Sheena is an Indigenous artist, educator and founder of the Pollen Patch; an urban educational space and native ethnobotanical garden in Columbus, OH. She facilitates hands-on DIY workshops that focus on teaching practical, ancestral skills that empower people to reclaim self-care autonomy, while building reciprocal relationships with plants and the land.
Creating living art is my way of participating in an ongoing relationship with my ancestors, the Plant Nation, and future generations yet to come. My work takes the form of floral arrangements and herbal remedies that carry the gifts of our plant relatives beyond the garden and into the everyday lives of my community.
Before a plant becomes part of my work, I have already spent months to years building a relationship with them in my garden, the Pollen Patch. My art helps me reconnect with a way of life that existed before everything we needed could be bought from a shelf and explores the relationships that have been forgotten through modern convenience.
My art is not an attempt to recreate the past, but a response to the loss of knowledge not handed down due to the colonization of my Indigenous people and culture. My work invites people to experience plant relatives not as products, but as beings whose purpose has always been to care for us.