BU Office for the Arts presents Drawn Together: Comics, Food, and Collective Care, a residency with artists Mariah-Rose Marie and Shaina Lu
The two-day residency, Nov. 12-13, explores the power of using visual narrative as a medium to share and pass down culture, food, and recipes as acts of preservation, resistance, community
BU Office for the Arts presents Drawn Together: Comics, Food, and Collective Care, a residency with artists Mariah-Rose Marie and Shaina Lu
The two-day residency, on November 12 and 13, explores the power of using visual narrative as a medium to share and pass down culture, food, and recipes as acts of preservation, resistance, and community care.
Boston University Office for the Arts in collaboration with the BU College of Fine Arts’ Visual Narrative program, BU Food Studies Program, and the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, presents their upcoming residency Drawn Together: Comics, Food, and Collective Care with guest artists Mariah-Rose Marie and Shaina Lu, both illustrators and authors whose work centers food, heritage, and resistance.
The two-day residency, on November 12 and 13, explores the power of using visual narrative as a medium to share and pass down culture, food, and recipes as acts of preservation, resistance, and community care. This residency invites the BU community to engage through interactive workshops, a cooking demonstration, class visits, and an artist panel.
The themes reflect how everyday practices, such as cooking and storytelling, can become powerful tools for cultural preservation. Through visual narratives and shared meals, the residency showcases how artists and communities alike can utilize creative expression to resist erasure and nourish both individual and collective well-being.
“Boston University Office for the Arts serves as a source of creative opportunity and cultural connection on campus. With so many exciting events taking place, we are thrilled to continue building a platform that elevates the voices of artists whose work explores culture, global issues, and identity,” says Elana Harris, Interim Managing Director of BU Office for the Arts.
“With Mariah-Rose traveling from the West Coast and Shaina Lu based here in Boston, this program connects creative voices from across the country. I am especially excited about the workshops both artists will lead. Students will have the chance to explore the diasporic connection of black-eyed peas through a cooking demonstration with Mariah-Rose, and to participate in a hot pot collage workshop with Shaina Lu, learning about the ingredients that make the dish so special and their cultural significance. Their work beautifully demonstrates the power of community, creativity, and resistance, values that remain as vital today as ever.”
MEET THE ARTISTS | LINEUP OF EVENTS
MEET THE ARTISTS
MARIAH-ROSE MARIE
Mariah-Rose Marie is a graphic novelist, story artist, educator, and writer based in Tovaangar, aka Los Ángeles. Their comic, illustration and storyboard work can be seen anywhere from Netflix and HBO Max to The New Yorker, Science for the People Magazine, EATER and the multi-award winning graphic journalism magazine, The Nib. Always with empathy (and often with humor) Mariah-Rose interweaves the individual and the global through stories that reach across political borders and personal identity. Mariah-Rose is the maker of COOK LIKE YOUR ANCESTORS: An Illustrated Guide to Intuitive Cooking with Recipes from Around the World (Silver Sprocket, 2023), A Quick & Easy Guide to Healthy Relationships (Oni Press, 2025), and their debut fiction graphic novel GO BACK & GET IT (Make Me A World / Random House Children’s) is coming in 2028.
Top row: COOK LIKE YOUR ANCESTORS, 2023. Middle row (left to right): Ode to the Andes (Potato), 2024; COOK LIKE YOUR ANCESTORS postcard, Ode to the Andes (Tomato). Bottom row (left to right): Family Ties, 2022; No Chai for the FBI, 2024
I’ve always been someone who loves stories, growing food, feeding people, and making art. Today I am a cartoonist who volunteers as an urban farmer, organizer, and designer in social, environmental, and food-justice circles. This residency is coming at a time in my life where all of these passions are converging into a career where I’m able to make work about all of it. This is only possible when artists and cultural workers are lifted up by people who are equally excited about expanding what art can mean, and I’m honored to have the support.
SHAINA LU
Shaina Lu 呂明穎 (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese-American artist interested in the intersection of art, education, and activism. She creates community art for social change through dialogue and conversation with local youth, residents, and grassroots organizers. You can see her public art throughout Boston’s Chinatown, MA, where she works, and in Malden, MA, where she lives. In 2023, the Massachusetts AAPI Commission honored Shaina as an Unsung Hero for her work as an artist and organizer. She is the creator of NOODLE & BAO (2024, HarperCollins Quill Tree), a middle-grade graphic novel about food, family, and fighting against gentrification. When she’s not creating art, she works with young artists and makers in Boston’s Chinatown. Shaina is a proud alumna of Wellesley College, and she holds a Master’s in Arts in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Noodle & Bao cover
MAPC
Justice for Black Lives
The Fortune Teller
Fund Our Future
Juice Box Rubato
Lunar New Year Zine for Pao Arts Center
I’ve always felt that I’ve worn many hats (educator, organizer, artist, AND I’ve been reluctant to own any one of them as my work. Sometimes, they’ve often felt separate from one another, though in recent years, I’ve been stitching them together in my work. I see them converging here in the residency. I’m thrilled to be making art, imagining new futures, and building critical connections with you all.
