Ecological Artistry from the Garden Studio | Melissa Cowper-Smith
Event Type:
- Interactive Arts Exploration
- (Online)
Program:
- SPARKS Exchange
Featuring:
- Melissa Cowper-Smith
Organizers:
- Center for Process Studies
In this SPARKS Exchange Melissa Cowper-Smith will share how gardening, observation, landscape, and material transformation shape her artistic practice. Working with handmade paper, encaustic, and mixed media processes, her work explores shifting relationships between memory, ecology, cultivated spaces, and the natural world. More about Melissa’s work can be found at cowpersmith.com
This session’s creative response will be generative scribing, where we gather words throughout the session that evoke the materiality of Melissa’s process. To wrap-up the session, participants will weave these words into poetry.
Featuring
Melissa Cowper-Smith
Melissa Cowper-Smith is a Central Arkansas-based real estate professional, artist, and advocate for creative and land-based living. Originally from Alberta, Canada, she holds a Master of Arts from Hunter College in New York City and now lives near Morrilton, where she and her family created Wildland Gardens—a thriving space for growing regional plants, making art, and connecting with the land. Melissa is an award-winning artist and dedicated gardener, known for her botanical papermaking and the use of plants grown at Wildland Gardens. She actively supports Arkansas’s artists, craftspeople, and small-scale farmers, and values deep, place-based knowledge and creative, hands-on living. Whether growing herbs, sharing garden starts, or connecting with others through art, she believes in the richness of work that is rooted in care, tradition, and a sense of belonging. Find out more about her work at https://www.cowpersmith.com
RSVP for this Event
Free Online Event
Disclaimer: This event is open to the public and will be recorded. If you choose to enable your camera or participate in any discussions, your voice and likeness will be recorded, and may be posted on the Center for Process Studies websites and social media, or included in CPS materials and/or publications for noncommercial purposes. If you do not want your voice or likeness to be shared in any public venues, please send an email to optout@ctr4process.org.
