Buffalo, NY – On Saturday, June 29, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Public Art Initiative will begin work on a new project at 5 East Huron Street. The artist, Logan Hicks (American, born 1971), is often cited as one of the premier stencil-based muralists in the world and has been an active member of the street art and mural community since the early 2000s. Many of his works involve a staggering number of stencils, sometimes up to fifteen layers.

Hicks’s mastery has garnered him worldwide respect and the opportunity to create large-scale murals globally. Perhaps most notably, he was selected to paint the coveted Bowery Wall in New York City in 2016. Building on his long-standing ties to the street art community, he organized The Underbelly Project: a secret hidden space in New York City memorialized in a book released by Rizzoli and documentary film that premiered at Miami Art Basel in 2018.

The artist’s stencil images come primarily from his own photography, and the project in Buffalo is informed by a recent trip to the area. His final work will be painted on the side of 5 East Huron Street, the former OSHUN restaurant, in the heart of downtown and surrounded by many of Buffalo’s architectural gems.

The Albright-Knox’s Public Art Initiative is an innovative partnership between the museum and the County of Erie established in 2013 to enhance our shared sense of place and cultural identity in the urban and suburban landscapes of Western New York. The City of Buffalo joined the partnership in 2014. The goal of the initiative is to create spaces of dialogue where diverse communities have the ability to socially engage with, actively respond to, and cooperatively produce great public art that is capable of empowering individuals, creating stronger neighborhoods, and establishing Western New York as a critical cultural center.

Other recent Albright-Knox Public Art Initiative projects include Felipe Pantone’s Optichromie—BUF mural on the back of Town Ballroom; Muhammad Zaman’s muralOur Colors Make Us Beautiful at 1131 Broadway; Louise Jones’s mural Wildflowers for Buffalo at 465 Washington Street; Robert Indiana’s NUMBERS ONE through ZEROsculptures at Wilkeson Pointe; White Bicycle’s mural We Are Here at 1260 Hertel Avenue; Chuck Tingley and Matt Grote’s mural weego at 1503 Hertel Avenue; Otecki’s (Wojciech Kołacz) mural Work and Play at 617 Fillmore Avenue; The Freedom Wall, completed by artists John Baker, Julia Bottoms, Chuck Tingley, and Edreys Wajed at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and East Ferry Street; Betsy Casañas’s mural Patria, Será Porque Quisiera Que Vueles, Que Sigue Siendo Tuyo Mi Vuelo (Homeland, Perhaps It Is Because I Wish to See You Fly, That My Flight Continues to Be Yours) at 585 Niagara Street; Keir Johnston and Ernel Martinez’s mural Welcome Wall at 751 Fillmore Avenue; Bunnie Reiss's mural Magic Buffalo at 1322 Hertel Avenue; Shantell Martin’s mural Dance Everyday at 537 East Delavan Avenue; Daniel Galas’s mural 72 Jewett at 74 Jewett Avenue; Amanda Browder’sSpectral Locus installation at three separate locations throughout Buffalo; Alice Mizrachi’s mural Dream Keepers at the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology; Roberley Bell’s Locus Amoenus installation at the Tifft Nature Preserve; Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn’s mural Noodle in the Northern Lights at Shea’s 710 Theatre; Kaarina Kaikkonen’s installation We Share a Dream at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport; Jenny Kendler’s Milkweed Dispersal Balloons and ReWilding New York (Community Seed Stations), a two-fold work that took place over the summer of 2015; Shayne Dark’s 2015 exhibition Natural Conditions and residency at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens; Jaume Plensa’s Silent Poets at Canalside; Casey Riordan’s Shark Girl at Canalside; Tape Art’s Buffalo Caverns, a massive, temporary mural made with low-adhesive drawing tape on the north wall of the Central Library branch of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library; a billboard- and sticker-based iteration of Matthew Hoffman’s You Are Beautiful project, made possible in part through a partnership with Lamar Advertising; and Charles Clough’s collaboratively produced Hamburg Arena Painting, which is installed at the Hamburg Public Library. The Public Art Initiative has also distributed 30,000 art kits to students throughout Erie County.

The Public Art Initiative was established and is supported by leadership funding from the County of Erie and the City of Buffalo.

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