A Quirky Art Festival Will Be Unfolding in New York—One So Low-Key It Might Surprise You

Living in New York, you see a lot of weird things. But even for the city, 14th Street gets a little strange each October, when Art in Odd Places holds its annual weekend-long festival bringing visual and performance art to unexpected public places.

Now in its 19th New York edition, Art in Odd Places was founded by Ed Woodham as part of the Cultural Olympiad of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It’s been taking place along 14th Street since 2008—not that you’d necessarily know it.

“The whole idea is that it’s woven into the everyday fabric of 14th Street,” Woodham told me. “The streets are never closed. There’s no funnel cakes, no tube socks.”

“One of the beauties of Art in Odd Places is this kind of surprise as you discover it,” artist Patricia Miranda, who is co-curating this year’s edition, added. “At first, you think it’s just New York—and then you realize there is this accumulated group of people doing interesting things.”

To lead the festival, Woodham tapped Miranda and her husband Chris Kaczmarek, who were among last year’s participants. It was their first time jointly presenting work, a humorous costume of a stack of frilly orange hoop skirts that covered Kaczmarek, who is six foot five, from head to toe.

“Christopher is so tall we thought it might be intimidating—but it turned out to be so friendly,” Miranda said. “Children were coming up and asking, ‘what’s in there?’ There was a really playful aspect that surprised even us.”

That’s the kind of whimsical interaction that audiences can expect from Art in Odd Places—the term “audience” being used liberally, of course. Most of the people who encounter the festival do so by chance, completely unaware that it’s even going on. Some might hurry on with their day; others might come back later to check it out, or even stop outright to engage with the artwork.

“It’s about the interruption and sort of challenging our daily habits,” Woodham said. “It’s a mindful offering as well, where the arts are not forced on people.”

At the same time, Art in Odd Places hopes to be a welcoming entry point for those who might not regularly engage with art.

“It’s not in a museum that you have to go through a door and pay money for.
It’s not in a gallery that feels like a rarified and privileged place for many,” Kaczmarek said.
”It is right there in the street.
It’s a democratized insertion of art into our environment, and this amazing connection between culture and community.”

This year’s event has the theme of “Care.”

“In this year 2024, with the wars and the election and everything else, we were thinking about how could we occupy a space of joy,” Miranda said. “And one of the things that we felt like was really needed was care for one another, care for us as artists, care for the community.
So, that was the genesis of the theme.”

“Laundry showed up in a couple of projects and I think that’s a great metaphor for care. Another thing that appeared a lot was care for the environment, both in terms of a grand scale and a small scale,” Kaczmarek added. “For the piece by Catherine Chen and Cristina Bartley Dominguez, there is gonna be this Sisyphus situation where they’re carrying a large ball of waste plastic through the streets of Manhattan. It should be an interesting image.”

Other intriguing projects include Giannina Gomez’s , an unofficial traffic patrol squad wearing a sexy high visibility uniform (including orange traffic cones on their heads and fishnet stockings) who will be handing out absurdists “tickets” while directing pedestrians’ movements.

And then there are more conceptual pieces, like Theda Sandiford’s , which sees participants pushing shopping carts she has turned into mobile art installations that represent the emotional weight we all carry with us.

From 160 applications, the curators selected proposals from 77 artists. The bulk are from New York, but participants will also make the trip in for the occasion from 13 other states and nine countries. It is the second largest cohort in the event’s history.

“Flooding the streets with art was was really one of the things that we were really passionate about,” Miranda said.

See this year’s list of participants below. 

Abbie Goldberg (New York)
Abigail Simon and Marina Zurkow (New York)
Alexandra Neuman (New York)
Amanda Wu, Ying Chen, and Yasmeen Abdallah (New York)
Amelia Marzec (New York)
Amy Youngs and the “Lichen Likers” (Ohio)
Anna Miller (Iowa)
Anousch Froundjian (New York)
Augustus Wendell (New York)
Barbara Ann Michaels (New York)
Bonny Leibowitz (Texas)
Buddy YoMA (New York)
Catherine Chen and Cristina Bartley Dominguez (New York)
Chanika Svetvilas (New Jersey)
Chere Krakovsky (New York)
Chris Rogy (New York)
Claudine Arendt (Amsterdam, Holland)
Connie Perry (New York)
Cynthia Reynolds (New York)
David Darts (New York)
David Appel (New York)
Day de Dada Performance Art Collective (New York)
Deirdre Macleod (Edinburgh, Scotland)
doblespiral (Lucia Cozzi and Maria Bonomi)
Domenica Garcia (New York)
Doreen Chan (New York)
Emilia White (Toronto, Canada)
Emmanuelle Zagoira (New York)
Geraldo Zamproni (Brazil)
Giannina Gomez (New York)
Gretchen Vitamvas (New York)
Janine Cunningham (Pennsylvania)
Jared leClaire (New York)
Jehlani Bowers (New York)
Jessica Duby (New York)
Jiawen Hu (New York)
Jo Blin (Prague, Czech Republic)
Jo Yarrington (New York)
Julia Justo (New York)
Kalan Sherrard (New York)
Karen Kalkstein (Connecticut)
Katie Cercone aka ‘OR NAH’ (New York)
Ken Rinaldo (Ohio)
Kiki McGrath (Illinois)
Kristin Mariani (Ilinois)
Laura K Reeder (New York)
Laura Nova (New York), with Sara Koller and Michelle Kahane
Laure Drogoul
Leah Crosby (Michigan)
Lisa Hein (New York)
Maisie Luo (New York)
Pia Tempestine and Maria Seddio (Massachusetts)
Mariana Maia
Mengyu Zhao (New York)
Nima Nikakhlagh (Massachusetts)
Patricia Espinosa (New York)
Priscilla Stadler (New York)
Rachelle Beaudoin (New Hampshire)
Rae Goodwin (Kentucky)
Rocky Duval (New York)
Sally Apfelbaum (New York)
Saulaman Schlegel (Minnesota)
Serena Buschi (New York)
Shirah Rubin (Massachusetts)
AnimaeNoctis (Italy)
Sofia Isabel Kavlin (New York)
Susan Wolf (California)
Suh Amorim (Brazil)
Sylvain Souklaye (New York)
tasha douge (New York)
Terry Hardy (Guatemala)
Theda Sandiford (Virginia)
Thomas Diafas (Berlin, Germany)
Victoria Boulay (Argentina)
The Bureau of Non Competitive Research (Canada)
y nishizawa (New York)
Zach Rothman-Hicks (New York)