Sidewalk Detroit’s Eco Artist Residency at Eliza Howell Park in Brightmoor aims to empower the local community while promoting environmental awareness around the park’s meadows, woodlands and the Rouge River, which flows through the park. By merging art and education, the residency highlights the significance of the park’s natural areas and encourages community stewardship, attracting statewide attention to the park's ecological role. Sidewalk Detroit's ongoing vision for Eliza Howell Park includes improving park infrastructure, focusing on stormwater management and the restoration of native ecosystems to foster deeper connections with the environment.

Sidewalk Detroit has hosted two artist residency programs and will host our third in Spring of 2025.

The Eliza Howell Park Eco-Artist Residency is a public art initiative in Detroit that addresses climate crises like water pollution through the lens of spatial equity and public art. Throughout the spring and summer, Detroit-based artist-in-residence, Halima Cassells, led three workshops where participants collaborated to rescue materials from the Rouge River, embarking on the transformation of trash into treasure for an upcycled art installation at Eliza Howell Park. These workshops allowed individuals to contribute to the creation of the sculpture, which was constructed from repurposed materials and now stands as an archway at the trailhead leading to the Rouge River, serving as a gateway to the woodland nature trail. The Ecology Center provided valuable insights during the workshops about microplastics and sustainable practices, reinforcing the project's commitment to environmental stewardship. This collaborative effort resulted in an artwork inspired by wildflowers and the concept of nature's abundance, standing as a reflection of the park's natural beauty and a symbol of our shared commitment to environmental stewardship and addressing climate crises.

Halima Afi Cassells (b. 1981) is an award-winning interdisciplinary community-engaged artist, mom of three, and avid gardener, with deep roots in Waawiiyaataanong/ Detroit, MI. She credits gardening as inspiring her to move away from painting to a practice where she aspires to use natural, found, and upcycled materials and processes that lend to the thriving of all (human and non-human) communities. Halima continues to explore relationship-building, and the notions of freedom and work, value and disposability in a participatory context through her work. In addition to winning the 2023 Kresge Award for Interdisciplinary Arts, Halima has been awarded grants from: Panta Rhea Foundation, BulkSpace, Art Matters, Culture Source, Knight Foundation Arts Challenge, and Artplace America. In addition to exhibiting at the Virgil Carr Center, Charles Wright Museum, MOCAD, and public spaces in Detroit, her work has also been featured in gallery spaces in New York, Oakland CA, Oaxaca, Berlin, Copenhagen, Bogota, and Harare.

Sidewalk Detroit Artist Video: Sidewalk Detroit

Visit Halima Cassells website: https://www.halimacassells.com/bio

This project is funded by Arts Midwest and MetroParks

In 2021, Sidewalk Detroit hosted internationally acclaimed artist, Patrick Dougherty, as he created one of his famed ‘stickwork’ sculptures in Eliza Howell Park. This artist residency engaged over 150 artists, volunteers, neighbors, and members of the public to work side by side with the artist as he created this monumental piece. Each aspect of the sculpture is hand-woven and composed entirely of natural materials. This art installation is a multi-year effort, part of our long-term work in the park. The vision for the park is to improve infrastructure, specifically focusing on stormwater management and restoration of the native ecosystem, while curating activities that facilitate a deeper connection to the park.

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Dougherty was raised in North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina in 1967 and an M.A. in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Iowa in 1969. Combining his carpentry skills with his love of nature, Patrick began to learn more about primitive techniques of building and to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. In 1982 his first work, Maple Body Wrap, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artists’ Exhibition.

His work quickly evolved from single pieces on conventional pedestals to monumental scale environmental works, which required saplings by the truckloads. Over the last thirty-some years, he has built over 300 of these works, and become internationally acclaimed. His sculpture has been seen worldwide---from Scotland to Japan to Brussels, and all over the United States.

Visit Patrick Dougherty Website: http://www.stickwork.net/