Black Walnut Trees (Studies)
July 15-20, 2025
Roman Susan
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago, IL
As part of a series of pop up exhibitions, I paid tribute to the black walnut trees in my neighborhood. These trees helped inspire this project, and I used the exhibition space to kick off This Land is Alive, hosting my first soil chromatography workshop in the exhibition space. Read more about the exhibition here and here.
Thank you Roman Susan for your endless support of this project, including funding.
Terrain Biennial 2025
October 5 – November 15, 2025
North Austin Branch, Chicago Pubic Library
5724 W. North Ave, Chicago, IL
For the Terrain Biennial Residency, I featured select stories from This Land is Alive in the windows of the North Austin Branch of the Chicago Public Library. Visit the North Austin Branch’s website here.
Thank you Terrain Exhibitions for your enthusiasm about this project and funding. Learn more about the 2025 Terrain Biennial and see the other artists’ projects here.
Little Village Library
April 21 – early June, 2026
Little Village Branch, Chicago Pubic Library
2311 S. Kedzie Avenue, Chicago, IL 60623
This Land is Alive was invited to participate in the Little Village Branch of the Chicago Public Library’s teen programming. This exciting opportunity meant getting to host two workshops with students from local schools that lack arts programs. The 7th and 10th grade classes got to see how they can use citizen science together with art to make beautiful work that can also help them assess soil health. The 7th grade class collected soil and flowers from their school’s garden, and the 10th grade class used soil, roots, and fallen leaves from the Little Village Library’s garden. Their work is being exhibited alongside the interviews from This Land is Alive. Because as important as the stories of the adults in this project are, so too are the stories of our children. Visit the Little Village Branch’s website here.
Future
Would you like to help spread the stories of Chicago’s overlooked places, people, and plants? Contact Mari at Howdy [at] TheBCat.Gallery.