The goal for the program, according to Mansour, is to have attendees “radically reimagine their own abundance,” not as excess but as belonging and wholeness.”

Visitors of Lebanon Hills Regional Park Visitor Center may have noticed two large eggs appear in the pollinator garden outside. What laid the feet-tall purple- and white-speckled eggs there is not a mythical bird nor tardy Easter bunny. They are the first installation from Dakota County Parks’ first ever artist in residence Ifrah Mansour.

Mansour comes to Dakota County through Minnesota’s statewide artist-in-residence program: Minnesota Parks Artists in Residence Project, or MNPAiR.

MNPAiR is being piloted in partnership between the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Parks and Trails Division, the Metropolitan Council, the Greater Minnesota Regional Parks and Trails Commission and Forecast Public Art.

In Dakota County, Mansour has been working with residents in Weaving Abundance, a public art project that will travel across Dakota County Parks throughout the month of August highlighting the meditative act of weaving and a pondering on the idea of abundance.

Mansour describes the residency not as coming to Dakota County Parks as a backdrop for her art, but as a way to become “embedded into the culture of the regional parks and create what is discovered and found there.”

Mansour is a multimedia artist and educator based in Minnesota. Her work Can I Touch It? has been featured at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and in she debuted her one-act play How to Have Fun in a Civil; War at the Guthrie Theater in 2018. In 2022 she became a Bush Fellow

The first sculpture unveiled in Dakota County Parks was the eggs towering over the pollinator garden in Lebanon Hills.

Starting with the eggs—with the mystery of what they might hatch into—was a specific focus. They were a way to “start in a place of birth and brewing and eggs imply that first journey of abundance,” said Mansour.

Last weekend in Lebanon Hills, the first program of Weaving Abundance had Mansour and visitors harvested native willow branches to be woven into circles or crowns.

Mansour draws from the Somali tradition of weaving ornate mats and huts, or aqal in Somali. These hand-woven huts were the homes of the nomadic Somali people that could be broken down, moved and reassembled like modern day tents.

Mansour began working on creating aqal during the pandemic, including a 2024 exhibit ‘The Healing Aqal’ at the Benedicta Arts Center in St. Jospeh, MN which highlighted the Somali tradition.

Since then, Mansour has continued “on a journey to develop my own weaving practices.”

For Mansour, the meditative act of weaving, using plants native to Dakota County Parks, is a method of recognizing abundance around us, especially within nature: “Nature has a beautiful way of reminding us there is this innate abundance around us.”

Mansour referenced that natural abundance as particularly poignant now when smoke-filled Minnesota summer days can make the world “literally seem on fire.”

The goal for the program, according to Mansour, is to have attendees “radically reimagine their own abundance,” not as excess but as belonging and wholeness.

Throughout August, Mansour will be touring Dakota County Parks for other events culminating in a celebration at Spring Lake Park Reserve on August 22.

And the eggs will go with her.

“I love that the eggs are on a tour,” laughed Mansour. Mansour would not say what exactly is planned for them, only that they, like Weaving Abundance, will be travelling throughout Dakota County