It was all about the arts at Floyd Bennett Field last weekend when the Jamaica Bay-Rockaways Parks Conservancy hosted its inaugural Floyd Bennett Field! Festival of the Arts in partnership with the National Park Service at Gateway National Recreation Area.
The three-day festival kicked off April 19 with an opening reception and a preview of projection mapping artwork illuminating the 11,000-square-foot facade of historic hangars three and four. The festivities featured the works of 24 artists, including established artists Derrick Adams, Peter Burr, Eto Otitigbe and Ryan Hartley Smith, as well as emerging artists from Brooklyn College and the Fashion Institute of Technology, who together told the story of Floyd Bennett Field and the future of the park and the buildings.”
The hangars are part of a major two-phase revitalization project. The first phase is a $26 million historic rehabilitation of the building’s exterior, funded by tThe Great American Outdoors Act. The second part, funded with matching funds from the JBRPC, focuses on the interior, which will be equipped with an innovation center that includes community programming opportunities, park visitor amenities, and research and development facilities dealing with nature-based solutions and coastal resilience.
Jennifer Nersesian, superintendent of the Gateway National Recreation Area, told the Brooklyn Paper that the National Park Service and JPRPC have been looking to restore New York’s first municipal airport for years.
“One of the biggest and most exciting projects we are undertaking is the rehabilitation of historic aircraft hangars three and four. And tonight’s festivities really help us start that, celebrate that and bring that [the hangers] in a whole new kind of focus, using art to showcase it and bring the public in to help envision what Floyd Bennett Field will become,” Nersessian said.
Terry Carta, executive director of the JPRPC, told the Brooklyn Paper that the featured artists have a connection to the cultural landmark.
“We are very proud to present this collection of artists who bring diverse styles and diverse stories to this longer history of the Floyd Bennett field; in its past, present and future,” Carta said.
After the reception, guests and artists ventured out onto the lawn in front of the hangars for the big moment: the projection mapping artwork.
Projection mapping is a 3D video projection technique with lights and colors that casts virtual images onto irregular shapes and buildings with uneven surfaces.
Renowned artist Derrick Adams’ latest animation, The Sky’s Not the Limit, It’s Only the View, was part of the exhibition. The 5-minute short celebrates the diverse topography and waterways of New York City and the lower Hudson region as a group of characters take an aerial journey through skyscrapers, grassy hills, boat-filled marinas and boardwalks.
Adams told the Brooklyn Paper that he considers himself a multidisciplinary artist whose work ranges from paintings and sculptures to sound and video.
“For this particular program and event tonight, I was commissioned to make a video piece that will be shown tonight,” Adams said. “It’s a piece that I created that incorporates some of the visual iconography around that particular region of the city.”
Adams was grateful and honored to be a part of an arts festival that included the community.
“I feel like it’s very different to have these types of experiences because they’re really about the people and not the commercial experience of galleries and museums,” Adams said. “There’s a certain type of modesty that I appreciate in this type of environment for people who want to come here for community engagement and support the creative culture in the city.”
Emerging artist and Brooklyn College student Dongwei Han uses cartoon graphics and some AI-generated graphics for his artwork.
“I was trying to have some [art] like time flowing from the past to the present,” Khan said.
The art festival was the first major show for Brooklyn College student Dakota Ray. Ray based his piece, titled “Astro Echoes and Aviation,” on stargazing events held regularly at Floyd Bennett Field.
“My teacher picked me and I was like, ‘Thanks, that’s really nice,'” Ray said. “Because I don’t do that many shows.”
