Graycliff and Jozef Slawinski Art

                                                     

It has now been gone from the estate for almost eight years and many people new to the organization since that time may not even know of the amazing world renowned piece of art that once graced the front of the school building on the estate which was built by the Piarist priests..  It was a huge installation of art by Jozef Slawinski of a type called Sgraffito----.  It involved a layering of different tiers of colored concrete and then scraping away the various layers of wet concrete to produce the colored image.  When plans were made to demolish the building the art was mounted on, the Polish Arts Club partnered with Graycliff to undertake the effort to remove and save the artwork.  It proved to be much more costly and difficult than originally planned and its planned placement at Assumption Church in the city (which houses other Slawinski works) proved not to be possible due to the size and weight of the work once removed.  Space was eventually found on the wall of the Library at Buffalo State College (Yeah, I know, not its actual name, but I have two degrees from there, so that allows me to use the shortcut name.)  The link below takes you to a WNY Heritage magazine photo article on the artwork and its removal process.  For those of you who have forgotten this significant story of Graycliff and those who may never have known, I hope you find it of interest. (Hang on the last photo for a few seconds as it is actually a slide show involving a number of different photos, but nothing indicates that until they start changing, with captions no less.)

 ://wnyheritagepress.org/photos_week_2010/slawinski_graycliff/slawinski_graycliff.htm