Saturday, Oct 25, 2025 at 10:00am
Atelier de la Nature, a 30-acre nature reserve and eco-educational campus, invites all children and families to the 2025 Halloween Art & Nature Festival — a one-day free event to celebrate Halloween, Louisiana's unique natural surroundings, and planet Earth through art, music, food, and science.
This year's Festival theme is "Enchanted Forest"!
The nature of South Louisiana’s forests, bayous, and swamps is enchanting, with their ethereal Spanish moss, fairy-like fireflies, mysteriously hooting owls, forest sirens, and "lamp-eater" amphiuma salamanders (among the largest amphibians in the world), old-growth live oak trees, and much more. We will explore how this magical nature shaped indigenous, Cajun, and Creole folklore — and, through science, express the complex web of living connections in our unique forest ecosystems.
Artist Denise Gallagher created this year’s Enchanted Forest artwork, referencing Louisiana folktales such as Madame Grand Droits (Lady Long Fingers), the feu follet (flames that lead unwitting travelers deeper into the swamp), a mischievous Latiche, the Loup Garou, and more.
In the morning and afternoon sessions, we will host Southern artists and scientists as they demonstrate how to talk with trees, sonify fungus, discover mycelial networks, explore the genetics of the Tree of Life, uncover unicorn skeletons, and more! Cosplay as fairies, goblins, and other enchanted beings is encouraged.
An evening session will begin at 6 PM, featuring an aerial performance, a Dungeons and Dragons tournament, a fantasy creature drawing contest, a glow-in-the-dark forest art installation, bat and bug hikes, other nocturnal activities, and optional camping afterward.
