Queens Museum X Guardians of Flushing Bay Workshop: “Tactile Sensibility”

Location: Queens Museum and Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Date: Spring 2023

Ages: Adults

I was invited by Rebecca Pryor, the Executive Director of grassroots organization Guardians of Flushing Bay, to co-curate a series of artist-led workshops in collaboration with Queens Museum, with a mission to daylight the waterways of Flushing Creek. Through this partnership we organized four workshops led by queens-based artists Nadia Misir, gil perez, Jevijoe Vitug, and myself.

The title of my workshop, “Tactile Sensibility” comes from artist and designer Anni Albers’s seminal 1965 text On Weaving. In chapter eight she remarks “We touch things to assure ourselves of reality” in the context of what she refers to as “Tactile Sensibility”. In engaging with our “Tactile Sensibilities” we aimed to get to know the creek’s secrets on a deeper level by visiting hidden sights, touching local plants and other findings, playing with them as art materials, getting to know them as creative collaborators, and learning about how and why they grow where they do. Each participant left with a unique collage inspired by our explorations and made from samples we collected.

Participants were also provided with art materials that I had foraged and gathered from the previous months of February, March, April, and May in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which included frozen violets and cherry blossoms, dried phragmites, wood charcoal paint, mulberry ink, and muslin that had been dyed with mugwort.