Drawn Together: Comics, Food, & Collective Care

November 12-13, 2025

This two-day artist residency, presented by the BU Office for the Arts, explores the intersections of food, comics, cultural storytelling, and community care. Featuring guest artists Mariah-Rose Marie and Shaina Lu, both illustrators and authors whose work centers food, heritage, and resistance. The residency invites the BU community to engage through interactive workshops, a cooking demonstration, class visits, and an artist talk.

The themes of this residency, food, comics, community care, and resistance, reflect how everyday practices like cooking and storytelling can become powerful tools for cultural preservation, identity, and solidarity. Through visual narratives and shared meals, the residency highlights how artists and communities alike can use creative expression to resist erasure, build connections, and nourish both individual and collective well-being. For BU’s diverse and international student population, these themes resonate deeply, acknowledging the many ways culture is carried, shared, and defended across borders, generations, and kitchen tables. Through comics and community-centered programming, the residency invites reflection, dialogue, and collective care.

Upcoming Artist Residencies

Past Artist Residencies

The following residencies have been produced since the founding of the BU Office for the Arts in 2012!

Other visiting artists sponsored by BU Arts Initiative:

The Crossroads Project, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Maya Lin, Sonia Sanchez, Stephen Schwartz, Deborah Lipstadt, Gerald Vizenor, Alysia Harris, Stacey Tyrell, and Martha Graham Cracker.