August 14, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay is pleased to announce an upcoming workshop, All the Things a Flower Can Become, led by 2026 Artist in Residence Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera. The first of two consecutive workshops, the program is set to take place Saturday, August 22 from 2 – 4 pm at the Dome House. REGISTER HERE.
The workshop takes its premise from a question Rodríguez Rivera has been considering in his recent work: what would one do if faced with the last bouquet of flowers in the world? Participants will each receive one or two flowers and spend the afternoon experimenting and exploring acts of observation, documenting, archiving, imagining, and transformation—dissecting, preserving, inventing, and seeing what unexpected results bloom along the way. The workshop is designed to embrace open-ended inquiry, inviting reflection on color, varied botanicals, pigment, and our future.
The workshop builds on Rodríguez Rivera's ongoing series of work, Becoming Post-Tropical, which explores material transformation, ecological vulnerability, and diasporic memory through natural pigments and organic materials sourced from the Door Peninsula landscape.
"I am increasingly interested in how different landscapes, sites, and spaces can be engaged as sites of translation and creation, where memory, material, and environment intersect to produce new forms and new visuals," said Rodríguez Rivera. "This workshop is an extension of that thinking—an invitation for our community to slow down and notice."
Rodríguez Rivera (b. 1988, Cataño, Puerto Rico) is an artist, designer, and educator based in Detroit, Michigan, whose work spans image-making, print, installation, and sculpture. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Graphic Design in the Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University. His work has been supported through fellowships and residencies including the Solid/Liquid/Gas Residency at Fallingwater, the Haystack Open Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and a Bridging the Divides Fellowship through Hunter College and Princeton University, with grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Instituto de Cultura de Puerto Rico.
"Juan Carlos brings an incredibly thoughtful, generous approach to public engagement," said Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, Executive Director of the Miller Art Museum. "This workshop offers our community a unique opportunity to create alongside him and experience firsthand how his practice transforms something as simple as a flower into a meditation on time and memory."
The workshop is free, but registration is required. Visit the Miller Art Museum’s program page at millerartmuseum.org for registration details. All ages welcome; guests are invited to join both the August 22 and August 29 afternoon workshops, though attending both is not required. The workshops take place at the Dome House, located at 5015 S. Cave Point Drive, Sturgeon Bay, WI. Participants are asked to be mindful of Dome House neighbors by not blocking driveways, and parking on the west side of the road only.