Becoming a Flower

About Facilitator

Gracia Echeverria is a Chilean designer living in New York. Her design practice is mostly dedicated to editorial projects; working as an art director, producer, and editor, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams. She is also an avid gardener, composter, and sometimes musician.

Objective

Becoming a Flower** invites participants to imagine the perspective of a flower—its relationship to pollinators, how color and scent might attract or repel other species, and its role in ecosystems ranging from the park to our streets. Through walking meditation, group reading, and a poster-making exercise, we’ll explore different ways of sensing one’s surroundings and then communicating those ideas to others, both human and more-than-human.

Flowers around us are carriers of information. They have a role as the reproductive organs of plants, and with the help of pollinators, they reproduce. (Examples of pollinators are birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and most importantly, bees). Bees. who see in ultraviolet wavelengths. perceive UV patterns around the mouth of the flower. The patterns act as a guide, steering bees toward the nectar and pollen. More commonly, these visual signs, rather than scent, direct the bee’s pollination. These markings signal a message, shaping the bee’s behavior. This idea of patterns and signals inspires us to think about flowers as posters, as callings for action, or as invitations.

Like the flower, what signals will you circulate? What types of attraction might your message inspire? And, how might nature herself act as a guide in the development of metaphors or provocations in the fliers we make?

** Becoming a Flower was originally developed by Jean Brennan and Gracia Echeverria

What's Included

• Collage Material
• Readings
• Scissors
• Glue

What to Bring

• Magazines for collaging