CALL FOR ART JUST ANNOUNCED.
CALL FOR ART
Pilgrims at the Creek
The contemplative life, art, and the natural world
SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE BACKGROUND AND TO APPLY.
Join us in our Tinker Creek Project, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the City’s newest stretch of greenway. Together, we’ve read the book and engaged in some terrific conversations (recorded and posted below)! Now, we’re creating art together, and explore potential public art projects along the greenway!
“I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment.” Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published by Harper’s Magazine Press in 1974, winning the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction). We’ll have online discussions and get out on some visits to the site from the 13th Street NE trailhead to Mason Mill Park. Join us as we celebrate the role of the natural world in teaching us to see, exploring together how we might pass along the work’s sense of curiosity and wonder.
Learn more about the project’s inception in this Cardinal News article.
OUR PAST EVENTS
DATES:
Jan. 28: Organizing meeting: Get to know each other
Watch the Video from the organizing meeting
View the Slide Deck from the organizing meeting
Feb 18: Chapters 1-3 with Guide Tom Gardner
Watch the Video from session one
Learn more about Tom Gardner here.
Feb 25: Chapters 4-6 with Guide Suzanne Thorniley
Watch the Video from Session Two
March 4, 7 PM with Guide Rachel Pence, VA Dept. of Environmental Quality
– Chapters 7 and 8 (pages 104 – 146)
– Watch the Video from Session Three
March 18 – The Tinker Creek Project with guides Ashley Wilson Fellers and Thomas Fellers
Chapters 9-11 (pages 147 – 206)
Watch the VIDEO here
March 25, 7 PM
The Tinker Creek Project with guide Natalia Michel, artist in residence
Chapters 12-13
Watch the VIDEO here
April 5, 2:30 – 4:30 PM
Nature Walk Along Tinker Creek
1902 13th St. NE
Phone – day of – (540) 529-4879
April 8, 7 PM
The Tinker Creek Project
Final two chapters and wrap up
Watch the VIDEO here.
April 26 – Tinker Creek Mindfulness walk with Suzanne Thorniley and Ashley Wilson Fellers.
May 18: 3 – 4:30 PM – Poets in the Park with Rachel Anne Morris
April 5, 1 – 2:30 PM, Mindfulness and Contemplative Photography
NEXT UP
June 9 – Pilgrims at the Creek Municipal Art Show Call (for art inspired by Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and relating to mindfulness, and intimate connections to nature (SEE BELOW)
July 7 – Pilgrims at the Creek applications due
TBD – The Eye Planetarium Field Trip with Katie Brooks
CALL FOR ART
Pilgrims at the Creek
The contemplative life, art, and the natural world
Pilgrims at the Creek
The contemplative life, art, and the world around us
APPLICATIONS DUE BY JULY 7.
This public art project encourages reflection upon the natural world through the artist’s creative contemplative and creative practice. Inspired by Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Tinker Creek Greenway, the Roanoke Arts Commission seeks qualifications for the creation of new work encouraging and reflecting on presence.
In continuing work begun in 2022 with the “Year of the Artist,” Roanoke’s creative residence will model the way for all of us. With the resulting exhibition, subsequent use of the work and the statements of artists, they will invite us to all pause, observe, breathe, and appreciate our natural world.
The exhibition is another stepping stone of engagement in a program that began with an 8-week study of the Dillard work. It continues with a series of exploratory workshops around the creek and contemplation. Documentation of the conversations and themes explored are at www.roanokearts.org/tinker. As a result, our community will have a greater awareness of, and support for, a potential permanent project and many hands and minds will have played a part.
In much the way that artists have led the way our community in better understanding the power of resident creativity within and upon our community through the Self-Portrait Project, and the It’s Here portrait exhibition, artists, they will again serve as thought partners, eventually exploring what a greenway space might look and feel like as an invitation to exploration, contemplation, and deeper study.
Between 20 and 40 artists will be selected to receive $500 to create new work for this call. The maximum size of physical work should be no larger than 24” x 36”.
Any resulting physical work will be returned to the artist, with education, marketing and digital exhibition rights remaining with the City. Images of the work will continue to be used for potential incorporation into follow-on projects tied to planning, placemaking, and the fostering of an engaging arts experience along the greenway.
Participating artists will be required to participate in a gallery talk at one of the monthly community building talks to occur between November 2025 and May 2026. Artists will also have the opportunity to develop and conduct an arts workshop sharing their practice in a city parks or green space.
The selection panel will work to create an exhibition highlighting a wide variety of artists, contemplative practices, and art forms.
Artist qualifications will be assessed by the selection panel in the following areas.
- Artistic excellence
- Description of contemplative practice or intention
- Stated willingness and desire to learn
- Ability to deliver a final product
- Approach regarding the artist’s role in the community
- Commitment to participate in community building events around the show
The Calendar
- June 1, 2025 call opens
- Monday, July 7, 2025, 11:59 PM call closes
- July 2025 – Selection Panel selects artists
- Early September – Progress documentation and invoicing
- October 13 – Work due
- October 17 – 19 – GO Fest
- October 20, 2025 – Opening Reception prior to City Council Meeting in honor of the work and Arts and Humanities Month.
- October 2025 – May 2026. Exhibition open, with 7 monthly Community Building Gallery Talks on Monday evenings
- Continued Contemplative Arts and Nature Workshops led by participants in City parks and green spaces
APPLY BELOW
Pilgrims at the Creek: Artist Application
Apply here: You will need to have ready your CV or resume and a PDF of sample works ready.