Plant People Presents
Gold Feather Marketplace

Plant People Presents is an exhibition and holiday marketplace that explores the connections between people and plants. Created and Curated by Arvolyn Hill of Gold Feather, this exhibit explores themes of Botany, Herbalism, Ancestors, Astrology, Gardens, Portals, and Sustainability, as well as giving and receiving plants as a love language.  This exhibition features nature-inspired art including paintings, watercolors, and pressed flower herbarium specimens. In addition to vendors selling herbal remedies and products that are rooted in plants, Plant People Presents has special events throughout the six-week exhibit with workshops on Herbalism, botanical art-making, and sound healing. Arvolyn Hill showcases her tinctures, flower essences, and pressed flower art. Along with a group of NYC Artists and plant people include Emily Capkanis, Dillon Goldschlag, Veronica Tyson-Strait, Natalie Bolden, and Patrice Payne, as well as vendors and workshops by Hanoux, Best Friend Flowers, and Jenna Wortham.

Appointments may be scheduled in advance for Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

This market follows CDC guidelines on social distancing. Each market follows a maximum occupancy limit and guests may only enter each space while wearing a mask and after sanitizing hands.

About the Artist: 

Arvolyn Hill is a Herbalist, Educator, Flower Essence Practitioner, and DJ. Arvolyn became passionate about Herbalism after several members of her family passed away due to illness developed living among environmental pollution. In 2016, Arvolyn founded Gold Feather, an online apothecary that began as a place to sell herbal tinctures and she has now expanded to pressed flower phone cases and reusable cloth face masks. Arvolyn is passionate about reclaiming herbalism for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, as well as using Herbalism for ancestral connection and healing. Arvolyn works as the Coordinator of Family Programs at Everett’s Children’s Adventure Garden at the New York Botanical Gardens, where she creates Nature and Science exploration activities for kids. Arvolyn is also an avid Community Gardener in Harlem. Arvolyn has been featured in Garden Collage, Harmony Designs and AFROPUNK. ChaShaMa is Arvolyn’s debut exhibition.

For more information on Arvolyn visit her website or follow them on Instagram.

Participating Artists:

Emily Capkanis is an emerging mixed-media artist and muralist based in New York City. Upon graduating from college, she earned a degree in Studio Art & Sociology at Drew University. She currently teaches high school painting and illustration at The Calhoun School. Her abstract painting work depicts intersecting lines and planes in bold color. Emily’s collages are arrangements of abstract painting fragments layered together to form larger pieces. Her found object art incorporates ordinary objects such as chairs and surfboards. Emily is drawn to unique color schemes and displays of geometric patterns. The balancing act between colorful expression and deliberate structure underpins the dynamic conflict in her work. This conflict is born out of her lifelong struggle with dyslexia – a learning difference that plays on our perceptions of order and arrangement, yet she has managed to get it to work to her advantage.

For more information on Emily visit her website here.

Patrice Payne is a visual artist and an educator on a passionate quest to create meaningful content that evokes visibility, cultural awareness, and interconnectivity. Since receiving an MA in Art & Design Education from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Payne has worked for several organizations and schools designing and teaching art curricula. In addition to working on her own art practice, Payne has designed logos, flyers, and performance programs for entrepreneurs and local organizations. In 2011, she established a free art workshop called Act with Art, which encouraged youth to use art to explore social and cultural issues in their communities. Act with Art continues to flourish and has held workshop sessions and youth exhibitions at Weeksville Heritage Center, The Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx, and BronxArtSpace. Additionally, Payne has designed murals on six pillars at Marion Hopkinson Playground in Brooklyn through a partnership with the NYC Parks Department’s #ArtintheParks initiative and the Marion Street Park Block Association. In the summer of 2020, she contributed to the Black Lives Matter mural in Lower Manhattan’s Foley Square — creating the design for the word “Matter”, which was realized by the legendary Tats Cru and youth arts organization, Thrive Collective. Recently she was awarded a residency through BronxArtSpace, which was hosted on Governors Island. As an artist in residence, she continued expanding on themes of empowerment, sisterhood, and Afrofuturism through character design. To date, Payne has received grants from the Puffin Foundation, Ltd., Brooklyn Arts Council, Citizens Committee for New York City, and the Bronx Council on the Arts and has presented her work in several exhibitions throughout the Northeast.

For more information on Patrice visit their website.

Natalie Bolden is an artist and art educator. As a black female artist, she creates therapeutically as a way to connect with herself and my culture. She creates with the intention that her work will serve as a vehicle to new places and spaces, both inside and outside of self. Her artwork spans across media and subjects, from ceramic pieces and cultural symbols to paintings that extend beyond the canvas. One consistent theme throughout her work, however, is the whimsical use of bright color to tell archetypal stories and to create points of emphasis which hopefully connect the viewer to the subject and themselves. Natalie graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in Africana Studies and will graduate in January 2021 with a Masters in Visual Art Education K-12 from Manhattanville College.

For more information on Natalie visit her website here.

Veronica Tyson-Strait is a landscape and garden designer, horticulturist, garden educator and fine artist. She focuses on ecological landscape design, landscape stewardship and plant and human interactions. Her artwork is inspired by natural systems and phenomena, landscapes and cultural shifts and how they are altered by human behavior and history. The result is a confluence of layers, matter, space, marks and tensions. Veronica has been exhibiting her abstract art in New York and Massachusetts since 1996. Her more recent art delves into garden ecology and art for environmental and social change. She is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art, with majors in painting and photography and holds a Masters of Landscape Architecture from the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture.

For more information on Veronica visit her website here.

Dillon Goldschlag is an artist living and working in the NY Hudson Valley. After studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, he has shown at craft shows, pay for play galleries and the Hudson River Museum. He’s been called “the voice of a new generation” by his mother, and nothing at all by Jerry Stalz.

For more information on Dillon visit his Instagram here.