Formerly the location of the Copacabana Jazz Club, 751 Fillmore Avenue has sat vacant for over a decade near the intersection of Broadway and Fillmore on Buffalo’s East Side. In 2016, the building’s new owners in partnership with the Broadway Fillmore Neighborhood Housing Services (BFNHS) and Fillmore District Common Council Member David Franczyk conceived of the idea for a mural that would incorporate the word “welcome” in the 13 languages BFNHS outreach identified as representative of this diverse neighborhood: Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, English, Farsi, French, German, Polish, Seneca, Spanish, Somali, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
In this video, Ernel Martinez and Keir Johnston, the creators of the "Welcome Wall" at 751 Fillmore Avenue in Buffalo, talk about their creative process and the community participation that helped create the mural. Albright-Knox Public Art Projects Coordinator Eric Jones talks about the museum's role in facilitating public art projects around Buffalo and Western New York.
We invite you to visit the "Welcome Wall" at 751 Fillmore Avenue and share your photos with #AKPublicArt. This mural has been sponsored in part by Broadway-Fillmore Neighborhood Housing Services. AK Public Art mural projects are generously underwritten by the New Era Cap Foundation. The Public Art Initiative was established and is supported by leadership funding from the County of Erie and the City of Buffalo.
Learn more at www.albrightknox.org. © 2017 Albright-Knox Art Gallery
