Join the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and artist Olly Costello for a hands-on workshop exploring themes from the Hull-House exhibition, Perennial City: Experiments in Urban Gardening. Participants will learn about Costello’s art and practice while also exploring their own creativity by making and designing seed packets. These packets will be filled with sunflower, pole bean, tulsi, and native flower seeds. Each seed packet carries a meditative message that invites the public to sow seeds with intention for collective flourishing throughout the urban landscape.

On display in Perennial City, Costello’s Fertile Futures (2022-2024) is a series of vibrant cut-paper collages that use soil and garden imagery as literal and figurative symbols for the health of social infrastructure. Costello’s illustrations are inspired by their work as a community activist, seed saver, and member of a yard-share network.

This workshop also features light bites and is ideal for older children (16+) and adults.

Olly Costello

Olly is a non-binary, queer illustrator, prison industrial complex abolitionist, urban food
growing enthusiast and community seed saver who is committed to participating in the
creative, collective work of building a liberated and flourishing future for all of us.