BUFFALO, NY.- Lawrence Brose, an acclaimed experimental film artist, image maker and curator who served as a key figure in Buffalo arts and educational organizations, died on Sunday, April 13. A lifelong Buffalonian, he was 73.

Brose died of pancreatic cancer. He is survived by Vince Buscaglia, whom Brose described as “my rock, my dearest friend, who has been with me through it all”, a beloved cousin, Marylou Warrington Hess and his close friends Keith Gemerek, Shelly Dominessy, Burt Nihill, Sharon Blaser and Marilyn Rybarczyk.

Brose’s last public appearance came last Wednesday, days before his death, during an event at the Burchfield Penney Art Center marking the opening of his exhibition, Cage: A Filmic Circus on Metaphors on Vision. The exhibition, celebrating his collaborations with composer and dear friend Douglas Cohen on his film about the avant-garde music theorist John Cage, marked a full-circle moment for Brose. The exhibition was originally planned to open at the Burchfield Penney in 2009 but was canceled because of a legal controversy that took several years to resolve.

“I started this exhibition right when I got diagnosed---it got me through the whole illness,” Brose told the crowd of friends and admirers at the museum on Wednesday. “It shows the power of art, what it can do, and the healing power of art and making art.

“I think we all need to embrace that,” he continued. “If we have something like this in our lives, whether it is love, whether it is togetherness, it is good for everyone.”

Lawrence Brose was born in Buffalo in 1951. After graduating from South Park High School he attended Genesee County Community College. He also received training as a piano tuner at the Batavia School for the Blind by virtue of blindness in one eye. He moved back to Buffalo in 1973 to work at Illos Piano Restorations as a tuner and, later, as a master restorer. Eventually he established his own business, Brose Piano Restorations, specializing in restoring vintage Steinways, including a piano from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.

Eventually Steinway itself bought out his business, allowing him to pursue his passion as a filmmaker and curator. Along the way he was embraced by leading pianists and composers. His series of works called Films for Music for Film grew out of that milieu, collaborating with the legendary pianist Yvar Mikhashoff and such famed composers as John Cage, Virgil Thomson and Frederic Rzewski.

Brose began working as film curator and publications director for the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts (CEPA Gallery) in the late 1980s, under executive director Gail Nicholson, and went on to serve with Robert Hirsch as CEPA’s artistic director for 10 years. When Hirsch left, Brose became executive director of the CEPA Gallery in 1999.

Brose's 25-year history with CEPA turned the gallery from a small presenting venue into a major arts center for photo-related arts. His work with CEPA won awards from many foundations, including the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the 2001 New York State Governor’s Arts Award.

“CEPA is my vocation,” Brose said.

Brose taught at the University at Buffalo as assistant professor in the Department of Visual Studies and headed the photography program for two years in the mid-2010s.

Brose’s groundbreaking film De Profundis, inspired by Oscar Wilde’s prison letter of the same name, premiered in 1997 at the Public Theater in New York. The film is not a traditional narrative—rather, it is an artistic exploration of suffering, self-discovery and liberation, blending vintage gay porn, family films and music into a mesmerizing hand-manipulated, color visual collage.

The film draws from Wilde’s bold refusal to conform to heteronormative expectations and Brose’s own experiences growing up in scrappy, rough-and-tumble South Buffalo under the heavy influence of the Catholic Church. A rebellious spirit, Brose even endured blindness in one eye—a challenge that shaped his life and unique perspective as an artist.

In De Profundis, Lawrence worked with members of the Radical Faeries counterculture movement—daring individuals who celebrated alternative queer identities, like Keith Gemerek, Ken Cooper and Mark Miller sharing stories of public sex and Agnes de Garron’s intense performances of repression and freedom. The film is layered with contemporary music, rituals and even a haunting reading of Wilde’s text set to piano by the respected American composer Frederick Rzewski. The film sought to question traditional norms of masculinity, gender and the very idea of normalcy itself.

Brose created more than 30 films, starting in 1983. One early work, An Individual Desires Solution, from 1986, is a poignant story about his lover’s struggle with AIDS. Regarded as one of the earliest experimental and personal films to emerge from the AIDS epidemic, it was featured in the groundbreaking 2015 retrospective Art AIDS America.

“I’m a filmmaker,” he said of De Profundis. “By navigating both the arena of structural/materialist film practices and Queer avant-garde cinema, I aim to bring a Queer cultural voice to the traditions of alternative cinema.”

In 2009, shortly before his Cage exhibition was slated to open at the Burchfield Penney, Brose was arrested by the FBI and charged with downloading images of child pornography. The exhibition was canceled, and he stepped down as CEPA director.

Although no illicit images were found on his computer, Brose worried that prosecutors would use the images from De Profundis against him in a trial. Ultimately, after six years of fighting for his innocence, Brose accepted a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to a single obscenity charge. He lost his job and his reputation and suffered through two years of probation. But his community stood by in support, and in 2016 he returned as CEPA director and continued his career as an innovative curator and champion of the independent arts.

“I have had the luxury of having everyone around me, helping me,” Brose said at the Burchfield Penney in his final public appearance. “This has been a glorious journey.”

For more on Lawrence Brose and his film work go to www.lawrencebrose.com