Speckled beige stucco, a protruding fire escape and a faded marque out front: the Erie County Health Mall wouldn’t exactly have stuck out to drivers zipping down Broadway Avenue.
That’s changed. It’s now home to a mural with billowing white clouds and a deep blue sky.
The mural is more than a pretty decoration, it marks the first publicly funded art installation to come out of a new Erie County program.
“We are a better community when we have art in all the communities, all the neighborhoods across our region,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said during an unveiling ceremony for the mural on Friday. “It reminds people that they matter.”
Erie County commissioned the mural under the Public Art Act, which was passed in 2023. That law allows the county to spend up to 1% of its total construction budget to commission and maintain public art installations. A second public art unveiling is slated for later this month, with more to follow.
“There were all these types of bids that the county were putting out that small business owners had an opportunity to engage in a county contract, but I noticed that artists were left out,” State Senator April Baskin, who spearheaded the effort to pass the Public Art Act during her time in the ounty legislature, said at Friday’s unveiling ceremony. “We often think of them as these eclectic beings that create art for just our entertainment, but artists have bills, and artists have supplies, and artists have facilities that they have to run, and they, too, deserve to be a legitimate contractor.”
Laura Valkwitch, the artist who painted the mural, said working on the mural allowed her to meet residents of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood. Community members and health mall staff gave her suggestions and encouraged her to keep working on hot days.
“It gives the community identity,” Valkwitch said of her work. “It reminds us that beauty and meaning are not confined to museums, that they belong in our everyday lives.”
Valkwitch and the other artists commissioned by the county were selected in a competitive process overseen by the Erie County Arts in Public Places Committee. Buffalo-born artist Alexa Wajed chairs that committee, which is made up of volunteers who are “local experts in art, architecture and cultural history,” according to a statement from Poloncarz’s office. The committee selected Valkwitch’s proposal from a group of more than 50.
The new county program builds on the Public Art Initiative, which was jointly created by Erie County and the AKG Art Museum. Since it launched in 2013, that initiative has funded 60 art installations and residencies, according to the AKG’s website.