Merrily They Roll Along
By Ron Ehmke
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This is not my story (and I will promptly disappear from it). But my own experience is worth mentioning because it’s representative of the almost symbiotic bond many Western New Yorkers have felt over the last fifteen years to this tiny local media arts center with a vast national reputation.
Sometimes that connection is so tight it inspires out-of-towners to relocate here. Take the case of former Rochester resident Bernie Roddy: "I discovered Squeaky Wheel through an announcement in a Rochester arts paper which said there would be hand-processed films showing in Buffalo that Friday," he recalls. "I was directed through the old Cybeles on Elmwood, out into the courtyard, and through the door of a narrow bar, where I sat and viewed the messiest cinema I'd ever seen. At home I had made my first animated film, and these films did not impress me a lot. What impressed me was the event itself: its participants, location, and sense of counter-establishment community. I continued to make the hour and half drive to catch screenings programmed by Ghen Dennis for another year or so before deciding to move to Buffalo. Rochester, I was convinced, could not generate this excitement and cohesion...where humiliation and struggle in the name of creativity were understood. As the place where then-director Amy Lee always greeted me at the door, Squeaky Wheel became family."
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Squeaky Wheel members and staff gather in front of
the space's bank of video monitors. Photo by Jim Bush. |
Squeaky’s story begins with the demise of the much-heralded Media Study Buffalo in 1985. The closing of that artist-run nonprofit organization threatened to leave an enormous gap in the cultural life of the city, since it had been the area’s primary center for independent feature film screenings, hands-on workshops, and equipment access since 1971. By coincidence, its closure coincided with another landmark event: a statewide series of town meetings held by the Media program of the New York State Council on the Arts. Longtime Squeaky Wheel board member Tony Conrad, Professor of Media Studies at SUNY Buffalo, remembers the situation well: “People were agitated [since] funding that had flowed into the Western New York area was going to be lost because it was flowing through an organization that had been lost. A lot of us [felt] that the Town Meeting should be a sounding board to let the state agencies know the extent of the media community here and the degree to which people in Buffalo really needed that kind of support.”
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With a diverse group of working artists as its founding board and nationally prominent video artist Julie Zando elected its first Director, the Wheel was ready by the fall of 1987 to roll into its first of three storefront homes, on Potomac Avenue in the shadow of Elmwood. The three ongoing aims of the organization were in place from the start: getting cameras and editing equipment into the hands of emerging and established film and video makers at the lowest feasible cost, teaching people how to use these resources, and providing a space where finished and unfinished work could be exhibited.
It was democracy in action, and the informal atmosphere in which all this took place—then as well as now—cannot be overemphasized. Current Education/Outreach Director Kelly Spivey characterizes the earliest workshops this way: “'I’ll show you how to use a video camera if you show me how to edit on a flatbed.' That’s how it started.” To this day, new classes—from basic and advanced computer skills to zine production and “Film Without a Camera”—continue to spring up as individuals strive to share their own interests and talents. “We’re pretty open to community members; if they’re excited and come to us with a proposal of what they want to do, we try to make it happen,” Spivey says.
Filmmaker and musician Terry Klein recalls, "The high-grade enthusiasm that pervaded the Squeaky Wheel headquarters in the mid-eighties could not be accurately documented. You had to be in the full presence of it." Klein is right. A visitor to the Potomac storefront in those days might be greeted with an evening of noise guitar, an exhibition of childhood artwork by current members, a meeting of the activist-oriented 8mm News Collective, or one of Tony Conrad's unforgettable live performances, complete with harps and Greek togas. Or perhaps a fabulous party: still the most user-friendly means of introducing community members to each other and to exciting projects light years away from formulaic Hollywood product.
