THURSDAY, SATURDAY
& SUNDAY AFTERNOONS
MARCH 7 - 21, 2026
TODAY THE SAP IS
SINGING
The next date for maple sugaring is:
THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1-5 PM
About Singing Sap
Singing Sap is an invitation to join community action in maple sugaring. Facilitated by artist Sheila Novak, this project proposes the sugarbush as a multispecies collaboration. Recognizing the local role of the Maple as the "leader of the trees" in Haudenosaunee culture, Singing Sap is an artwork and sensescape led by Maple, and open as long as spring sap flows.All are invited to join in this hands-on multisensory experience, to make maple syrup, and to honor the gift from our arboreal neighbors.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Sugaring
, CANCELED DUE TO RAIN
Sugaring SUN, MARCH 8, 1-5 PM
Sugaring TH, MARCH 12, 1-5 PM
Community Celebration SAT, MARCH 14, 1-5 PM
Sugaring SUN, MARCH 15, 1-5 PM
Sugaring TH, MARCH 19, 1-5 PM
BEFORE YOU ARRIVE
WEATHER AND CANCELATIONS
All events are weather- and sap-flow-dependent. Any cancellations will be announced 24 hours in advance and noted on this webpage and my Instagram.LOCATION
(parking) AT Ramble On (Farm)
3383 Colegrove Rd, Trumansburg, NY
ACCESSIBILITY
Ramble On (Farm) is located a 15-minute drive outside of Ithaca, NY, and is accessible by bike, just 1.5 miles west of the Black Diamond Trail. All guests are asked to park at the Ramble On barn and walk the 0.2-mile farm road to the forest SW of the barn. The road and
If you desire to attend but the conditions pose a challenge, please reach out to me for accommodations: sheilanovakstudios [at] gmail [dot] com
3383 Colegrove Rd, Trumansburg, NY
ACCESSIBILITY
Ramble On (Farm) is located a 15-minute drive outside of Ithaca, NY, and is accessible by bike, just 1.5 miles west of the Black Diamond Trail. All guests are asked to park at the Ramble On barn and walk the 0.2-mile farm road to the forest SW of the barn. The road andIf you desire to attend but the conditions pose a challenge, please reach out to me for accommodations: sheilanovakstudios [at] gmail [dot] com
Kaškáŋškaŋ
City of Bloomington Department of Creative Placemaking
Erin Genia and Sheila Novak
2023
About Kaškáŋškaŋ
Dakota peoples have lived in Mnísota Makhóčhe, today known as Minnesota, for thousands of years. The corridor surrounding the confluence of the Ȟaȟáwakpa/Mississippi River and the Wakpa Mnísota/Minnesota River is home to many culturally significant sites to Dakota peoples. During colonization, Dakota peoples were forcibly removed from Minnesota and sent to a diaspora of reservations. And yet, Dakota people remain here.
These banners contain Dakota imagery, like the áŋpo wičháŋȟpí́́/morning star, susbéčhá/dragonfly, as well as a fancy shawl, eagle feathers and corn to center and celebrate Dakota culture and people at this site. Kaškáŋškaŋ is a Dakota word meaning movement, to be shaken up, moving with a gust of wind – as the banners do – to express a need to shake things up, to help people change our relationships to the land towards reciprocity and recognize the interconnectedness of all things.
To learn more about Dakota presence in this region please visit DakotaLandMap.com
Restoration Through Reciprocity
As you view Kaškáŋškaŋ, you are surrounded by newly restored prairie. The reintroduction of these native plants is creating a home for wildlife - insects, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals of all sizes - who cannot survive in turf grass lawns.
To heal this landscape, we are restoring the ecosystem that supported vast life before European settlers transformed the landscape, destroyed habitat, and eroded the inherent cultural connection to the land, contributing to the existential threat of climate change.
The Dakota concept of mitákuye oyásiŋ is a way of life based upon the interconnectedness of all life. Animals, plants, water, and earth are not viewed as lesser than human beings: we treat them as relatives, with respect and reciprocity.
These banners and this park offer a reciprocal way of seeing the world: one where landscape restoration happens alongside cultural healing. Rejecting colonial patterns and ending institutional racism are essential to healing the ecosystem and restoring native lands.
Making Kaškáŋškaŋ
Cyanotypes are photographs: light-sensitive chemicals on paper or cloth capture the details from the shadows. When laid out under the bright sun, the shadows of objects like plants and eagle feathers protect the fabric from the sun, while the fabric turns blue in the sun's rays. Exposing these many elements into the fabric, we quilt ideas together to tell a larger story.About the Artists
Since 2019, Erin Genia and Sheila Novak have collaborated on projects focused on pollinator caregiving and gardening during COVID-19. Our projects consider how today’s environmental degradation and cultural trauma are linked to settler colonialism, Indigenous erasure, and oppression. In our work together, we hope to create spaces of multi-species ecological and cultural healing, focusing on the present and future thriving of Indigenous more-than-human communities.Erin Genia (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate/Odawa) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and community organizer. Erin specializes in Native American and Indigenous peoples arts and culture.
