“It’s a free public art festival that’s in accessible and surprising locations,” says Naomi Miller. Miller is one of the organizers, along with James Moed and Hannah Walsh des Cognets, of Terrain Biennial Newburgh, which opens September 27 (in tandem with Newburgh Open Studios September 27-28) and runs through November 15. This is the fourth biennial, and has the most artists so far: 34 artist will be displaying their work at locations across the city.
Public art is usually found in spaces owned by municipalities: parks, plazas, subway stations. Terrain settles artistic pieces onto private property. The city itself becomes a canvas for artists. An art gallery has hours of operation; this biennial is open 24 hours.
Terrain is not curated, in the usual sense of the word. There are two requirements: the artist should have some affiliation with Newburgh, and the project should be workable. “We’re not interested in what’s called ‘plop art’—things that just come out of nowhere,” Miller remarks. About two-thirds of the artists are Newburghers. Participants receive a small honorarium to cover materials and labor.
Public art has to be large—larger than most gallery art. Artists at the biennial have to think big. Cartoonist Andrea Moed is installing her work on the outside of an unoccupied residential home listed by the Newburgh Community Land Bank. At the time of this writing, the exterior looks like a windowless Tudor house designed by Ellsworth Kelly. Later she’ll wheat paste cartoon images over the bright yellow rectangles—her first large-scale artwork.
Not every idea pans out. One proposal (I tactfully omit the artist’s name) was a fountain composed of replicas of human body parts printed by a 3-D printer. The idea, though intriguing, proved unmanageable.
Interested residents volunteer to host an artwork; the organizers match them with an artist. Usually the term “patron of the arts” connotes a rich person, often born into wealth. A patron of Terrain needs no stock portfolio. Their investment is their porch, or lawn, or garden, or window, or chimney, or fence. They must be willing to have strangers sidle up, stare into their property, and point their phone at the nearby QR code identifying the artwork.
Some pieces appear on the sides of buildings, on storefronts, and, in one case—four minimalist banners titled Ours by Matthew Lusk—on a shipping container. Bam Bowen and Sara Gurevich are installing a quilt with a message—“i’m trying to rewrite what happened before”—that slowly disappears over the course of the exhibition (one word is removed each week). Elena Kalkova has crocheted large fragments that together spell out another message: “No One Is Illegal.”
Dan Daly is designing a mini-theater inspired by the nightly flight of a mass of swifts across the street: “These birds perform seven shows a week for us;” Daly writes. “I think it is only fair we give them a performance in return. My project, For the Birds, places a stage across the street from the chimney the swifts live in. This stage gives passerby an opportunity to perform their own theatrical work for the birds.” The stage has a luscious red trompe l’oeil curtain.
“Social sculpture” is a term invented by the avant-garde German artist Joseph Beuys to refer to collective action that changes society. 7000 Oaks, for example, was a five-year project to plan 7,000 trees in Kassel, Germany. Terrain is a work of social sculpture. It originated with artist Sabina Ott in Chicago, who began showing art on her porch in 2011—a new artist every month. Two years later, she launched the first Terrain Biennial on her block in Oak Park, asking neighbors also to host artists. Slowly it grew into an international movement.
