The FARGO HOUSE gallery presents the work of artists, architects and designers whose work explores the collective imagination of places. 2016 - 2017. David Schalliol. Telescope Houses of Buffalo.
The telescope house is a distinct vernacular building type that was often begun as a wood frame worker's cottage, usually developed and designed by outsider architects.  Such houses were typically produced from designs in pattern books or other standardized development tools by German and Polish immigrants or the companies that employed them.  But they did not stay as designed for long. The combination of small residences, narrow but deep lots, growing families, and limited resources led to a distinctive expansion pattern: buildings that were enlarged through rear additions that incrementally reduce in scale. This has resulted in houses that seemingly can be collapsed into themselves like a telescope or "spyglass."  On the East Side of Buffalo, where once dense streets are full of derelict lots, small fields now flank many of the telescope houses. The resulting wide-open views make the special design of Buffalo's telescope houses visible, but they also reveal the tenuous condition of many of the buildings and the neighborhoods as a whole.

David Schalliol is an assistant professor of sociology at St. Olaf College who explores the transformation of urban centers through mixed-methodology projects. His writing and photographs have appeared in such publications as Social Science Research, Places, and The New York Times, as well as in numerous exhibitions, including the inaugural Belfast Photo Festival and the Museum of Contemporary Photography's Midwest Photographers Project. His book, Isolated Building Studies, was published by Utakatado in 2014. Schalliol has also contributed to documentary films, including "Highrise: Out My Window," an interactive documentary that won the 2011 International Digital Emmy for Non-Fiction. He is currently making an ethnographic film about the displacement of more than 400 families on Chicago’s South Side. Schalliol received his bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College and his master’s and doctoral degrees from The University of Chicago. http://davidschalliol.com/ 2014 - 2015.  Caitlin Cass. Rathbun Builds Buffalo.
Caitlin Cass makes comics, drawings and counterfeit museum exhibits that folklorize historic failures. Her current work tells the story of Buffalo’s great capitalist, Benjamin Rathbun, a 19th century developer who is said to have erected 99 buildings in the year 1835 alone. Through comics and drawings, Cass commiserates with Rathbun as he builds Buffalo, buys Niagara Falls, forges bank notes and ends up imprisoned in a building of his own making.

Cass’s work has been exhibited at The Corcoran College of Art and Design, The Burchfield Penney Art Center, The Niagara Falls History Museum, and The Print Center at the Today Art Museum in Beijing, China.  She was Artist-In-Residence at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium and an Artist Fellow at The Contemporary Artist Center Woodside in Troy, NY. Her comics have appeared in The Chicago Reader, Artvoice, The Public and on Toronto's subway monitors (presented by Art For Commuters). Cass holds a BA in Great Books from St. John’s College and an MFA in Visual studies from The University at Buffalo. She lives and works in Buffalo, NY. 2013 - 2014.  Daniel Salomon. Metathesis Hardbound.
Metathesis Hardbound is a visual narrative surrounding the collection of forlorn fragments of architecture. On his 2011 tour of the US, Daniel Salomon compiled building-parts in a room-sized box builit on the bed of his pickup.  After returning home, Salomon covered his box with a patchwork of pinhole apertures in order to capture the box's contents.  Re-assembling the fragments to accommodate a complex array of perspectives, he finally used the box as a primitive camera device, exposing its interior to a range of natural light conditions. This exhibition presents his phantasmagoric exposures, as well as the means to their making.
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