Artist in Residence: November 1, 2025–November 1, 2026
Opening: Saturday, November 1st from 2-5pm
Seed Cleaning Ceremony and Life at the Center Seed Distribution
Join Seed Steward Azita Banu for a seed cleaning ceremony as we process seeds from Holy Nativity Community Garden.
Take home and plant winter seeds that were part of Life at the Center (2024), an installation by Azita Banu and Carolina Caycedo of four seed mandalas which include seeds from plants that grow well in this climate, as well as native plants from the Chumash and Tongva territories.
Seeds hold the knowledge to germinate and grow into resilient plants that nourish scores of people, and they connect us to our ancestors and tell our story of humanity. Throughout time, we have carried seeds with us, simultaneously tracing our migratory patterns and deepening our connections to indigenous lands. By saving seeds today, we guarantee that future generations will be able to connect to the past. There is solace and strength in continuing a lineage of seed keeping.
Over the course of a year at Art in the Park, Lucia Fabio will build and tend a garden that emphasizes ancestral knowledge of seed collection, while collecting oral histories pertaining to seeds and growing cycles. Fabio’s parents are immigrants from Longi, a small mountain village in Sicily, where generations of her family have lived in close relationship to the land. By focusing on germinating her late mother’s seeds, Fabio will explore her family’s ancestral growing practices. The garden will allow her to learn and share knowledge while creating space for others to do the same. There will be times throughout the year when the garden will seem dead or untidy, but the plants will actually be in their ideal form for harvesting the next generation. Fabio will gather wisdom and rely on the guidance of her family members, seed stewards, and members of the plant community as the garden unfolds. Programming will include garden days, seed distributions, workshops, and conversations. In addition to caring for her mother’s seeds, Fabio will germinate, distribute, and establish native plants around AITP. At the end of the year, the garden will become a permanent fixture and continue to grow and adapt to the needs of the community around AITP. The culmination of the residency will result in an exhibition that will present Fabio’s research and incorporate works by artists who use plants as a means to connect to their ancestors and create bridges to the future.
The residency will be dictated by the lunar planting calendar—a traditional and ancient agricultural guide based on the phases of the moon used by many cultures as a natural timekeeping method. Instead of following a schedule of convenience based on the hustle and bustle of daily life, Fabio will instill slowness, intentionality, and an observation of natural rhythms in her gardening practice to inspire a deeper connection with the earth and its cycles. By presenting the entirety of a plant’s life cycle—germination, growth, and seed collection—Fabio hopes to demystify the growing process and have it be accessible. A garden is a living being. Fabio will make adjustments during the course of the residency in response to the changing needs and character of the garden as the plants mature in their unique ways. Inter-generational participation is encouraged as the residency programs are open to people of all ages, young and elder.
This residency was inspired by the loving memory of Giovanna Fabio, Irma Goetz, Bertha Sosa and all mothers who have left this realm. We tend to and nurture seeds for the next generation in honor of mothers and everyone who came before.
Lucia Fabio is an artist, curator and researcher. She tends to work collectively and has curated exhibitions at REDCAT Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Heritage Square Museum, and ONE Archives at the USC Library. Fabio’s practice as a garden volunteer and educator had led her to produce programming that utilizes her knowledge of plants- knowledge gleaned from her Sicilian family who have been farmers for generations. She creates phenomenological experiences for the viewer: grounding them in their bodies while taking note of their senses as they realize a greater connectivity to their environment and others.
Image Caption: Seeds collected by Giovanna Fabio in various containers with ceramics by Lucia Fabio in an outdoor setting.