‘The opportunity of a lifetime’: Q&A with Shasti O’Leary Soudant, selected artist for new Highmark Stadium art

When the Buffalo Bills Public Art Program at Highmark Stadium put out the call for new, site-specific artwork for the stadium's permanent collection, Buffalo State assistant professor of art and design Shasti O'Leary Soudant knew she had to apply.

"It was the opportunity of a lifetime," O'Leary Soudant said, "to create something monumental and highly visible in my own backyard, housed in an extraordinary brand new structure for a legendary team."

From 433 applications, 40 artists/groups-including O'Leary Soudant-were selected via a competitive process that included review and selection by a comprising local art representatives and project stakeholders.

"I squealed like a little girl," O'Leary Soudant recalled. "Then I thought, 'Oh GOD! Now I have to pull it off!'"

The completed collection, which was unveiled at the start of the season, features artwork in 40 locations throughout Highmark Stadium, including sculptural ceiling installations, large-scale murals, and wall-based works of various sizes. O'Leary Soudant's piece, entitled BILLS WIN!, comprises 498 "footballs" arranged in chronological order, representing every regular-season victory by the Buffalo Bills football team from 1960 through 2025.

O'Leary Soudant gave us a few moments of her time to share inspiration behind the piece and some behind-the-scenes moments from the creation process.

Each of BILLS WIN!'s 66 strands represents a Buffalo Bills season of play, and each individual football form hangs in chronological sequence.

Buffalo State University: Tell us about the story behind BILLS WIN!
Shasti O'Leary Soudant: Sports have always been stats-focused, but in recent years, that's really ramped up. I've been a design educator for 15 years, and information graphics are a significant aspect of that discipline. My first thoughts concerned how I could make the piece data-driven. Data can be beautiful. Each of the 66 strands represents a season of play. Some of those strands stretch long with success-the 13-win seasons measure 30 feet-and create a dense and exuberant visual presence, while leaner years reveal periods of struggle and rebuilding. Each individual football form is rendered in the colors of the opposing team and hangs in chronological sequence, transforming decades of competition into a suspended archive of memory, rivalry, heartbreak and triumph-a spectacular visualization of where we have been as players, coaches, and fans, and how far we have all come together.

BSU: What challenges did you encounter during creation and installation?
SOS: The space I was chosen for is a massive atrium with very weird geometry, and it demanded something monumental to sufficiently activate the space. The brief had stipulated that the sculpture had to hang from the central beams, and I had a tough time solving the design until it hit me in the middle of the night. I remember bolting upright in bed with a fully complete vision in my head and thinking, "Holy moly! How am I gonna pull THAT off?!" I'm gobsmacked that the piece looks almost exactly like that vision I had at one o'clock in the morning!

BSU: How did you overcome the space constraints?
SOS: When working at this scale, it takes a village. It was vital that I worked with experts in their fields, who know how to solve the trickiest design problems. There were so many to solve, and I was so thankful to be collaborating with my heroic husband and the incredible fabrication team at Rigidized Metals. My husband did all the forming and assembly-more than 22,000 individual pieces! My ideas for attachment points and how the pieces were assembled and mounted in the space were only my best guesses. It takes expert engineers and machinists like my guy at Rigidized, Tom Schunk, to really understand how to put something like this together and implement what needs to happen. It's hanging 95 feet above people's heads. There's no room for error. Safety is paramount. And that's nerve-wracking.

BILLS WIN! resides in a massive atrium in the new Highmark Stadium.

BSU: Any favorite memories from the creation process?
SOS: A gentleman from the warehouse complex wandered in, having heard that "something wild" was going on in one of the bays. He told a fantastic story of father and son being at the single game the Bills won during the 1968 season, how they had gone to the restroom in the fourth quarter when defensive backs Butch Byrd and Booker Edgerson scored back-to-back defensive touchdowns against the Jets within a span of just one minute and two seconds. He spoke of plaster raining down on their shoulders at the urinals as the Rockpile shook when the fans went crazy. The instant I heard his story, I almost cried with joy because the piece had done exactly what I'd hoped.

BSU: What is it that you hope people will experience when they encounter your piece?
SOS: I hope that they find themselves and their memories in the work. All my work is about the people it's designed for. It's meant to be generous and inclusive. I want to create a sense of invitation and evoke delight and curiosity with every sculpture I design.

Shasti O'Leary Soudant in front of BILLS WIN!

BSU: What does it mean to you to represent Buffalo State as part of this project?
SOS: I am so honored to represent Buffalo State there, and I am particularly proud that I was not the only artist with a Buff State connection to be selected.

In addition to O'Leary Soudant, Jalen Wright, assistant director of academic standards and coordinator for academic intervention, was one of the project's selected artists, as well as the following Buffalo State alumni:

Kari Achatz
Julia Bottoms
Andrew Fries
Bree Gilliam
Tom Kegler
Bethany Krull
Charles Tingley
The Solo Roths: Matthew Sagurney and Robert Lynch
Susan Ferrari Rowley
Ann PerrySmith

BILLS WIN! images by Shasti O'Leary Soudant; image and image of O'Leary Soudant by Pat Cray.

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Thirteen with ties to Buffalo State create artwork for new Bills stadium