Last September, an old canal barge made its way from Rochester 45 miles west to the village of Medina. Community members lugged trees and soil to help the artist Mary Mattingly build a unique garden — a floating one. Mattingly’s project is one of the key pieces of the Medina Triennial, which brings international artists and their work to the small village along the Erie Canal. The exhibition begins June 6 and runs through September 7. (By its very nature, the Triennial will recur every three years.) The art is shown at 10 sites throughout the village, including in the old high school, at the railroad museum, at the local YMCA, at a newly constructed visitors center and notably on the canal itself. This creates the feeling of a living exhibition in keeping with its theme, “All That Sustains Us.” Karin Laansoo is co-artistic director, along with Kari Conte. She says the artists tapped to contribute also helped shape the concept. “Basically, it asks what keeps communities alive, not just ecologically, but culturally and socially, water, food, memory, labor,” Laansoo said. “So we really wanted the works that don’t illustrate those ideas, but actually engage them.” Karin Laansoo, left, and Kari Conte, right, the co-artistic directors of the Medina Triennial. Credit: Photo Hakan Topal. Courtesy Medina Triennial. Case in point: Tania Candiani, an artist from Mexico City, wrangled hundreds of participants into the auditorium of the village’s historic high school earlier this year. With help from composer Rogelio Sosa, they breathed, hummed and whispered for four hours, creating a vocal performance inspired by the cycle of water. Much like the Triennial writ large, the piece was inspired by the canal, but also the region’s wider history. Berlin-based artist Asad Raza, who was born in Buffalo, created a new piece titled “Reflection” that pumps water from the canal into Medina’s new visitors center. It is experiential, Laansoo said, in that people can walk in it. Lina Lapelytė, from Lithuania, leads young performers who are “singing and building a sculpture at the same time,” Laansoo said. These pieces all engage the people who actually live in the region, a core tenet of the Triennial’s aim. “We really wanted to make it about Medina, not bring artworks in that are made elsewhere, but put Medina on a pedestal, if you want to call it like that,” Laansoo continued, “and really make the works together with the local community.” That extends to the nearby areas of Buffalo and Rochester, too. The new visitors center, named the Medina Triennial Hub and located right on the canal on the village’s Main Street, was renovated with the help of students from the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning. Mary Mattingly’s “Floating Garden.” Credit: Photo courtesy the Medina Triennial. For shade on the garden barge, Mattingly built a pavilion, but she needed help. She recruited a few architecture students for both the design and the construction with plenty of help from former Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Amanda Reis. “A lot of times architects will design something, hand drawings off, and someone else builds it,” said Seth Holmes, the interim department chair of RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability who helped oversee the project. “We really like to strive to have our students learn the hands-on components of construction and not just draw it and hope someone else builds it for them.” Mattingly’s “Floating Garden,” he said, allowed students the chance to learn in real time that construction projects are never perfect, despite meticulous planning. “They’re mounting the pavilion to the barge, and the barge is a steel barge, and they’re building the pavilion out of wood,” he said. “We’ve got to get it all timed perfectly with the welders that came out to weld some tabs on that they would attach the wood through. It’s not always easy, and that’s good for them to learn.” The Triennial is free for all, though registration is strongly encouraged. The indoor sites are open Thursday through Sunday from 12 to 6 p.m., while the park locations are open daily, 24 hours per day. Laansoo recommends beginning at the visitors center and seeing the works that incorporate the canal first. But, she reminded, it’s not a museum — and there’s no rush. After all, there are 10 sites to see, most in close proximity to each other, and almost all of the exhibition is walkable. “It takes a village,” Laansoo said. “You hear this a lot, but in this case, it really did.” Find more information on the Medina Triennial here. The post The Medina Triennial brings ambitious, accessible art to the Erie Canal appeared first on CITY Magazine. Arts. Music. Culture.. ...read more read less