The 120,000-square-foot Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Terminal—DL&W—the southern terminus of Buffalo’s light rail train built in 1917 near the Buffalo waterfront, is being transformed into a public space with heated areas, seating, vendors, events, and artwork—including a massive display by Joan Linder.
Linder’s website, joanlinder.com, show Birds, Bugs and Beasts, created in 2021 for P.S. 97 in Brooklyn, New York, and a precursor to the work featured in the DL&W Station, Birds of Buffalo. Asked to submit a proposal, hiker/birder/artist Linder thought of birds in the terminal—those free to fly in on the western side, as well as those spotted in and around the city. Linder made 300 drawings and paintings of birds documented by birders at Tifft Nature Preserve. “There were 154 first sightings in 2024,” she says. “I did throw a couple of extra birds, like pigeons, a nod to being in the city. It’s supposed to look like the birds just wandered in.”
The exhibit is an immense undertaking using thousands of terracotta tiles within 14.5 terminal bays across from huge windows facing Buffalo River. For some bays, Linder also created intricate mosaics from her bird artwork. They are, she says, “Almost like a piece of jewelry breaking up the grid of tiles.”
“I’m so excited about this project,” Linder says. “It will be a part of the fabric of Buffalo that gets seen by an array of people who take the light rail. I just love public art; it’s not in a gallery, and you might love it or hate it. With public art, it’s a placement game, and with Birds of Buffalo, there is an educational component; it’s a snapshot in time of a group of birds that flew through the city, an index, a moment. Birds are movement and the train is movement.”
