Endi Poskovic, MFA 1993
Tell us about your experience in the Department of Art at UB.
I arrived to Buffalo as a graduate student in the summer of 1991 just as the country of my birth, Yugoslavia, began to disintegrate and descend into cataclysmic carnage. I was 22, stateless and confused. I looked forward to my study at UB, eager to pursue my creative passions. UB and the Buffalo community welcomed me with open arms, made me feel at home and helped me discover a community of creative people who, like myself, told stories and embraced many ways of seeing and being. What a revelation that was, that we were there, all different, yet all inventive and connected through a great many positive threads. UB's vibrant grassroots community of fellow artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, composers, thinkers, makers and social activists, reinforced my hope and belief in a better world. That belonging felt very special, empowering. It brought out the best in me and gave me agency to do the best I could.
The art studios were situated in the Bethune Art Building, the old Buffalo Meter Company Building in University Heights on Main Street. It was a supercoool building, designed in 1915 by one of the first women architects in the United States, Louise Blanchard Bethune. This was before it was gentrified like it is now as an apartment loft. We all worked long hours, energy was there around the clock. The quirky art setting, together with incredible academics and interdisciplinary discourse in cognate classes on Main and North Campuses, shifted perspectives in ways I could never have imagined. Once, there was a group of us art students who signed up for a German literature elective class. When the professor realized there were far more of us, art students, than others, he altered the course on the spot. Now we were learning about expressionist film, Cabaret Voltaire, DADA, Tristan Tzara, Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield and wicked things that twisted our minds and brought energy into the course. Professors were really not that buttoned up, they danced with us. Harvey Breverman was extremely generous, even when he was the most challenging. Adele Henderson made printmaking young again. She once said, all that matters is your work, and that is all one can strive for. This has stayed with me forever.
Endi Poskovic (MFA in Printmaking 1993) wiki
Professor, University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design