Nature Journaling: Virtual Class, Senior Series

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The Garfield Park Conservatory has teamed up with artist Abena Motaboli to offer an 8-week online nature journaling course with older adults, age 55+, that takes place in the comfort of your own homes!

This class will focus on creative writing with drawing and other multi-disciplinary arts as a secondary practice. Topics and themes are nature based and include studying native plants and their uses, exploring materials found in nature and every day life to create art, reflecting on one’s relationship with nature, the self and more!

This class encourage students to deepen their relationship with the natural world and become stewards of the earth while developing creating writing and multi-disciplinary arts skills.

This course takes place on Monday’s from 10:00 am-12:00 pm on the following dates:
September 28 (if you are unable to make this first class, we will have a recording and chance to connect with the instructor before October 5)
October 5, 12, 19, 26
November 2, 9 & 16
Culminating event date TBD by class participants.

Class price:
General – $240
Volunteers/Members – $192

Materials: Thanks to the support of Aroha Philanthropies, all supplies are covered for students in this class! Materials will be available for pick up by appointment at Garfield Park Conservatory.

Scholarships are available! Please fill out this Scholarship Application or contact Mattie Wilson at mwilson@garfieldpark.org for more information.

Abena Motaboli is a Chicago-based educator, visual artist, and writer. Her art practice is performative, contemplative, and transformative. Known for her intricate plastic installations and meditative line-work in her paintings, she is influenced by her home country of Lesotho and Southern African culture. She uses ephemeral material such as plastic, tea, dirt, and coffee to comment on displacement, past memories, and the culture of creating.

Growing up in international communities and being an immigrant, she is strongly influenced by the diversity of people, memories, displacement, the other, and ideas of human resilience seen through immigration. With the need to find quiet spaces amidst times of uncertainty, she invites the audience to find a space to contemplate through installation or an abstract tea stain. In her written prose and poetry work, she explores these themes and uses them as a base for her sound work.

She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibits such as SOFA Chicago, Bhavan Gallery based in London, Woman Made Gallery, DIFFA Pop-Up Gold Coast Gallery, and Aqua Art Miami to name a few, her work is also placed in private collections throughout the U.S.