Several faculty members from Nichols School’s arts department create exhibits for the annual PLAY/GROUND festival, run by Nichols alumna Emily Tucker ’00. While the event is usually held in Medina, numerous sites have been set up across Western New York for guests to view the artists’ work. These outside works are more accessible in a socially distant format for all to see this year.
PLAY/GROUND 2020 is a collection of works from 22 regional and national artists. The even runs throughout the week and ends on Sunday, September 20.
Middle School visual arts teacher
Kari Achatz’s exhibit,
Afterglow, is her first large-scale outdoor sculpture. Natural flame-like shapes and shadows focus on positive and negative spaces that allow the viewer to become a part of the sculpture.
Afterglow is on display at the Pierce Lawn area of
Canalside in downtown Buffalo.
On the front lawn of the
Hotel Henry in Buffalo, local artist Colleen Toledano has recreated a miniature version of the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Titled
Looking In, this exhibit features small-scale work from Achatz and Upper School visual arts teacher
Amanda Besl. Nichols Middle School student Bennett G. ’27 also contributed to this exhibit.
Upper School performing arts teacher
Kristen Kelley is taking part in the
Mountains performance which is taking place at the
Artpark amphitheater in Lewiston. The not always linear narrative of the performance draws on current events and archetypal relationships to utopia and the apocalypse, struggle and triumph, and big feelings.
Upper School visual arts teacher
Andrea Mancuso’s work through her art collective, Virocode, is on display at the
University at Buffalo Anderson Gallery.
Shared Immune Systems is
a site-specific video projection that captures and comments on the interaction and conversation between nature and machines/technology. For the best viewing experience of this project, come after dark.