🕷️🐛🐞 Registration required – this event is free but space is limited 🐝 🪲 🐜

Join us for a FREE family-friendly event to celebrate Halloween, Louisiana's special natural surroundings and planet Earth, through art, music, food and science.

This year's theme will be “Creepy Crawlers”, inspired by the 1960’s activity game that taught children to cast plastic insects and other ‘creepy’ organisms out of molds.

These events aim to raise awareness and appreciation of local biodiversity and to connect our community with a side of nature many of us know very little about: insect life. Insects are an essential part to ecosystems, yet many of us are unaware of their connection to us and the role they play in nature or that many insect species are rapidly disappearing.

This year we will host five Southern sculpture artists as they create bug and other creepy-crawler-themed sculptures from recycled metals using a portable casting furnace and blacksmithing forge installed onsite at the Atelier grounds. Festival goers will have the opportunity to meet these special guests including:

· Elizabeth Belz (Brasstown, NC) will use a portable blacksmithing set to forge insect and arthropod-shaped free-standing sculptures.

· Anne Bujold (Lafayette, LA), will create a native Louisiana bee installation in partnership with Kimberly Hamm, a PhD researcher in UL Lafayette’s Entomology Department.

· Liz Markum (Denton, TX), will create metal casted sculptures from arthropods found at Atelier de la Nature.

· Leslie Tharp (Gainesville, FL), will create a tangled creepy crawler root sculpture from recycled iron.

· Kristen Tordella-Williams (Auburn, Alabama) will create an enormous spider sculpture from recycled iron

Other special guests will include:

· Video game designer Chera Meredith (Knoxville, TN) creator of the game Bug and Seek and co/founder of So Peculiar LLC.
· Entomologists and arthropod experts from all over the country to join us and share their knowledge.

In addition, we are inviting entomologists and arthropod experts from all over the country to join us and share their knowledge.

Our 2024 festival mascot is “Franken-Mantis” by artist and biologist Cheyenne Eagles.

Registration required for morning, afternoon and evening sessions – this event is free but space is limited. Register here!

Morning and afternoon sessions activities:
· Metal furnace pours with recycled aluminum and iron
· Iron forging demos with repurposed materials
· Meet insect and arthropod scientists
· Beetlejuice Cochineal Beetle Natural Dye demo
· Mead-making demonstration and honey-tasting
· Giant Interactive BUG Installation
· Preserved deep sea roach display
· Learn the names of different bugs in Uma (Houma) language
· DIY isopod sculpture workshop using recycled/up-cycled materials
· Experimental insect-inspired music
· Screenings of insect-inspired films
· Live spiders and other creepy crawlers with arthropod-inspired robots
· Eating BUGS! An edible insect-tasting
· Creepy Crane food display
· Insect lamp-making activity
· Live snakes and other reptiles
· Traditional Cajun and Creole cooking using locally sourced ingredients
· Trick or Treating
· Creepy Pumpkin Decorating
· More to be announced

Evening session activities:
· Metal furnace pours with recycled iron
· Bug Banquet
· Blacklight Insect watching
· Bug and Seek Video Game Tournament
· Screenings of insect-inspired films
· Live music
· More to be announced

Additional Event Information:

The 2024 Master of Ceremonies will be Renella Rose Champagne of KRVS’s “Lost in Love” program.

This year’s food will be prepared by Chef Colt Patin (a Certified Executive Chef and Certified Chef Instructor), his students from the Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge, and the Cub Scouts Pack 301 (Breaux Bridge, LA), who will serve Cajun and Creole dishes prepared with local and seasonal ingredients.

🦬 The event is free but registration is required 🦬

Join us for an indigenous perspective on bison in Southwest Louisiana, followed by a bison chili cooking demo and tasting.

Yes, there were bison in Louisiana!

Come learn about bison in this area and the Indigenous Atakapa-Ishak People who have lived here from time immemorial. We will learn about the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the local environment from an Indigenous perspective with Jeffery U. Darensbourg, followed by a bison chili cooking demo and tasting with our very own Aurore Ballengée.

About Jeffery U. Darensbourg:

Jeffery U. Darensbourg grew up in Itta Homma (of which “Baton Rouge” is a translation) and currently resides in Bulbancha, the only name he uses to refer to what others call “New Orleans.” He works with words, crafting essays, poetry, academic articles, and public talks intertwining traditional academic research with autoethnography and memoir. He is a Louisiana Creole and an enrolled member of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Indians. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive science.