An open door legacy
The very idea of welcoming newcomers into the fold remains the definitive distinguishing aspect of Buffalo Media Resources. Hospitality— that quintessentially Buffalonian trait—has long been the staff's greatest strength. Current board member Meg Knowles recounts an experience familiar to many over the last decade and a half: "When I first moved back to town in 1989 and knew I wanted to make documentaries, I took my first video-making lesson with [original Technical Director] Armin Heurich. There were four of us in the class. Squeaky Wheel taught me all the basic skills, and they were really helpful while I was struggling; I'd be in the editing suite and Armin would come in and help me all the time. He and Cheryl [Jackson, Executive Director from 1989-97] were super friendly; they made you feel very comfortable, like they really cared about you, so it was a really great place to have as a resource for someone who was trying to jump in and learn things."
From Jackson's perspective, the goodwill flows both ways, especially in difficult times. "I was there during some very lean years, including the budget cuts in 1990-91, when we faced the first serious funding crisis after the boom of the eighties. I was the only full-time staff member, and our first computer was on loan from my part-time assistant director, Annie Fergerson. We were all halfway in the poorhouse, so we relied a lot on of volunteers. People put in tremendous individual effort to build the programs into what they are now." Even in the midst of shrinking income, Squeaky Wheel was able under Jackson's tenure to build initiatives which continue to this day, including the public access television anthology program "Axlegrease," a nationally distributed publication, The Squealer, and a popular monthly series of open screenings.
Perhaps the greatest legacy of Jackson and Fergerson's efforts was their commitment to the then-fledgling field of digital art. At a time when the World Wide Web existed largely in the imagination, they mapped out a multi-year plan for bringing Squeaky Wheel into the forefront of the computer age. Today, the Elmwood Avenue facility is filled with iMac-equipped workstations, high-end digital cameras and editing equipment, and high-speed internet access available to all. Of particular interest is "TechArts for Girls," a program designed for girls between the ages of 9 and 12 as a way of narrowing the "digital divide" between the genders by making computer training fun and introducing female students to prominent professional women who work with technology.
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Squeaky Wheel's Tech Art for Girls program educates
young women in a wide range of digital media. |
Indeed, it was Squeaky's predominantly female staff (all six of its directors to date have been women) which originally drew current staffer Stephanie Gray to the organization and inspired her and partner Spivey to move here from Erie, PA: "Buffalo is very lucky, because there is a stereotype—and it is true in a lot of other cities—that it's mostly men running this kind of stuff. [They often speak] gobbledygook and then say, 'just push that button.'" That's hardly the experience Gray had while learning the ropes from award-winning WNY-based videographer Jody Lafond, whose unintimidating and supportive approach to teaching is emblematic of the house style.
As Knowles points out, artists aren't the only people who turn to Squeaky Wheel to gain skills and rent equipment at rock-bottom rates: "We offer corporate memberships; we help community members trying to make small videos for their nonprofit organizations; we're just about to start a program with the elderly to create video diaries so they can communicate with relatives who don't live in the area. One of the kids who took workshops at Squeaky in conjunction with Gay and Lesbian Youth Services of Buffalo got his tape accepted in the Toronto Gay and Lesbian Film Festival." The organization has also collaborated with groups including Hispanics United, the African American Cultural Center, Boys & Girls Clubs, and many area schools. Current Executive Director Kara Olidge (herself a transplant from New Orleans) suggests "especially in urban America, as community centers decrease, people find themselves coming more and more into spaces like this, which combine arts and access."
And growing
Despite the current wave of financial austerity, Squeaky continues to expand its outreach, which, as board member William Altreuter of the law firm Altreuter Habermehl observes, makes it difficult to reduce its identity into a tidy soundbyte. However, he adds, "the complexity of the organization is part of its appeal. Squeaky Wheel has historically been great at adapting and reinventing itself to take advantage of potential resources. I think that's consistent with the whole idea of media as an evolving and constantly changing art form."
Conrad agrees: "We're not a dot com; we didn't go up and down. We're not just something that sprang up when this or that new corporation came to town. We're from here, and we've stayed right here. We are Buffalo, and we're solid just like the working people of Buffalo."
Ron Ehmke is a Tonawanda-based writer and performer.
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