I sat down with the Nature’s Cookbook team that helped bring our vision of creating a resource to capture plant knowledge while honoring our cultural histories and connections to food. Today, I share my conversation with artist Lynda Grafito on her journey into her healing and herbalist work, and her experiences co-creating CEED’s Nature’s Cookbook. Lynda is a Colombian visual artist living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and she joined the Cookbook Team in July of 2023 to begin the illustrations and formatting design for Nature’s Cookbook. She has been an incredible collaborator, also illustrating other CEED resources like our Conflict to Clarity: A Guide to Effective Resolution.
Interview with Lynda Grafito
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your work (both independently and with CEED)?
I am a visual artist from Colombia. I specialize in illustration, printmaking, and murals, and love teaching art classes in Spanish to Latino communities in the Twin Cities. In 2023 I began collaborating with CEED/Natalya, and Cynthia to illustrate Nature’s Cookbook. My current projects consist of a mural at Brooklyn Center Middle School, as well as two zines for CEED: one on their Conflict Resolution Protocols and the other about the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, a local trash incinerator located on the North side of Minneapolis.
Why did the Nature’s Cookbook project appeal to you?
In 2021 I joined a community garden – El Jardín Armonía En Acción; I had only recently moved to Minnesota, and I felt that the garden provided a fun opportunity to connect with my roots and with other Latin people with who I could share culture and language with. Being part of the garden made me remember the teachings of my grandparents and their love for the land. We all held a shared desire to share a collective plot of land and put into practice the knowledge passed down from our elders, representing our traditions and cultures from our various countries of origin. As we shared, I began to understand how important it is to eat healthy foods and how powerful it feels to grow your own food. In 2022, our gardening coordinator, Abigail Hindson, created a Spanish-language gardening guide: Sembrando Esperanza, Cultivando Poder. She invited Jennifer Peña Morales and me to illustrate it; see the illustrated guide here.
Later that year, I met Natalya at the community garden, where she led a CEED workshop on Home Energy Justice. We connected, and soon after, she introduced me to the Nature’s Cookbook project that she and Cynthia had written and developed. I was attracted to this project because of its proximity to the community (and its inspiration came from garden members!), as the recipes were collected and written by ordinary people from different cultures around the world.
What was the process like in formatting and illustrating Nature’s Cookbook?
The illustration process was very fun. I used photographs as references for the illustrations, and my partner and I modeled the photos to see what positions worked best for the characters, especially the hand positions. The style I used for the illustration is very similar to my linocut prints, and I really appreciate the creative freedom Natalya and Cynthia trusted me with as I used my love for printmaking to bring these illustrations to life.
I met with Natalya and Cynthia in the formatting and layout process every two weeks. We decided to have each chapter represent a different color – you can tell we used many colors for all of the pages. This was an eye-catching way to indirectly name a chapter’s focus, vibe, and elements without using words. We also commonly discussed illustration ideas, reviewed layout errors, modified font sizes and colors, referenced other books and images, and performed printing tests. We worked hard to ensure the book felt consistent throughout.
I appreciated how Natalya and Cynthia saw little details in the illustration and formatting that made this process faster. They helped me identify and critique little things that I would never have noticed so quickly. Their incredible ideas helped me visualize the book’s illustrations, chapter after chapter.
Where did you draw inspiration from when creating your illustrations?
Nature’s Cookbook itself served as inspiration for me. In the Recipes section of the book, you’ll notice footers at the bottom of the pages, illustrating delicious fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other ingredients; each [recipe] chapter has a footer specific to the commonly used ingredients included in each chapter.
The cover of the book shows a family preparing food, with small plants in pots next to them that they will use to season their food, along with a large cucumber plant that represents the Grow It Yourself (GIY) chapter and the Silvery Blue and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies, the Black-Capped Chickadee bird, and some mushrooms surround the borders of the cover to symbolize the Gifting & Receiving chapter.
I also referenced my community, elders, and family. For the chapter covers, I wanted to represent different cultures and generational groups: parents and grandparents guiding the little ones on how to plant or cook.
The book’s overall illustrations were inspired by the diverse communities, wildflowers, mushrooms, pollinators, and animals that live in Minnesota.
How do you believe art helps to engage & captivate learners?
I believe that art has the power to hold one’s attention. In the case of this book, I feel inclined to stay and read a page because of the illustration included – depicting the page’s written content. This book’s final, illustrated version has the power to connect communities through acts, such as cooking, gardening, and healing, as they see themselves and their favorite traditional meals and ingredients within the pages. I would hope that this innate and visual connection to the book motivates learners to think more consciously about the environment and of the gifts of nature.
How do you define your connection to nature?
My connection to nature is the comfort and peace it brings me. When I feel overwhelmed or stressed, my refuge becomes nature. I really appreciate going for a walk in the forest—I find my inner peace when I can completely stop listening to the busyness of the city. I also feel deeply connected to nature when I garden. Gardening brings back memories of my country and makes my stay in this country more enjoyable.
I think I owe my connection with nature to my grandparents, who taught me from a very young age to recognize plants, plant, and harvest, get dirty, and not be afraid to explore.
What is your favorite page or chapter in the book?
This is such a hard question… I have so much that I love. A few of my favorites are the Meet Nature’s Gifts chapter, the Gifting & Receiving chapter page, and the book cover page – I love how it connects with everything inside.
Can you share a memorable moment from your time working on this book?
When we finally saw it all in print! It was beautiful! seeing all the colors and how everything was taking shape and making more sense, it was comforting to see everything that was worth the work of so many months all finished
What other projects are you currently working on?
I am currently working on creating two zines for CEED:
- HERC Comics – a joint effort among CEED & The Minnesota Environmental Justice Table – to incite continued awareness and advocacy efforts to the ultimate closure of the HERC trash incinerator.
- Conflict Resolution Protocols to serve as a visual documentation of the collective agreements determined by EJNCF members.
I have also recently obtained the grant The Next Step Fund from the Minnesota Regional Arts Council to expand my creative process through the acquisition of new equipment and materials, as well as participation in workshops to learn printing techniques, and how to create eco-friendly printmaking inks and papermaking. All of this is an effort to nourish and perfect my new artwork, Volver a la Tierra, in a way that is conscious of the environment and more related to the themes I address in my work. The results obtained will become an art show.
This summer, I will begin leading a team of young people to create a mural for St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Semilla Center organization. Together, we will conduct different art workshops with the community, and the young people will learn about leadership and the mural-creation process.