Can a bus station be an art gallery? Can it double as a theater? What about a teaching kitchen? The answer is yes.
This week, we are getting artwork ready to be displayed on the screens we have installed in five CDTA bus stations on Central Avenue. This program, a partnership between the Central Avenue Business Improvement District and CDTA provides for the installation of screens in some of the busiest bus stations on Central Avenue in order to broadcast arts programming submitted by local artists.
Do you know what that means?
It means we’ve gotten to spend all week being immersed in artist submissions. Poetry. Collages. Paintings. Sculptures. Photography. We are reviewing all the work, and then, building short presentations of each artist’s work, in order to build a cohesive program that will be shown to the public in each of the bus stations, effectively making them into public art spaces.
We’ve been using video editing software to create these short, multimedia presentations all week–and having so much fun! “Let’s add a little music here. Let’s zoom in here, so you can see where this detail is coming from. We need a credit sequence that highlights who the models are. We want this title to come in later, so it doesn’t interfere with the image.” And so on, and so on.
As each new presentation comes together, we get more and more excited about when this program will go live, streaming this content onto screens across the district. People will be sitting alone on the bench, waiting for the bus, getting serenaded by the thoughtful lines of poetry created by Daniel Summerhill and Neeco Piper. They’ll be done with work, heading home, thinking about what to make for dinner, or how to get their laundry done before bed, and then be given a short unexpected break from that to-do list, because there will be Joan Lezette-Miller’s photographs, transporting them to sunrise on a Claverack hillside or Treha Myth Downey’s carefully orchestrated flowerscapes taking them from the mundane to the sublime. They’ll see celebrations of Albany’s Boxing Club and local farms, brought to them by YouthFX, a Grand Street Community Arts program that puts cameras in the hand’s of the city’s youth. They’ll even be treated to dance performances by the city’s resident troupes.
It’s a big undertaking, and one we’ll continue to tinker with. Each new submission fills us with more hope for this city’s future. We are gifted with so many talented artists, and they offer so much energy. Now, finally, we will be able to bring all of that energy together in one place–Central Avenue.
The launch event for this new Transit Art program will take place on October 20, at 1pm at the bus station in front of the Linda, WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio, located at 339 Central Avenue. Stop by, see the unveiling of the new specially-designed screens, and meet the artists who are contributing to this new vision.
Want to submit work? Please contact the Central Avenue Business Improvement District to learn more about how to make your artwork part of it. (518) 462-4300
