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How an "art couple" found each other.
By Julianna Jacoby-Patronski
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We’re sitting at a table for three at the Delaware Avenue Spot Coffee and Richard and Wendy have chosen the two seats beside each other; they’re close — nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. At some point, I think that they remind me of the template for a movie couple — a couple whose connection is portrayed through the characters finishing each other’s sentences, talking over one another and then graciously letting the other speak while gently correcting or adding to what was said. However, there’s no acting involved; the rhythm of speech they’ve developed seems like habit and almost makes me feel like I’m talking to one person. It’s actually quite endearing—although it makes it difficult to take notes.
Richard and Wendy live in Buffalo’s Elmwood district; they share their home with a dog and two cats. Richard is an Art and Theater Critic for The Buffalo News and a painter; Wendy is the Project Manager for the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s Art on Wheels project. She took a leave from her position as Director of Development at the Burchfield to take on this major public art project. It is in the spirit of Herd About Buffalo!, a project that Wendy also helped spearhead.
Married for nearly a decade, how Richard and Wendy came together makes a strong case for fate — that yes, it does indeed exist and it was powerfully rallying for them way back in the seventies before either knew the other existed.
Wendy is originally from Los Angeles; she moved to Buffalo temporarily — or so she thought — with her first husband (his family was from Williamsville) in the early seventies. She opened her own her catering business called Moveable Feast and had two children, Kate, 28 and Jonathan 24.
Ultimately, Wendy and her first husband divorced, but she found that Buffalo had become her home regardless of the fate of her marriage. Wendy confides that at first she had a hard time admitting that she liked Buffalo but then comments, “I think that the wealth of cultural opportunities is astounding — I’m constantly telling residents and visitors alike.” She adds that her love of Buffalo “definitely” does not extend to the weather.
Richard is originally from Albany but says, “that’s ancient history now.” Like Wendy, he arrived in Buffalo in the seventies — 1979 to be exact — while en route to California from Pennsylvania, where he had an arts residency. He was actually transporting a horse, and was having some car trouble, so he stopped in Buffalo. “I never left,” he says. He landed a job as a part-time art critic at the Courier Express, and, before the Courier folded, accepted a position as the Visual Arts Director at Artpark. In 1985 he made the move to The Buffalo News and has remained there since. A brief marriage had ended by the time he met Wendy—so he was free for a new attachment.
Fast forward to November 1988. Wendy and Richard were both at the opening of an Albright Knox Art Gallery exhibition—separately. Enter fate.
A mutual friend of Richard and Wendy’s was at the opening as well; he’s actually the first person Wendy met when she moved to Buffalo. Wendy told the mutual friend: “I need to start dating. Can you find me a date?”
And that, as they say, is history. The mutual friend introduced Richard and Wendy. The two went on their first date, which, according to Wendy, was a performance of Lady Emerson. “You remember that?” Richard rhetorically asks with a grin.
Four years later, in 1992, the two were married.
These days, as two people whose careers demand much of their attention, they relish the time they spend together. “He makes me laugh all the time,” Wendy says of Richard.
Richard, speaking about how they are as a couple and what he thinks makes their relationship work, says, “We stay curious — we read, we pay attention to the arts,” pausing, then adding, “we work it out as we go along. Spontaneity is most romantic.”
They also share the love of the city that became their home. “We feel personally responsible to keep all of the businesses on Elmwood open.” Wendy says this with a slight laugh but it’s clear that there’s some truth to her statement as she first explains their ritual of trying to rotate through all the restaurants in the Elmwood area, and then eventually tells of her daughter’s upcoming wedding. As she speaks, a picture of them as ambassadors for Buffalo takes shape in my mind.
Wendy is helping to plan her daughter’s wedding at which many out of town guests will be in attendance (her daughter now lives in Boston, MA). The question arose as to how to keep the out-of-towners happy when the actual wedding wasn’t happening. Wendy is putting together a picnic at Delaware Park and shuttling everyone to and from via the most architecturally significant route so that the guests can get a taste of the Buffalo that Richard and Wendy cherish.
“The picnic came about as we were trying to come up with a way to keep all the people from out of town (probably at least 150 people) entertained the day of the wedding,” says Wendy. “We thought that a picnic at (Delaware) Park would show off a great area of the city — the Museum District/Olmsted Crescent.
“All the out of towners will be staying in the city so we’ll have a couple busses shuttling people from their hotels to the park. We’ll probably have the bus go right up Delaware so the guests can see all the extraordinary mansions. The picnic itself will be at the casino and lake area, but we’ll also provide information about what else they can do in the area — the Albright Knox, Burchfield-Penney, BECHS, Zoo and the Farmer’s Market on Bidwell & the Elmwood shopping area.”
Wendy’s motives become clear — obviously her only daughter’s wedding is first and foremost in her mind, but it’s equally obvious that introducing a captive audience to some of the jewels that Buffalo has to offer is a close second.
As the three of us leave Spot, agreeing that on this particular day that we’ve met — a fall day in Buffalo where the golden leaves are still firmly attached to their trees and are a remarkable contrast to the cloudless blue sky — the mild weather is perfect. At that moment, a man approaches us and — directing his attention more to Richard and Wendy then to me — asks for directions. With a smile, Richard begins gesturing with his hands the direction the man should go as Wendy starts to do the same.
Julianna Jacoby-Patronski is a special events planner and free-lance writer for local and national publications.
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