The Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy is hosting a weekend-long public arts festival at Floyd Bennett Field, located at 31-59 Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn.
The inaugural “Floyd Bennett Field! Public Arts Festival” will run from Apr. 19-21, featuring a celebration of art, architecture, live music and other festivities for the local community.
The event will showcase art from 24 established and emerging artists who work with multiple mediums. The festival will also pay homage to Floyd Bennett Field’s historic airplane hangars, by transforming the space through the use of visual storytelling.
Festival goers can look forward to art that will be video mapped on the 11,000 square-foot airplane hangers. The pieces were created by a collective of renowned artists, including Derrick Adams, Peter Burr, Eto Otitigbe and Ryan Hartley Smith. According to the conservancy, the artists’ emphasis on the airplane hangers focuses on the festival’s theme of adaptive reuse and creative reimagining. The featured artwork will showcase the concept of reimagining historic spaces through visual art.
Some of the featured emerging artists include Matt Bruinooge, Alessandro Echevarria, Donghwi Han and Christina Lee. The additional artists are Hanlin Liang, Dakota Ray, Ti Xu and Phoenix Yang. Audience members can enjoy live music performances by Wild Yaks, Sesame Flyers Steel Pan Ensemble and Batalá. Erick Sahler, an illustrator and master printmaker, will unveil an original artwork honoring Floyd Bennett Field.
The festival coincides with Earth Day weekend, inviting over a dozen community organizations to host family friendly art and nature themed activities. Local business owners will sell products, and festival goers can enjoy food trucks offering a wide variety of dishes. Residents will also enjoy a silent dance party accompanied by a live interactive video performance piece to end the festivities.
The Floyd Bennet Field’s airplane hangars are undergoing a major two-phase partnership project. The first project, a $26 million rehabilitation funded by the Great Outdoors Act, will transform the structure’s exterior and critical systems. The Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy will also create an interior Innovation Hub featuring research and development facilities focused on coastal managing an interior retrofit, as well as public programs for community members.
