Published December 5, 2024
Artist Amanda Browder, Community Sewing Workshop in the CFA Atrium
Part of the Buffalo AKG Museum Public Art Iniative, which is facillitating Browder's creation of new collaboratively sewn work for the 2025 exhibition "Hi-Vis".
UB Art Alumnus Naija Boles, (2023 BFA), assisting Browder with the workshops, guides a community member with sewing panels for the collaborative tapestry.
Community members and UB students joined visiting artist Amanda Browder, on her return to Buffalo for a UB community sewing day, Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024, in atrium of the Center for the Arts. Browder's new installation will be featured in the Buffalo AKG Public Art Initiative’s upcoming exhibition, Hi-Vis, opening in February 2025.
Similar to her previous Public Art project in 2016, Spectral Locus, Browder is once again invited volunteers to help pin and sew large swaths of fabric to create the artwork during upcoming community sewing days. Participant assistance contributes to the concept of the artwork by connecting communities through a shared creative purpose, building on a social textile tradition of togetherness and belonging.
Organized by the UB Department of Art, through Stephanie Rothenberg, Department Chair.
About Amanda Browder
Born in Missoula, Montana, in 1976, Amanda Browder received an MFA/MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, producing over 30+ large-scale fabric installations all around the world. She collaborates with local community groups and sources textiles from local donations, amplifying multiple voices.
Exhibitions include: Triennale Brugge, Project 1: ArtPrize; SPRING/BREAK Art Fair; New Museum, Ideas City Festival; Nuit Blanche Public Art Festival/LEITMOTIF Toronto; Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL; ArtsWestchester, Westchester, NY; White Columns, NYC; Nakaochiai Gallery, Tokyo. Published in Unexpected Art: Chronicle Books and Strange Material; Arsenal Pulp Press. She received her first NEA grant in 2016 with the Buffalo Art Museum and later with the St. Charles Art Center and the Sioux City Art Center in 2023. Photos and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Fiber Art Magazine, and Hyperallergic.
About the Buffalo AKG Museum's Public Art Initiative
Art creates spaces that people share, whether neighbors or strangers, alike or dissimilar, Buffalo-raised or from far-flung places. A work of art gives us a moment to pause and reflect, and, when experienced with another, an opportunity to meet and connect.
The Public Art Initiative was born in 2013 out of a partnership between the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and Erie County, soon after joined by the City of Buffalo. Since then, in more than 60 murals, installations, residencies, and works of sculpture, we have sought to empower artists, inspire viewers, and strengthen a sense of our shared landscape with art that reflects the beauty and vitality of the many communities that shape it.