The Rose Buffalo
Taking Account Of The Passage Of Time
In 2000, a hospital and an art center in Buffalo, NY had an idea.
They would create a public art exhibition that showcased local artists and collectively worked to both raise money for cancer research AND foster art and pride in the area at the turn of the new century.
The project was called Herd About Buffalo, organized by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. Accepted artists were supplied with a plain white, fiberglass buffalo and given no instructions other than to transform them into art. More than 150 buffaloes went out into the world, and over the course of the next few months, they began to appear all over Western New York.
By October, all the buffalo sculptures were on display. Many began to be sold at auctions to high bidders to raise funds for the organization sponsors.
Many went to private collections. Some disappeared.
But a few, like the simple brown buffalo with the rose, have remained. And this buffalo, erected at the end of the street where I grew up, has remained a touchstone of our visits to my old neighborhood over the years.
The old boy is a bit scratched these days, older, somewhat faded from two decades of being petted. But if there’s any illustration of the organic passage of time… well, the Rose Buffalo remains as an hourglass to my daughter’s life.
We’ve visited as often as we remember to, including when Uma was seven months old, and just last month. Through it all, the old boy has remained. The rose showed up sometime during the pandemic, another interesting marker from a difficult time.
Last month, as Uma and I walked over to the Rose Buffalo for, perhaps, the fifth or sixth time in her life, I couldn’t help thinking about this particular patch of land. This spot was overgrown when I was a kid. I used to ride my Huffy down through a dirt path that had been carved by kids like me to provide passage between the gas station on one side and the grocery store on the other. When the Rose Buffalo appeared, the area was turned into a suburban meadow, and thus it’s remained.
Uma pets the Rose Buffalo, as she’s done before, steps up front and gives me a thumbs up. She knows now how this works. I wonder if there will ever be a time she’ll do this without me here.
We walk back to the car where Meena is waiting, and head home to New England. The Rose Buffalo once again, providing us passage, and memory, and a way-marker to our lives - until we return again.
