In February 2025, 4th-year undergraduate students will be traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana with Professor Bonier in a research studio framed around learning, engagement, and exchange.
Studio Rationale: Connect students (via travel and through remote research) to sites inside and outside the levees & conduct work that provides value to communities in New Orleans. Students will consider community-engaged sites for mapping/ research/ drawing/ design. Students who join travel will do work — weeding/ planting/ building/ mapping and other forms of site stewardship.
Transdisciplinary artist and storyteller Monique Verdin will be spending two days with students on her grandmother’s land in Saint Bernard Parish. She will be teaching the class about Southern Louisiana, and we will be assisting her with work on a medicine garden and barn rehabilitation for The Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange, which she directs.
The group will also be working for two days with Civic Studio’s Gulf South Open School in Village de l’Est’s Canal Gardens. Students will assist with mapping and planting while learning about ongoing projects to soften and cultivate canal banks for public access and greater resilience in the face of climate change and land loss.
Student Research Drawings by Stella Park, Daniel Ganesh, Nan Jiang, Baljot Jagdev, and Hasan Hiriji
