Why is there an elephant in Jeffersonville? Many visitors to the weekly Jeffersonville Sunday Market have had the same question.
If you’re lucky enough to meet Mama, the life-size elephant replica sculpture stationed in the garden of the Jeffersonville Bake Shop, you might also be surprised to learn the lesson she has about environmental awareness, Indigenous art, and human and animal coexistence.
Mama was created as part of The Great Elephant Migration, a conservation and art movement that fundraises and spreads awareness about coexistence projects between humans and animals.
Originally crafted by The Coexistence Collective, a group of over 200 indigenous artists in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu in Southern India, Mama is one of 100 elephant sculptures of all real life sizes that are currently being featured as public art exhibits all across the country.
All of the elephants are made out of lantana, a bamboo-like flowering weed that is destroying the natural vegetation that elephants of Southern India eat. As a way to protect the elephants in their home and on their migration, these artists have taken the lantana and constructed it into something everyone can enjoy.
Michael Huber, co-owner of the Jeffersonville Bake Shop and its parent company Heartwood saw the Great Elephant Migration exhibit that was featured in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District last year. Amazed by its beauty, Huber and his wife and business partner Lauren Seikaly bought an elephant as a donation to the project and placed her in the natural garden they built with their family on Main Street.
A decade after the husband and wife business team bought the abandoned building that has now become the Jeffersonville Bake Shop, Huber and Seikaly see Mama’s placement in the natural garden as just one more step towards a larger goal of improving local communities from the ground up.
“Bringing in Mama to enhance the community, bringing in a garden, just trying to make the space more livable for everyone has been the goal,” said Huber. “And to Lauren and me having art in the town is a really important aspect of having a healthy community.”
The elephant will be stationed in the garden until Labor Day, as the lantana is not durable against snow and colder weather. Huber and everyone at the Jeffersonville Bake shop encourage anyone interested to come out and see Mama – and even to get up close to see the detail. They just ask that no one tries to climb her.
Image: Mama the Elephant resting in front of the Jeffersonville Bake Shop (Credit: Genevieve Hartnett)
I was delighted to see the elephant in Jeffersonville after seeing the larger installation in NYC last fall. The work is wonderful and a great way to get awareness and concerns about important environmental concerns out to the community.