From August 6–15, PLAY/GROUND 2021 will be held at a number of inspirational locations throughout the city, including the Buffalo Central Terminal, The Broadway Market, Canalside, The Handley Room at The Lederman/ Super Street, and the Matt Urban Hope Center.
29 artists, involved in 20 projects, spread across 5 sites, and contained to a 7 mile radius.
PLAY/GROUND is a platform for site-specific installations by contemporary artists that include Lisa Brown • Kyle Butler • Valeria A. Cray & Hiram Cray • Julia Dzwonkoski • Dorethea Edwards • Randy Fernando • Sarah Fonzi • Lindsey Griffith • Laural Hartman & Sarah Kinard • Jay Hawkins • Darryl Lauster • Camilla Lee • Legba Graphics: William Quintana + Christa Trautman • Bianca L. McGraw • Shantelle Patton • Senso di Voce: Esin Gunduz & Megan Kyle • Christopher Squier • Adam Thibodeaux • Rich Tomasello • Colleen Toledano • Diana Lynn VanderMeulen & Sasha Stiles • Brandon Williamson • Sara Zak • Zeitpunk (Matthew Graham)
These artists have created a series of public art installations that have all been added to this map. The installations are all within a 7-mile radius, making it easy to visit all of the sites in a single day. Along with the art installations, there are a number of coinciding events taking place, including a kick-off barbecue, a community paint day, family art activities, performances, and a bike ride.
“We are so excited to present PLAY/GROUND 2021 to you all. We are taking advantage of the supreme Buffalo summer weather and have sited a majority of the installation outdoors or in wide open spaces, to make everyone feel as safe as possible. This year we are all about health and wellness through the arts! Take a guided or self-guided bike tour of the sites and take advantage of our free art making workshops, performances, and events…” – PLAY/GROUND Team (organizers are Resource:Art and The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art aka BICA)
Free PLAY/GROUND Kick Off BBQ @ The Central Terminal
Friday 8/6 5:30–8:30PM
Family Art Activity at The Broadway Market
Saturday 8/7 12:00–3:00PM
Join the PLAY/GROUND team and Buffalo’s Own for a fun filled family friendly day of painting. “The power of gathering gives the opportunity to inspire, to be more hopeful, more joyful. More alive.” This is the tagline for the only PLAY/GROUND project you will encounter across each of the 5 sites. The project is called “A Gathering Place”, and was proposed by Buffalo’s Own, Inc., an organization founded by Jay Hawkins, Lisa Brown, Dorethea Edwards, Camilla Lee, and Shantelle Patton. “A Gathering Place” includes the creation of five art benches in collaboration with the community.
Family Art Activity at The Broadway Market
Saturday 8/7 12:00–3:00PM
Join Daemen College, Western New York Book Arts, and Unite by Night for a drop-in button making workshop.
Lindsey Griffith Presents The Same Stream Twice
Saturday 8/7 1:45–3:30PM
Join us at the third floor theater of The Matt Urban Hope Center at 1088 Broadway for a short play about communication and miscommunication that reappropriates imagery from online theatre back into real time and space. Doors open at 1:45pm, and the performance will begin promptly at 2pm.
Welcome Brunch with Senso di Voce
Sunday 8/8 11:00AM–2:00PM
Join the artists & curators of PLAY/GROUND inside the Gallery exhibition featuring participating artist and a performance by Senso di Voce.
Sunday 8/8 11:00AM–1:00PM
A guided ride provided by Buffalo Bike Tours, through the Broadway Fillmore neighborhood for a one-time-only tour to more than a dozen site-specific art installations, hearing from several artists along the route. The ride ends with beer and mumbo wings!
Schedule by location/artist
2021 Projects & Artists
Buffalo Central Terminal — 495 Paderewski Drive, Buffalo, NY 14212
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Municipal Sentiment: Sod Forms, Kyle Butler — A series of sculptures made primarily with grass, suspended on taught lengths of chain link.
