Forest Park Forever is celebrating its 30th anniversary by giving three artists $3,000 each.
The money is a stipend for three, three-week-long residencies in the park from May to September. Stephen Schenkenberg, the organization’s strategic communications director, says the project’s intended to answer the question:
“How can we celebrate in a way that the community ultimately gets something new, someone’s new interpretation or expression of what the park means?”
Participants will be required to spend 10 hours a week in the park where they will produce art works relating to the park while developing public programs that may take the form of a workshop, exhibition, concert or experiential walking tour. Artists are also expected to engage with the park’s horticulturalists to learn how different areas are maintained andhow landscaping decisions are made.
The residency will be funded through the group’s existing endowment. The artists will be selected by a panel of five volunteer jurors.
The full parameters of the residency will be determined in part by which artists are selected to participate and the nature of the projects they are proposing.
Come live with me and let us pace In print improbable the page: I give you, gentlemen, the human race. Now, let us act our age. -- Excerpt from 'A Plaque for Forest Park' by William Jay Smith, 1943
“The public program that culminates each of their individual residencies could be wildly different and that’s really exciting for us,” said Katy Peace, marketing and digital media manager .
The team behind the residency says they want artists off all disciplines to apply; they’re not looking just for landscape painters.
“We have photographers and painters that use the park a lot but this is also open to dancers or poets, sculptors --- a range of artistic disciplines, anyone that would be able to integrate Forest Park into their discipline in an interesting and original way.”
Forest Park Forever will be taking applications until March 25.
Full text of "A Plaque for Forest Park" by William Jay Smith can be found at the Poetry Foundation.
Update: A previous version of this story stated the residencies were three months long. They are in fact three weeks long.