Sheila Novak (she/they, b. 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist and curator. Sheila’s work focuses on ecological healing, spatial justice, and social equity.
more public praxis projects
The Storied Maple
Soil Factory, 2024
March is the season for maple syrup production in Upstate New York. Across the lands of the Gayog̱hó:nǫ́ people and beyond, maple trees begin moving stores of starch through the tree's body, waking up and preparing energetically for spring, for leaves, for photosynthesis and for the energy production of another year. A culinary experience uniquely indigenous to this land, maple syrup is also a cultural experience deeply rooted in indigenous knowledge. The first sugar of spring, this sap is a lifeblood for not just the maples, but also for human and animal beings alike at the end of long and cold winters. Broken branches and tapped bark offer a sweet liquid to keep the maple’s kin alive in the hardest of months.
March is also the season for industrialized maple syrup production: a good, commodity, or resource in the settler state. Across the region, maple trees will be linked together in early March with miles of blue tubing, a kind of industrialized draining, which pulls the sweet sap from the tree to tanks where processes of reverse osmosis remove water leaving a concentrated syrup. Bottled in plastic and placed on shelving under fluorescent lives, the gift of the maple, or even who she is, is fully obfuscated during a pancake breakfast.
March is also the season for industrialized maple syrup production: a good, commodity, or resource in the settler state. Across the region, maple trees will be linked together in early March with miles of blue tubing, a kind of industrialized draining, which pulls the sweet sap from the tree to tanks where processes of reverse osmosis remove water leaving a concentrated syrup. Bottled in plastic and placed on shelving under fluorescent lives, the gift of the maple, or even who she is, is fully obfuscated during a pancake breakfast.
Land Medicine
Sheila Novak and Johannes Lehmann
2023
Near Ithaca, NY, two sites manifest distinct human-ecological relationships: a Superfund site, still toxic after 25 years of cleanup, stands in juxtaposition to the Fischer Old Growth Forest, one of the only forest ecosystems in the region that has not been logged.
Despite their opposing histories, these sites hold a shared past: human presence on the land. The superfund site illustrates Western ontologies that posit a separation between humans and land: here, human presence on the land is harmful. Yet the old-growth forest, despite its age and health, has not existed outside of human presence. The forest, believed to represent pre-contact forest ecosystems, illustrates indigenous ontologies in which human presence stewards the health of the land.
How can we cultivate reciprocal relationships with the land? How can we shift the dominant culture to understand human existence as one that supports rather than depletes the land? Soil scientist Johannes Lehmann has a clear proposal for one method of reciprocity: nutrient and carbon recycling. Locally, the excreta recycling movement has taken hold in large part due to work such as that of Johannes and thanks to the art and science collaborations of the Soil Factory. And yet the cultural shifts that allow us to view land as ‘resource’ or ‘kin’ mirror the cultural shifts required to see our excrement as ‘waste’ or ‘nutrition’.
Here, urine is medicine. Not only do the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilize the soil, but urine is presented as a glowing form, a golden cube, a treasure
Land Medicine (Fischer Old-Growth Forest)
soil (leaf and root litter, decaying plant residues, producing root exudates, fauna (earthworms, spiders, nematodes, collembola etc.), microbes (bacteria, fungi, archaea), microbial and faunal necromass, microbial exudates and enzymes, sand-silt-clay, pebbles and rocks, water, air containing CO2, N2O, CH4), fine and coarse roots, leaves, one week of urine, water, gelatin, copper leaf, maple frameLand Medicine (Rosen Brothers Scrapyard/Dump Superfund Site)
soil (leaf and root litter, decaying plant residues, producing root exudates, fauna (earthworms, spiders, nematodes, collembola etc.), microbes (bacteria, fungi, archaea), microbial and faunal necromass, microbial exudates and enzymes, sand-silt-clay, pebbles and rocks, water, air containing CO2, N2O, CH4), fine and coarse roots, leaves, soil contaminants (Trichloroethane, Dichloroethane, Dihydroacenaphthylene, butane, methylnaphthalene, Methylphenol, nitrophenol,Chloro-3-Methylphenol, 9H-Carbazole, 9H-Fluorene, Acenaphthylene, Acetone, Aluminum, Anthracene, Antimony, Aroclor, Arsenic, Barium, Benzene, Benzo-fluoranthene, Benzoic Acid, Benzo[A]Anthracene, Benzo[A]Pyrene, Beryllium, Bis(2-Ethylhexyl)phthalate, Butyl Benzyl Phthalate, Cadmium, Chromium, Chrysene, Cobalt, Copper, Cyanizde, Di-N-Octyl Phthalate, Dibenzo(A,H)Anthracene, Dibenzofuran, Dibutyl Phthalate, Dichloromethane, Dimethyl Phthalate, Ethylbenzene, Fluoranthene, Indeno(1,2,3-Cd)Pyrene, Lead, Manganese, Mercury, Methoxychlor, N,N-Diphenylnitrous Amide, Naphthalene, Nickel, P,P'-Dde, Phenanthrene, Phenol, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (Pcbs), Pyrene, Selenium, Silver, Tetrachloroethene, Thallium, Toluene, Trichloroethene, Vanadium, Xylene (Mixed Isomers), Zinc), one week of urine, water, gelatin, copper leaf, maple framemore public praxis projects
a Ritual for
New Growth
Egleston Square Branch of the Boston Public Library, 2022
Starting at the new moon and ending at the full moon, ritual follows a trajectory from darkness to light, from questioning to realization, from searching to discovery. The project connects these powerful energies with trajectories of ecological and personal growth, engaging neighbors in a daily sprout- and spirit-watering ritual. Focused on spiritual and ecological nourishment for more-than-human communities, we sprout a pollinator garden together.