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Come and Find Me, Sara Zak — Childhood comes and goes in a blink of an eye; come find yours again in a scavenger hunt for characters and creatures made of children’s books.
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Core Sample, Sarah Fonzi — A monumental column of fictional geological earth strata to illustrate a place’s distinct history as impacted by changing inhabitants.
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Portal, Valeria A. Cray & Hiram Cray — It will energize and unify the area and bring in good spirits.
Broadway Market — 999 Broadway Street, Buffalo, NY 14212
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A Digital Garden Grows, Diana Lynn VanderMeulen & Sasha Stiles — The collective nurturing of lifecycles and calm environments; in gardening and growth we trust. Curated by Miriam Arbus & Jess Conatser.
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Broadway Market Postcards, Julia Dzwonkoski — Postcards celebrating the colorways and vibes of the Broadway Market.
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Drop Ceiling, Legba Graphics (William Quintana + Christa Trautman) — Finding the joy and wonder in the Broadway Market parking garage waffle grid.
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insomnia, memory loss, lethargy, and insanity, Christopher Squier — In a series of digital works printed on fabric, artist Christopher Squier creates collages that combine abstraction and distortion as well as images of glass Fresnel lenses found in internet searches. Together, the resulting images embody mathematical principles from quantum physics and take up photographic conversations about the bending of light and subsequent warping of reality.
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Poetic Cafe, Bianca L. McGraw — An interactive installation that engages participants with poetry, art, music, comedy, craft, and meditation.
The Handley Room, The Lederman Building — 239 Lombard Street, Buffalo, NY 14212
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Current Affairs, Rich Tomasello — An installation created in part by a diverse group of teenagers, working with artist Rich Tomasello, sharing their feelings, hopes, anxieties, and fears of our current times.
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In Flux, Colleen Toledano — A multi-media installation made of paper, lumber, and light to submerge viewers in an environment of the everchanging flows of nature.
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Rust Belt Requiem, Darryl Lauster — An assemblage of Buffalo’s industrial history recomposed as a public monument.
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Sounding Spaces, Senso di Voce: Esin Gunduz & Megan Kyle — An immersive sound installation that embodies musical resonances across time, geography, and genre.
Matt Urban Hope Center — 1088 Broadway Street, Buffalo, NY 14212
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City of Fences, Zeitpunk (Matthew Graham) — If Buffalo is the “City of Good Neighbors” and if “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,” does that make Buffalo the “City of Fences”?
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The Same Stream Twice, Lindsey Griffith — A short play about communication and miscommunication that reappropriates imagery from online theatre back into real-time and space.
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Parallel Intersection, Laurel Hartman/Sarah Kinard — An intuitive play with the idea of straddling the line between abstraction and representation.
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A How-to-Guide: An Interactive journey into the mind behind the rhyme, Brandon Williamson — A curated performance piece created by Brandon Williamson especially for the Matt Urban stage.
Canalside — 44 Prime Street, Buffalo, NY 14202
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Apertures/Apparitions, Adam Thibodeux — Apertures/Apparitions seeks to reanimate the ghost of the Gillet & Sons Distillery at Canalside by infilling the voids that once served as thresholds with speculative apertures. It defamiliarizes physical traces of impermanence (ruins) made flat (through printed image) and ruptured by both the hand of the maker and the body of the occupant.
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ECHO, Randy Fernando — Make noise, make light.
All locations
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The Gathering Place, Camilla Lee, Dorethea Edwards, Jay Hawkins, Lisa Brown, and Shantelle Patton — Five artists from the Buffalo’s Own, Inc. collective will present a series of benches co-created with community members that will be spread across each of the PLAY/GROUND sites. After PLAY/GROUND, the benches will find permanent homes in the Fillmore district and live on as markers of shared community and the creative ambition of our city.
The full list of artists whose work will be on view from Canalside to the Broadway Fillmore Neighborhood is below, and you can learn more about each project by visiting artplaygroundny.com/2021-projects.