Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County
Call for Artists – Tompkins County Public Sculpture, NY
- Deadline:
- Budget: $25,000
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Eligibility: This RFQ is open to all. Individual artists or a collaboration of artists are welcome to apply. Familiarity with working with large scale art construction, assembly, installation and materials is required. Experience in community-build projects is preferred. Indigenous artists and artists based regionally to Central New York are especially encouraged to apply.
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 mission of the Community Arts Partnership is to strengthen the arts in Tompkins County by supporting artists and arts groups, ensuring equitable access to the arts, and cultivating a creative culture that reflects our community’s diversity. We affirm that our community includes Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ people, who have not just a history, but a presence and a future here. We recognize an opportunity for our community’s public art to raise visibility of the presence of Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ people on this land, and we are grateful to coordinate this public sculpture project in collaboration with Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ people.
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.
Taking the lead from the Two Row Wampum, as a guide for honoring the experiences of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, the successful piece will be a place of interest for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous visitors and residents. As more and more members of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ diaspora return to their homeland, the sculpture will serve as a point of pride and visibility – something to come here for that is about Gayogo̱hó:nǫˀ presence and future. As a reflection of local culture and residents’ hopes and dreams for their food future, it will evoke pride for Enfielders. For everyone it will encourage reflection and learning.
The project offers artists the opportunity to be part of something new, something that hasn’t been done here before – an intentional collaboration among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from the beginning of the project. The hope is that this project will serve as a model, not just for the creation of additional sculptures to be part of the Tompkins County sculpture trail, but also for how local Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and organizations can work together, honoring the Two Row.
Artists will have the support of a 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 is based on a Black consciousness curriculum. It 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.
Artists will be expected to lead a community-build process and collaborate with a project working group to help hone a scope of work. The working group will include the project team as mentioned above, Enfield residents and elementary school students, and representatives from the Enfield Town Board and Enfield Food Pantry.
The ideal project is envisioned as a community-build sculpture for prominent display that relates to the natural space it inhabits. The project should include strat
More Information: www.artspartner.org