkin Soap Company and built on Seneca Street in Buffalo. Among its many innovations were air conditioning, built-in metal desk furniture, glass doors, radiant heat, a wide-open, multi-storied workspace, toilet bowls suspended from the bathroom walls and ornamentation by sculptor Richard Bock.

The second project mentioned is Broadacre City, a development concept proposed by Wright in his 1932 book, "The Disappearing City" and inspired by the rise of interstate highway travel and the Great Depression.

Commonly described as the "antithesis of the city and the apotheosis of the newly born suburbia," Broadacre was unveiled by Wright in 1935 in a very detailed 12-foot-by-12-foot scale model that represented a hypothetical four-square-mile community for 1,400 families.

The exact opposite of transit-oriented development, Broadacre incorporated many of the garden city ideas of urban planner Ebenezer Howard. Wright called it not just the destiny of a mature industrial society, but "the plastic form of a genuine democracy." He continued to plan and publish on this project until his death in 1959.

The exhibition is made possible through a grant from the New York Council on the Humanities, and support from the Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund of the Office of the UB Vice President for Research, the St. Simon Charitable Foundation, Inc., and the Martin House Restoration Corporation.

Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this news release or exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.

See this article online at: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/10395

Check out the Darwin Martin house restoration progress

If you are looking for something special to do in the Buffalo area, check out out the progress of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Darwin Martin house restoration. Jim and I went on a tour of it this past Sunday and it was wonderful.

I hadn't been there in about three or four years, so much progress had been made since my last visit. The new visitor's pavilion is very unique. The outside restoration of the Martin House is nearly complete; inside they hope to be done by 2011. I was so impressed with it that I joined as a member. For more information visit the website http://www.darwinmartinhouse.org/ or call 716-856-3858.

Tours are by reservation only, see the website for days and times. It costs $15 person for the basic one hour tour. Longer in-depth tours are also offered.