Seeding the Stars: A celebration of public art and community
- January 24, 2025
Join us at Hosmer Library to celebrate the installation of “Seeding the Stars,” two tile and glass mosaics, created by Olivia Levins Holden as part of Hennepin County’s One Percent for Art program.
The event will be held Saturday, February 8, 2025, from 2-4 p.m. at Hosmer Library. Family-friendly art activities, a musical performance, and refreshments will be available at the event. A program is planned for 2:30 p.m. that will include library staff, artist welcome, and a community sing.
About the art
The design of “Seeding the Stars” was created based on ideas, priorities, and feedback from Central residents and library patrons.
The east pillar features a child reading. The child is seated on the earth. The Dakota words Mni Sota Makoce are woven through the indigenous soil. Each book and newspaper stacked beside the child honor important community institutions and movements core to the Central Neighborhood. As the child learns about their history, waves of energy radiate into the cosmos. The stars become neurons, representing learning, and the vast beauty of neurodiversity.
The west pillar features an elder gardening, surrounded by an ecosystem of native plants. She is planting seeds for future harvest and pollination. This pillar honors the long history of foraging, cultivating, community gardening, and diversity in the Central Neighborhood.
Juliette Perine Myers assisted with this project.
Learn more about art at the library
About the artist
Olivia Levins Holden (she/they pronouns) is a queer, mixed Boricua muralist, organizer, artist, and educator living in Mni Sota Makoce, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Olivia’s work centers around art as transformation, connection, and narrative. She emphasizes community involvement and collective design, drawing on themes of ecology, personal story, and people’s history. Since 2009, she has created and led murals in Minneapolis, California, and Puerto Rico, including Waves of Change/Oleadas de Cambio (2015), Defend, Nurture, Grown Phillips (2019), and Ritmos y Raíces de Resistencia (2021). Olivia leads the Power of Vision Mural Project and Transformational Creative Strategies Training (TRCSTR) at Hope Community. She is a founding member of Studio Thalo Collective. Olivia received a 2022 McKnight Fellowship for Community Engaged Artists.