Trained as a painter, Buffalo-based artist Kurt Treeby has since turned his interest in fiber work and architecture into an opportunity to reflect on loss in the built environment, recreating buildings in plastic canvas and yarn—often as tissue boxes. In making these mini-replicas, Treeby aims to use recognizable buildings that have been altered or demolished, using tissues to add an extra layer of meaning through their association with mourning.
Treeby first learned about Frank Lloyd Wright’s vanished Larkin Administration Building while attending college in the ‘90s. (Buffalo’s decision in 1950 to raze the vacant but internationally-admired design now haunts seemingly every Western New York preservationist, historian, and urbanist blog commenter.) He has been fascinated by the building ever since he first saw images of it. But, he tells CityLab, “I stayed away from [the Larkin] at first because it was so iconic.”
