Sunday, November 30, 2025
12:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Austin Central Library
⚠️ Limited Spots Available - RSVP encouraged
Explore the underground connections between Texas native plants and their ancestral stories through photography and mixed-media collage. Inspired by Essentials Creative's Rhizomatic installation on the library's rooftop garden, this hands-on workshop guides you in creating visual collages that honor Indigenous knowledge, scientific understanding, and personal memory—using photography, illustration, and paper cutting.
Drop in anytime, leave when you need to, and work at your own pace. Whether you stay for 30 minutes or the full 3 hours, you'll have materials and guidance to create something meaningful.
This workshop grows directly from Rhizomatic, a multimedia tapestry installation featuring ten Texas native plants explored through both Indigenous cultural narratives and botanical science. Each tapestry presents traditional stories, uses, and Indigenous names on one side, with ecological information on the reverse—celebrating the rich cultural and biological heritage of plants like Purple Coneflower (Iⁿcháⁿpe hu), Prickly Pear (Nochtli), Amaranth (Huautli), and Maguey (Metl). By placing Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding in equal relationship, the installation honors multiple ways of knowing our natural world.
A rhizome is a root system that grows horizontally underground, connecting in all directions with no single center—like ginger, cattail roots, or the persistent growth of native grasses. This workshop uses rhizomatic thinking as a framework: your story connects to ancestral stories, plant knowledge networks spread across cultures and time, and healing traditions survive underground even when colonization attempts erasure.
What You'll Do:
- Learn photography and collage history through the lens of BIPOC artists who use these mediums for cultural reclamation
- Photograph Texas native plant specimens in studio portrait and still-life sessions
- Create layered collages using Essentials Creative's printed photos, botanical illustrations, scanned watercolor, fabric, and patterns
- Explore the connections between the ten featured plants and Indigenous knowledge systems
- Reflect on your own ancestral or personal plant knowledge and relationship to the land
Featured Plants Include:
Purple Coneflower • Goldenrod • Prickly Pear • Cattail • Apache Plume • Chile Pequin • Amaranth • Horsetail • Turk's Cap • Maguey
No art experience necessary—just bring your curiosity and stories. This workshop welcomes all who want to explore the intersections of ancestral or personal memory, plant wisdom, and creative expression.
Essentials Creative is a multimedia collective where Indigenous American, Latin American, and Asian artists converge to create visual narratives that resonate across cultural boundaries. Based in Austin, this team of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ creatives transforms conceptual visions into tangible experiences that honor ancestral knowledge while boldly reimagining artistic possibilities.
