Art enriches human life in many ways, some of which have
nothing to do with acquiring and owning an object. When you interact with installations or performance
pieces, you walk away empty-handed, but perhaps some expansion on the inside
has occurred.
This
past weekend — and for the second consecutive year — the former Medina High
School was the site of “PLAY/GROUND” (artplaygroundny.com), a series of installations and
performances created by dozens of artists based in Western New York. Located
right in the village, the building was purchased for redevelopment by the
Hungerford family of Medina, who last year approached the WNY art consultancy
group Resource:Art about creating a cultural experience in the school.
Having
partially grown up in Clifton Springs, a tiny Ontario County village east of
Rochester, I’m particularly appreciative of cultural amenities popping up in
small, rural towns; teen me would have been overjoyed if the Main Street Arts
gallery (and now, the up-and-coming Sulfur Books) had existed when I lived in what,
at the time, felt like a cultural vacuum. The addition of galleries, art
events, and book stores with literary programs benefit the residents of small
towns directly. But they also have the indirect benefit of bringing tourist
revenue in from the surrounding cities. And city slickers get to emerge from
their bubbles for a while and remember how much state exists outside of the
urban pockets.
The
weekend-long “PLAY/GROUND” pop-up was co-presented again this year with
Rochester and Buffalo-based arts organizations, including Rochester
Contemporary Art Center and Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. From Friday,
September 27, to Sunday, September 29, the school featured installations and
events presented by a set of returning and new artists.
I
didn’t catch the preview party on Friday night, which included performances by
Buffalo’s Torn Space Theater and Buffalo Aerial Dance, as well as DJ duo Sherri
Miller and Mario Fanone. But on Saturday and Sunday, live music performed in
the auditorium filled the halls, performers in Kyla Kegler’s puppet show “Do
You Think My Head Is Too Big” roamed the halls wearing huge papier-mache human and
animal heads, and visitors popped in and out of classrooms, bathrooms, and the
gym to experience each element of the spectacle.
I
made the trip with CITY’s News Editor Jeremy Moule, who grew up in Medina, and
artist Megan Sullivan. Our little group first gravitated toward a quieter room
across the hall, which turned out to be a locker room with toilet stalls and
shower stations. A line wrapped around the room toward the adjoining space that
was hidden by a black curtain with a silver asterisk painted on it. We queued
up and chatted, taking in the fact that every single surface of the walls,
lockers, stalls, ceilings, and floors was covered with freeform paintings and
drawings by Brockport artist and Wall\Therapy alum Nate Hodge.
After
30 minutes in line, I was a bit concerned about seeing the rest of the spaces
(we arrived in the afternoon and the venue closed at 5 p.m.). I considered
stepping out of line and asking Jeremy and Megan to tell me what that room was
like, but at this point we were close to the front and I decided to stick it
out — this wasn’t a fast food line. Then a woman behind us started loudly
complaining about how outrageous it was that the wait was so long, repeatedly
lecturing the level-headed friend of the artist who chatted with visitors and
ushered each next set of folks into the small room.
I
had already asked the artist’s friend if she could tell us what to expect. She
said the artist, Caitlin Deibel, was creating “soul portraits” with individuals
or small groups, and that her art in general was focused on healing. People were
allowed to move along at their own pace, she explained, but most people weren’t
taking more than five minutes.
Without
much more information, this description brought to mind the soulful,
art-therapy-like performances presented by Megan Joy May, a former artist in
residence at the Flower City Art Center, whose work is often not about the
product but the process, the focus, the reflection, and the growth.
When
I was up, I went in alone, vowing not to linger too long. An old-school
projector was set up in the small anteroom to the locker room showers, bouncing
a square of light onto the wall. Deibel explained that she wanted visitors to
consider their light and shadow selves, and invited me to go into the adjoining
shower room — two narrow spaces separated by a central wall, each side filled
with vases of dried plants and pods collected from nearby fields — and select
objects that I connected with to bring back to the projector. I brought back
curved branches of delicately shivering leaves and rods of spiny thistle, and
arranged them on the projector bed so that a sort of shadow archway formed on
the wall, framing a spot for me to stand in the bright negative space. Then
Deibel took my picture using my phone, and I went away with what sort of looked
like a nature goth prom photo saved in my device.
So
it made sense that the line was moving slowly. And perhaps this wasn’t an
experience for everyone — I wondered if the woman who complained connected with
what the artist was trying to do, or if she just got her selfie, some nebulous
proof of having had an experience.
Back
out in the hallway, our little group split up to check out the installations in
the hallways, stairwells, and classrooms — some filled with interactive
elements, some transformed into strange, immersive environments.
I
was delighted to check out the contributions by some regional artists I’ve
followed for years, including Robin Whiteman. She transformed a locker room
into a seemingly haunted treasure hunt, with her ceramic, cloth, lighting, and
mixed media works filling many nooks in the dim space. In a hallway and up a
staircase, sculptor Lee Hoag had set up “Beat Drop,” a few of his large, imaginative
assemblages that stood sentinel or seemed to trundle down the stairs just like
students of decades past.
Elsewhere,
Bethany Krull created a reliquary-like birdcage with ceramic bird bones nestled
into a carpet of moss and flowers, suspended spot-lit in a cave-like janitor’s
closet. Krull’s artist statement explained that this work, “The Canary is Long
Dead,” alludes to the cataclysmic effects of climate change, and warns us of
the fate that awaits if we don’t act.
Other
installations were simply playful, hands-on delights, such as Buffalo-based
Michael Bosworth’s “Newton’s Clock,” which included deconstructed pinball
machines reconfigured into stations that challenged visitors to keep the ball
in motion as long as possible. Entering another room, I encountered Colleen
Toledano’s “The Field,” which is essentially scaffolding to another world: steps
and ladders led to holes cut in plywood, and by climbing them you could peek
into a surreal lawn-like environment.
A
particularly long classroom was transformed into “Rolling Thunder,” which
blended Buffalo artists Tom Holt and Quincy Koczka’s love of creating things
and skateboarding. The space was filled with sculptures (painted ramps and the
like) “animated” by skateboarders. Serious Bart Simpson vibes.
Some
installations were just downright cool, including Keith Lemley’s “Symmetry
Breaking” sculpture, a geometric construction with fluorescent lights and
reflective surfaces that formed a huge prism-like object in the center of a
classroom.
Lemley’s
sculpture was so stunningly pretty it seemed made for selfies — I had to wait a
bit to see the whole object because of all of the people snapping shots of
themselves for the ‘gram. Ditto for “Into the Void” by William Quintana and
Christina Trautman. The installation was a room-consuming series of telescoping
boxes with deepening hues and lights that held my gaze like a magnet. It brought
to mind both a Dan Flavin light sculpture and a 1970s game show set.
Peeping
into a different classroom I spied several folks laying on a pillowy sculpture,
gazing up into a constructed canopy, taking the artists Marquis Burton and Tara
Sasiadek up on their offer to use “Wave and Shore” as a place to pause and
stretch time. Other installations in the spectacle were a bit inaccessible, and
still others elicited some deeper and lasting considerations after viewers
walked away.
“PLAY/GROUND”
as an endeavor is not unlike the instances when groups of artists have done “takeovers”
of unused buildings. One Rochester example is the 2015 “Compartmented“
art takeover of the reading rooms at what is now Lyric Theatre, which happened between
that building’s use as a church and performance venue. This region is rife with
old, underutilized spaces that can become art venues in a pinch, and these
types of exhibitions point out the potential in breathing new life into them.
Rebecca Rafferty is CITY’s arts and entertainment
editor. She can be reached at becca@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2019.
