FERAL KINSHIPS / ART AS BIOLOGICAL COLLABORATION & GREENHOUSE LAB 6.0: FREQUENCIES FOR THE ROOTED
FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2025 | 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Greenhouse LAB
Tulsa Artist Fellowship - Studios
109 MLK Jr. Blvd E. Tulsa, OK 74103
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL
In this exchange, new Tulsa Artist Fellow Franky Cruz and St. Louis-based artist Juan William Chavez will discuss their artistic collaborations with butterflies and bees. For more than a decade, Chavez has created environments for bees as a part of his artwork, from his early multi-year project The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary to his recent Decolonizing the Hive: Native Bee Stewardship Network for the 2023 edition of the Counterpublic triennial. Cruz’s work explores the intersection of art, science, and ecology, notably through his immersive Vivarium Meconium Laboratory series, in which he raises butterflies in studio-built habitats and creates abstract paintings using the residue of their metamorphosis. His practice has been featured in exhibitions at institutions including Locust Projects, MOCA North Miami, and NSU Museum of Art, and centers on ecological transformation and interspecies collaboration.
For this event, held in TAF’s new indoor Greenhouse LAB space, both artists will share their work and then open up a conversation—with one another and with the audience—about using gardens as art studios (and art studios as gardens), about the porous barriers between art, science, and horticulture, and about what it means to work in interspecies relation.
Greenhouse Lab 6.0: Frequencies for the Rooted to follow. Organized by TAF Fellow Gavin Kroeber, the evening concludes with a playful sonic digestif featuring sound and video by Chavez in collaboration with invited performers.
ABOUT JUAN WILLIAM CHAVEZ
Juan William Chavez is a St. Louis-based artist, activist, and educator whose multidisciplinary practice explores ecology, food justice, decolonization, and Indigenous knowledge systems. A 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, Chavez creates socially engaged projects that include public installations, beekeeping-based sanctuaries, workshops, and urban agriculture initiatives. His work has been featured in major exhibitions such as Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21 at El Museo del Barrio and the 2023 Counterpublic triennial, where his Native Bee Sanctuary served as a community-based, chemical-free teaching garden. In 2024, he was named lead artist for Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge in Orlando. Chavez is the founder of Northside Workshop, serves on several civic boards, and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
ABOUT FRANKY CRUZ
Franky Cruz is a Tulsa-based interdisciplinary artist whose work merges painting, sculpture, and scientific inquiry with a focus on ecological systems and interspecies collaboration. Originally from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Cruz has gained recognition for immersive projects such as Vivarium Meconium Dome Lab, where he raises butterflies and transforms their metamorphic residue into abstract paintings. He has exhibited at institutions including Locust Projects, MOCA North Miami, and NSU Museum of Art, and has been supported by awards from the South Florida Cultural Consortium, Oolite Arts, and The WaveMaker grant. Cruz has participated in residencies in Berlin, the Everglades, and Fort Lauderdale, and recently joined the Tulsa Artist Fellowship to further expand his hybrid ecological practice.
ABOUT GAVIN KROEBER
Gavin Kroeber is a Tulsa-based artist and curator whose work spans public art, performance, and cultural inquiry. His collaborative projects—such as New Cities, Future Ruins in Dallas and Dwell in Other Futures in St. Louis—explore the poetics of place through decolonial and posthumanist lenses. Kroeber has initiated long-form research and programming platforms including Fire School and Laboratory for Suburbia, and has presented work with institutions such as di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art and HKW Berlin. He is a 2025–2027 Tulsa Artist Fellow, a 2024 Creative Capital awardee, and a 2022 Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellow.
VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Tulsa Artist Fellowship strives to provide a welcoming and accessible experience. Our exhibitions and events are free, documented, and archived.
Archer Studios (109 MLK Jr Blvd E., Tulsa, OK 74103) accommodates wheelchairs and strollers. Variable seating is provided in addition to areas for distanced standing and wheelchairs. Family-scale private washrooms are available, designed to support visitors with disabilities and caregivers who need access to increased square footage and changing tables. The elevator at Archer Studios is located at the main west entrance on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Street-side parking is available using the Park Mobile App and is free after 5 p.m. and all day Saturday-Sunday.
Established in 2015, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship was created as a place-based initiative by the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) to address pressing challenges faced by contemporary artists and arts workers living in and joining Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa Artist Fellowship believes the arts are critical to advancing cultural citizenship and supports community-invested practitioners who intentionally engage with our city.
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