• Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance 2020-2022

    Workshops facilitated:

    1. Soil as Story, Body, and Medium, 2020
    2. Nature Journaling, 2021
    3. Pigment Exploration and the natural world, 2022

    Over the course of 2 years I Facilitated and developed interdisciplinary art courses for seniors over 55 and later evolved the courses into intergenerational courses.

    Curriculum was based on soil pigment making, natural dyes with tannins, poetry, creative writing, and our ancestral connections to our environment and this earth.

    Participants learned how to make soil pigment paints, natural inks, take basic soil tests, naturally dye with tannins and flowers, and developed deeper reciprocal connections with the earth.

  • Marwen 2020-2022

    Workshops facilitated:

    1. Fluid Forms: Reimagining Our World Through Interdisciplinary Art, 2020
    2. Seeing Color Through Plants, 2021
    3. Dreaming Sanctuaries: Nature Based Art making, 2021
    4. Sustainable storytelling through mixed medium, 2021
    5. Painting with nature 2022
    • Worked collaboratively with a team of emerging teaching artists, young artists, and staff to design class content and curriculum with a focus on nature and social justice over 12 weeks
    • Provided one on one mentorship with emerging young teaching artist partners weekly
    • Facilitated arts program and coordinated field trips to urban gardens 
  • Young Cultural Stewards (Chicago Park District) 2018-2022

    • Co-founder and Co-Facilitator for *small is all* a program where youth were invited to walk with a small creature or plant for 6 week apprenticeships seasonally. *small is all* is part of Young Cultural Stewards
    • Designed and facilitate nature based workshops for youth aged 3-14 years old with a focus on social and environmental justice.  
    • Engaged 1,500 youth through Chicago Park District ArtSeed programming across 50 public parks across Chicago seasonally.

    My role with the Chicago Park District has allowed me to facilitate intergenerational city-wide events and trauma informed art workshops with a focus on social and environmental justice which is integral to my process as an interdisciplinary artist.

  • Threewalls Fellowship - 2023

    The In-Session texts Peregrine and I chose to focus on for this Fellowship include the documentary In Our Mothers’ Garden (2021), the book All About Love: New Visions (1999) by bell hooks, and the poem “Ancestors I” by Tori Ashley Matos.

    Our work is deeply connected to our living environment, centered on reciprocal relationships with the earth and a love of this place we are on.

  • Fellowship at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art - Fall 2022

    Through this 8 week Fellowship at Intuit, I had the chance to facilitate an art making workshops inspired by outsider and self-taught art and artists from the museum’s collections and exhibitions.

    The workshop was inspired by self-taught artist Scottie Wilson. Titled “If memories were lines –,” Participants drew inspiration from Wilson’s thematic style and and were guided on themes surrounding their younger selves, connection to space and memory.

  • W.AR.P Residency.  I had the chance to spend 6 weeks working with the Weaving Mills dye garden. Through this residency I was able to facilitate weekly workshops with the residents at Envision Chicago, West town. Pictured above, William C and Abena paint

    Weaving Mill Residency - 2021

    I had the chance to spend 6 weeks working with the Weaving Mills dye garden. Through this residency I was able to facilitate weekly workshops with the residents at Envision Chicago, West town.

    Pictured above, William C and Abena paint with madder berries and honey.


  • Teaching Artist Mutual Aid (Chicago Park District & Marwen Arts) 2020-2021

    Teaching Artist Mutual Aid is an intentional community of learning and care invested in and co-created by Chicago’s BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ teaching artists. Building on the principles of emergent strategy, Chicago Park District’s and Marwen’s teaching artists will build relationships with each other, urban gardeners, community organizers, and participate in the reciprocal practice of mutual aid. After a month of hands-on community care work, teaching artists collaboratively developed an emergent curriculum as a foundation for summer youth programming in Chicago ‘s parks and gardens.


  • Group Mural with youth at the Cambodian Association-Illinois 2020

    For this workshop my collaborator Peregrine Bermas and I facilitated a mural making workshop with the youth at the Cambodian heritage center.

    We prompted them to draw and cut out flowers native to Cambodia or Illinois. They then wrote things they were grateful for on their flowers and what they felt in their space.

  • Workshop at Homan Square - 2018

    In this workshop I led a painting workshop using tea, coffee and india ink on Mylar paper with a group of adults in the community exploring non traditional art material