Arts & Entertainment
Artists help hang painted fabric panels that together made a
30-foot-by-30 foot mural on the east side of the Erie Playhouse’s
workshop building on the northwest corner of East 12th and
Brandes streets in Erie. CHRISTOPHER MILLETTE/ERIE TIMES-NEWS
in the project, a massive metal horse and globe situated at East
13th and Holland streets. The sheer size of the sculpture presented a real creative and logistical challenge to the project team.
In fact, the globe was so large it had to be welded in separate
pieces and didn’t exist in its final form until the day it was
installed on site.
And then there was the horse. Erie Arts & Culture roster teaching artists Ed Grout and Tom Ferraro, who were the cornerstone
artists for the project, knew they needed additional perspective
to bring the animal to life. They brought in multiple guest artists
to collaborate, including Kathe Umlauf, who specializes in animal
form and behavior; and Ron Bayuzick, who works with found and
repurposed metals.
Transporting “Fruits of Labor” was a different challenge
altogether. (After all, a 10-by-20-foot sculpture isn’t the type
of thing you can throw in the back seat and haul across town.)
For that, the group partnered with Gene Davis Sales and Service,
whose employees worked right alongside the teaching artists and
ECTS students to install it at the site.
“These are really community-owned pieces, in every sense of
the word,” Brown Sissem said. “We’re learning a lot about when
you bring these different groups together. You’ve got the obvious
primary benefits, but the secondary benefits that are coming out
of these processes of just working together are really meaningful — and better preparing all of us to think of each other as assets
in our community and how we might think together on some of
these things.”
Now that two of the three finished pieces are out in the
community, the conversation is just getting started. New manufacturers are approaching the group to ask how they can get
involved. Neighbors who live near the installations are thanking
the team for celebrating their neighborhoods through art.
“People were noticing change immediately, and I think that’s a
really important message right now for our community,” Brown
Sissem said. “We’ve done a lot of planning, and we’re ready for
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