Doug Levere's striking snowflake photos continue to generate national excitement and great press for a region accustomed to being slammed for the white stuff.

Elyse Wanshel, Trends Writer for The Huffington Post, featured Levere and his beautiful flake photos in Winter Sucks, But Close Up Photos of Snowflakes Will Blow You Away on January 6, 2016. This piece nearly collides with the wonderful article and slideshow about his art in The New Yorker on January 12, 2016.

Doug is a neighbor of mine in the Tri-Main Center, but Wanshel managed to tell me a few new things:

"Levere has a fashion illustrator for a mother, a printer for a father, and a portrait painter for a grandfather. He wholeheartedly believes that art is in his blood. “Sometimes I wonder if there is printing ink in my veins.”

Wanshel adds: "There might be a sprinkle of snow, too."

I also discovered that the “Fire & Ice” exhibit that wowed visitors at CEPA Gallery in December and January of this year will soon be enjoyed by those with more access to fire than to ice. The photographs by Levere and fellow Buffalo photographer Alan Friedman (also a neighbor in the Tri-Main Center! They bookend the fourth floor) will be traveling to Photo Eye Gallery in Santa Fe at the end of January. 

"Friedman captures images of the sun, and together they expect their Fire & Ice project to become a book that will, in part, shatter some stereotypes attributed to their chilly home."

I sure hope they talk to their Tri-Main neighbor, Buffalo Heritage Press, about that book! Shattering stereotypes and spreading good news about Buffalo is what it's all about.