LINEUP OF EVENTS
All events are free and open to the BU community and general public. Registration is required
Drawn Together show, works by Shaina Lu & Mariah-Rose Marie
October – December 2025
Howard Thurman Center 2nd Floor
808 Commonwealth Ave.
The exhibition features works from our visiting artists, Shaina Lu (Noodle & Bao) and Mariah-Rose Marie (COOK LIKE YOUR ANCESTORS). The works on view highlight the theme of the Drawn Together residency: cultural preservation through storytelling and collective care as resistance.
Afro-Indo-American: Cooking Kunde from Scratch
Wed, November 12 • 1 – 2:30pm
FLR Room 124
808 Commonwealth Ave.
What happens when flavors from the Swahili coast, India, West Africa, and the US meet in a dish? Meet Kunde, a Kenyan curry made from black eyed peas. Join a cooking session with Mariah-Rose Marie, the home chef, author and illustrator of COOK LIKE YOUR ANCESTORS for an introduction to a naturally plant based, affordable, and surprisingly easy to make meal.
Recipes for Resistance Zine Workshop with Mariah-Rose
Wed, November 12 • 5 – 7pm
HTC Commons (Room 205)
808 Commonwealth Ave.
Come combine the power of both with Mariah-Rose Marie, where we’ll draw, collage, and write our way through the process of turning a recipe into a recording of your world as it is now. You’ll leave with a mini zine for you to reproduce, trade, and share as you wish, no algorithm or government approval required. All materials provided. Just bring a recipe.
Hot-Pot-Luck Collage Workshop with Shaina Lu
Thu, November 13 • 1 – 3pm
HTC Commons (Room 205)
808 Commonwealth Ave.
In an increasingly isolated and detached world, community meals provide a space for joy and connection. Hotpot, an age-long eating tradition that originated in China, is the ultimate communal meal, where diners cook their own raw vegetables, sliced meats, and other ingredients in a boiling shared pot. We’re combining hotpots and potlucks – using art supplies, come make your own mini collage hotpot, or contribute an ingredient (or several) to a large communal hotpot.
Drawn Together Artist Panel in conversation with CFA’s Joel Gill
Thu, November 13 • 5:30 – 7pm
HTC Commons (Room 205)
808 Commonwealth Ave.
Join Mariah-Rose Marie, Shaina Lu in conversation with Joel Christian Gill as they discuss the themes of the residency, Drawn Together: Comics, Food, and Collective Care. Afterwards, there will be a brief celebratory closing reception with light refreshments.
register for THE events, ALL FREE, here
Boston University Office for the Arts ensures that the arts are fundamental to every Terrier by developing, supporting, and celebrating University-wide programs that advance community-building through the arts, encourage interdisciplinary arts teaching and research, and highlights diverse artists and forms of artistry.
Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. With programs in Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, CFA prepares students for a meaningful creative life by developing their intellectual capacity to create art, shift perspective, and think broadly. CFA offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, as well as a range of online degrees and certificates. Learn more at bu.edu/cfa.
The MFA in Visual Narrative at Boston University integrates the long-standing fine arts tradition of the BU College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts with sequential art storytelling practices, allowing students the opportunity to craft stories that integrate written and visual language.
Benefit from the resources and expertise of BU’s diverse academic departments, renowned food scholars, visiting faculty, wine and spirits experts, and accomplished industry professionals through Boston University’s Metropolitan College (MET), where there’s always a place for you at our table. Food brings people together, worldwide, and encompasses many essential professional fields beyond food preparation and service, including food marketing, recipe development, food policy, academia, and the media. As a culinary melting pot, Boston has long been home to world-class cuisines and innovative food and restaurant culture. BU MET has helped the city take a leadership position in this vital cultural space, both by being among the first in the nation to offer a master’s degree in gastronomy, and through commitments to the service industry via applied professional certifications in everything from food safety to wine studies.
The Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, founded by Dean Emeritus George K. Makechnie (Wheelock ’29, ’31, Hon.’79) in 1986 to preserve and share the legacy of Dr. Howard Thurman, is Boston University’s cultural hub. The Thurman Center is intentionally inclusive and emphasizes the importance of stepping outside your comfort zone to build relationships and share experiences with others. The Thurman Center is a place where cultural expression in all of its forms is embraced and encouraged.