Tompkins Co. Public Sculpture

The Community Arts Partnership is working with the Enfield community to design and commission a sculpture that will live in front of the highway barns on Enfield Main Road. 

Call For Artists - Due October 18th

The Community Arts Partnership with support from the Town of Enfield is requesting qualifications from professional artists to collaborate with the community to design a public art project centered around the community's culture and values related to food, including celebrating the food culture of the people indigenous to this place, the Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ (Cayuga).  The Enfield sculpture will be the first of a countywide sculpture trail centered around the same theme, funded by the Tompkins County Tourism Department. This artwork will be located on the land in front of the Town of Enfield Highway Department, at 475 Enfield Main Rd, Ithaca, NY and will be part of a larger community park envisioned by the town.

The theme of the artwork centers around food and food’s centrality to the human experience, its connection to culture, and its ability to unify.  The project should communicate a sense of Indigenous place, raising visibility of the presence of Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ people on this land.  It should communicate Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ culture related to food in ways that resonate with and support non-Indigenous residents’ values around food as a small, rural, historically agricultural community.

Artists will have the support of a local project team including a Black Consciousness-based expert educator, a community-engaged public art specialist, Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ culture bearers, and Community Arts Partnership leadership.  The project team has already begun community engagement work with Enfield, and will continue with that work in preparation for the arrival of the artist.  The community engagement work centers the experiences of local Black women farmers, and engages Enfield’s children to reflect and imagine through a lens of Black Joy.  The community engagement work includes building the relationship among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, polishing the Silver Covenant Chain of Friendship.

Here is the Request for Qualifications

Here is the Google Doc Application

(Applicants do not have to be from Tompkins County - all are welcome to apply)

Questions: Megan Barber, CAP Executive Director, director@artspartner.org

Planning Team

Megan Barber is a nonprofit leader, musician, and community builder.  Driven by her belief in the power of arts to change the world, Megan takes pride in supporting local artists and arts groups to realize their visions. As Executive Director of the Community Arts Partnership, her goals include cultivating a thriving creative culture that reflects our community’s diversity.  Megan grew up in Enfield and is excited to work with the community on this project.

Stephen Henhawk (Gayogohó:nǫˀ, Wolf clan) is a historian ad first-language speaker who grew up at Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Canada.  Stephen is a language teacher with the Gayogohó:nǫˀ Learning Project and a Research Associate at Cornell University.

Dr. Nia Nunn is a community leader serving as Associate Professor at Ithaca College, Board President of the Southside Community Center, Director of the Community Unity Music Education Program, and former School Psychologist at Beverly J. Martin Elementary.  The synergy of her intersecting roles and craft is rooted in Black consciousness, ant-racist, and abolitionist frameworks.  A mother, poet, speaker, consultant, and yogi, she is committed to learning and engaging audiences creatively, intensely, and gracefully.

Michelle Seneca (Gayogohó:nǫˀ, Turtle Clan) is Co-Leader of the Gayogohó:nǫˀ Learning Project.  She is focusing on the matriation of original food systems and to continue cultural practices, guiding directives in which language and culture can be revitalized among the Gayogohó:nǫˀ diaspora.

Annemarie Zwack is an artist specializing in engaging communities in creating Self-Determinative public art. She is currently employed by the Community Unity Music Education Program, based out of Southside Community Center, in Ithaca, NY. She has been engaging communities in creative self expression, locally, nationally, and internationally since 2002.  As a teaching artist, using art to express core curriculum, she guided Enfield Elementary students making a mosaic numberline, in 2011. www.ZwackArt.com

Stay tuned for updates and more ways to be involved!