Bringing together Hold Me Tender, Black Women in Bloom (via Carefree Mag), and Mutual Feelings SF, this floral arrangement workshop explores the ways tenderness, growth, memory, and becoming can be expressed through flowers.

Both Hold Me Tender and Black Women in Bloom center the lived experiences of women across the diaspora, using art, storytelling, and personal memory to explore identity, womanhood, softness, resilience, and the many stages of becoming. One creates a visual and immersive archive through photography and film; the other traces the journeys of Black women through essays, photography, and illustration, drawing on the lifecycle of a flower as a framework for growth.

Together with Mutual Feelings SF, the projects create a space to gather in community and consider what it means to nurture ourselves and one another, what we carry from where we come from, and what we are still becoming.

The workshop offers a tactile extension of these ideas. Through the act of selecting, arranging, and tending to flowers, guests will have space to connect with the themes of the exhibition and book while creating something of their own to take home: an arrangement shaped by their individual interpretation of tenderness, growth, and bloom.

Event Details:
✧ Date: Sunday, November 15, 2026
✧ Time: 2-6pm

✧ Location: A Loft of One's Own (5757 Horton St 2nd Floor, Emeryville, CA 94608)
✧ Ticket Price: $46.50 gross / $52.14 displayed price

Event Timeline:
✧ 2pm: Doors open
✧ 3pm: Floral arrangement workshop begins
✧ 5pm: Guests can check out the exhibit, purchase Black Women in Bloom coffee-table book, participate in the photobooth and socialize with other guest.
✧ 6pm: Stick around for Black Girl in Art Spaces. (RSVP here!)

All ticket sales are FINAL, and we are unable to offer refunds. If you can't make the event, you're welcome to transfer your ticket to a friend. For any inquiries, please contact us at mutualfeelings.sf@gmail.com or DM @mutualfeelings.sf on IG.

See you there! ✧˖°

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About Hold Me Tender: Photographers Sheilby Macena, a Haitian-American artist, and Simrah Farrukh, an American-Pakistani artist, will present Hold Me Tender, an immersive photography and film exhibition opening to the public on Friday, October 16, 2026, at A Loft of One’s Own in Emeryville, California. Hold Me Tender explores diaspora, third-culture identity, womanhood, love, softness, and cultural memory. Through portraiture, moving images, archival references, literature, personal objects, and interior space, the exhibition creates a living archive that centers the beauty and complexity of Black, Caribbean, African, South Asian, and immigrant experiences.

About Black Women In Bloom: Black Women in Bloom is a limited-edition coffee table book celebrating the becoming journeys of Black women across the diaspora. Curated from Carefree’s archives (with new, never-published essays!) and edited by Carefree Magazine founder Anayo Awuzie, it is both a collectible art object and an intimate reading experience.

About The Plant Queen: The Plant Queen is the creative practice of Bay Area-based florist and plant stylist Nichelle Queen Proctor, offering a curated selection of plants and pottery, along with workshops and floral design experiences. For In / Florescence, The Plant Queen brings its expertise in plants and floral design to lead the arrangement workshop and provide the materials for guests to create their own arrangements.