installations + public art
Percussion Park, Price Hill
Fueled by a $10,000 grant from People's Liberty, Ben led a team of local Cincinnati non-profits, and neighborhood community members to develop, build and install the Percussion Park, an interactive sculptural instrument in East Price Hill. The Percussion Park invites residents to spontaneously create music, and connect with their environment in new ways. The park includes a series of instrument stations using wood, repurposed steel, propane tanks, old gears, and much more. The materials used are specifically chosen to provide unique timbres; meditative, unexpected, odd, inspiring, anything to create a fun musical space. Watch the video.
Not To Scale, organized by Mary Clare Rietz
Working with local teenagers, Ben supported them in writing new music for a community parade and performance in the face of impending gentrification. “On February 3rd, 2018, residents and other stakeholders of the Eastside neighborhood in Covington, Kentucky, climbed the Licking River floodwall to put on two live performances — one in daylight, featuring sound, color, and movement; the other after dark, featuring light and voice. The eastern boundary of the neighborhood, the floodwall is the highest landform in Eastside, elevating anyone and anything on top of it to greater visibility. Community performers used this as their stage.”
Tiny Space Stations, Blink Cincinnati Light Festival
The installation, funded by a $10,000 grant from ArtWorks, invited participants to weave through evolving, humming, blinking columns of light spread out across an outdoor parking lot. Scattered throughout were playable instruments that manipulated the light through Arduinos stitched into drum heads. Each night hosted performances of newly composed music featuring a unique ensemble of instrumentalists. Ben was part of the team that received the grant and constructed the pieces, while also performing with the musicians nightly. Blink attracted over a million people in the course of one weekend.
Earth Citizens Courage Assembly | 2018
This shadow performance used giant cardboard puppets, found and repurposed objects, and a large scrolling picture machine (called a crankie) to tell a story about our climate crisis. The concept, story, and objects were created collaboratively by artists Lizzy DuQuette, Jesse Mooney-Bullock, teenage ArtWorks apprentices in the summer of 2019. It premiered at the Price Hill Creative Community Festival in July 2019 and was performed at BLINK. This project was made possible by ArtWorks and ArtsWave.
Price Hill Creative Community Festival | 2016 - 2020
The mission of PHCCF is to use collaborative arts as a tool to build more creative, equitable, and connected communities. This mission is embodied in it’s one-of-a-kind Artist-in-Residence project ensembles. These groups, which are intergenerational and diverse beyond measure, work together to co-create brand new collaborative works. Past PHCCF Artists-in-Residence include Shara Nova, Tomeka Reid, Kaneza Schaal, Siri Imani, Paradox Teatro, BYDA Circo, Josiah Wolf, Jordana Greenberg, Elese Daniel, Napoleon Maddox, and more.