Halloween season is upon us and we are super excited to be making decorations for this year's Halloween Art & Nature Festival themed "Creepy Crawlers"!

We meet EVERY SUNDAY at Atelier to get our creative (beetle)juices flowing and make creepy things. You are welcome to join us anytime between 10-3pm.

Beginners to professionals are welcome, as well as children. Lunch will be provided. Please email us at info@atelierdelanature.org if you have dietary restrictions.

Registration is not mandatory but it would help us to know you are coming.

** REGISTRATION REQUIRED. The event is FREE but SPACE IS LIMITED - Register at https://bit.ly/HalloweenFestival23 **

Atelier de la Nature, a twenty-five-acre nature reserve and eco-educational campus, invites all children and families to the 2023 Halloween Art & Nature Festival, a one-day free event to celebrate Halloween, Louisiana's special natural surroundings, the Gulf of Mexico and planet Earth, through art, music, food and science.

This year’s festival theme is “The Deep” (deep sea life, deep roots both cultural and botanical, deep time, deep traditions, and more). Festival goers will have the opportunity to meet special guests including:
● Award-winning Special Effects Artist, Chuck Varga, Neptune the official King of the Coney Island Day Mermaid Parade coming from New York City
● Walter Sandifier III, Spy Boy of the Beautiful Creole Apache Mardi Gras Indian Tribe from New Orleans.
● Award-winning Playwright Lisa D’Amour from New Orleans.

** Registration required for morning and afternoon sessions. The event is free but space is limited - Register at https://bit.ly/HalloweenFestival23 **

This year’s activities so far include:
● Meet mermaids, buccaneers, and King Neptune
● A life-sized whale skeleton sculpture
● Mardi Gras Indian water Inspired performance
● Meet mythical aquatic characters from the Ocean Filibuster Performance
● Deep roots prairie grass sculptural installation
● Giant Glow in the Gulf of Mexico lantern-shark and deep-water anglerfish disco ball sculptures
● There Was an Old Mermaid That Swallowed a Shark Game
● Fossilized nano-plankton exhibition
● Magnificent Megalodon Interactive sculpture
● Creatures from the Deep Special Make Up effects demo
● Monumental Jellyfish sculptures and nautical maize
● Meet marine biologists and other Gulf of Mexico Scientists
● Geological core samples exhibition and outreach program
● S.T.E.A.M. activities with Mermaidens
● Deep Wonder augmented reality program
● Deep Explorations Activity Book making workshop and give-away
● Deeply parasitic larval mussel exhibition and activity
● Interactive deep water coral projected installation
● Preserved deep-sea specimens’ exhibition and drawing workshop
● Spine-tingling Storytelling about Jean Lafitte and the pirates of Louisiana
● DIY Aquanaut Costume workshop and submarine sculptures using recycled/up-cycled materials
● Geothermal Energy outreach demo
● Life Aquatic and other deeply inspired music
● Live snakes and other reptiles
● Live spiders and other creepy crawlers with arthropod inspired robots
● Traditional Cajun and Creole cooking using locally sourced ingredients
● Sustainable seafood cooking demo
● Trick or Treating
● Abyss Zone Pumpkin Decorating
+ More!

Additional Event Information:
The 2023 Master of Ceremonies will be Renella Rose Champagne of KRVS’s “Lost in Love” program and King Neptune from the New York City Coney Island Day Parade.

Performances by Spy Boy Walter Sandifier III, DJ Spicy Tuna and others curated by Laura Huval of Sweet Cecilia and Al Berard Memorial Music Fund.

This year’s food will be prepared by Chef Colt Patin (a Certified Executive Chef and Certified Chef Instructor), his students from the Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge, and the Cub Scouts Pack 301 (Breaux Bridge, LA), who will serve Cajun and Creole dishes prepared with local and seasonal ingredients.

***THIS EVENT IS FREE BUT REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED at https://bit.ly/DinoBirding23***

Join us for an introductory bird walk led by Patti Holland and avian evolution program to make dino-bird drawings.

This is a family-friendly event.

Atelier de la Nature offers multilingual accessibility (French/Spanish/English). Please contact us for other accessibility requests.

***THIS EVENT IS FREE BUT REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED at https://bit.ly/DinoBirding23