Halloween Art & Nature Festival 2026

Spend Halloween in the woods with art, performances, science, strange creatures, Dungeons & Dragons, nocturnal hikes, and more. On Saturday, October 31, 2026, Atelier de la Nature invites beings of all ages to a completely FREE day and night festival exploring the mysterious world of Creatures of the Night through art, music, science, nature, folklore and Halloween fun. Across Atelier’s 30-acre nature reserve and sculpture park, you’ll encounter immersive art installations, live performances, hands-on art and science activities, Louisiana wildlife, folklore, music, food and plenty of wonderfully weird Halloween surprises. Come in costume. Cosplay is encouraged. Stay after dark if you dare. 🌙 🌙 🦇 🐺 🐈‍⬛ 🦉REGISTRATION REQUIRED for morning, afternoon, evening sessions and D&D tournament – The event is FREE but space is limited 🌙 🦇 🐺 🐈‍⬛ 🦉 Please reserve a ticket for the session you plan to attend: Morning Session & Afternoon Session Family-friendly art, science, nature and Halloween activities with performances, demonstrations and installations throughout the grounds. Evening Session Starting at 6 PM, Atelier changes after dark with nocturnal wildlife activities, bat and bug hikes, performances, installations, Dungeons & Dragons and camping. ⚔️🎲🐉 Want to join the Dungeons & Dragons tournament? Please reserve both an Evening Session ticket AND a D&D Tournament ticket. ♿ ACCESSIBILITY The Halloween Art & Nature Festival is wheelchair accessible and offers multilingual accessibility in French and Spanish upon request. Other accessibility requests can be accommodated with at least one month’s notice. 🦇 WHAT TO EXPECT More than 25 artists, musicians, scientists, naturalists and community collaborators will transform Atelier into a strange, immersive world inspired by the animals, myths and mysteries that emerge after sunset. Expect 50+ hands-on activities, performances and demonstrations, including: • 🐸 Calling real frogs on Quintron’s Frog Phone • 🦇 Bat detecting and Louisiana bat activities • 🦉 Owl masks inspired by local species • 🐺 Rougarou and Louisiana cryptid art • 🕯️ A lantern-making activity and glowing nighttime forest procession • 🦝 Raccoon-inspired belly dancing • 🐈 Giant cat toys for bobcats • 🪲 Bug watching at the Love Motels for Insects • 🦗 A cricket spitting contest • 🍴 Gourmet edible insect tasting • 🎧 DJing with sounds made by frogs, crickets, bats and other species • 🧛 Vampire bats, vampire-inspired creatures and Halloween science • 🎃 Creatures of the Night pumpkin decorating • 🐦 Nighthawk-inspired kite making • 💄 Opossum special-effects makeup demonstrations • 🦞 Crawfish-inspired sculpture, performance and storytelling • 🔥 Evening campfire activities • 🌙 Bat, bug and nocturnal nature hikes • 🎲 A Halloween Dungeons & Dragons tournament • ⛺ Camping after the festival And much more. 🎭 ART, MUSIC + CREATURES AFTER DARK 🐊 SWAMPERA Opera artist Ellen Denham, Ph.D. will join an extraordinary group of musicians and artists to create an experimental “Swampera”, inspired by Louisiana swamp species and Cajun, Creole and Indigenous folklore. Performers and collaborators include Dustin Dale Gaspard, Corey Ledet, Josh Hamburg, Li(sa E.) Harris, Rachel Mayeri and Stephen Pallrand. Expect unexpected performances to appear throughout the festival. 🐸 QUINTRON’S FROG PHONE New Orleans inventor and musician Quintron is creating a real-time Frog Phone connecting a vintage 1980s landline telephone inside Atelier to microphones installed beside one of our ponds. Pick up the phone and you might hear frogs, toads, insects and other creatures calling from the darkness. 🦞 MOLLY JO SHEA’S CRAWDESSY Artist Molly Jo Shea will transform one of Louisiana’s most familiar creatures, the crawfish, into a surreal multimedia installation and performance. Visitors will encounter a Mud Bug Graveyard filled with human-scale crawfish mound sculptures created with the public, followed by campfire-style performances mixing crawfish stories, mythology and Southern identity. 🦌 DANA SHERWOOD’S MIDNIGHT DINNER PARTIES Artist Dana Sherwood will host decadent outdoor dinner parties, but the guests will be the wild animals living at Atelier. Night cameras will record nocturnal creatures arriving to feast, with footage and sound becoming a new film debuting during the festival. 🌲 JAMEY GRIMES’ GLOWING FOREST New media artist Jamey Grimes returns with an expanded version of his forest light installation. Color-changing LEDs will transform the trees after dark, creating shifting shadows and the illusion of a dancing forest. Visitors can also make nocturnal-animal lanterns and join a lantern procession through the woods. 🔮 LI(SA E.) HARRIS Multimedia artist and performer Li(sa E.) Harris will explore relationships between body, land, spirit and place through sound, movement, listening and collaboration with Louisiana traditional healers and community members. 👻 REAL CREATURES. IMAGINARY CREATURES. LOUISIANA CREATURES. Acadiana artists including Terrèe Tisdale-Kwarteng aka Mymzy, Carey Hamburg, Erin Broussard, Francesca Kennedy and others will create artworks inspired by the strange connections between real animals and supernatural creatures. The official Creatures of the Night festival poster was created by Lafayette-based artist Terrèe Tisdale-Kwarteng aka Mymzy. 🌙 WHY CREATURES OF THE NIGHT? Art Historian James Hall described artists as “Creatures of the Night”, noting that nocturnal studio practices often led to breakthroughs in painting, drawing, and other forms. In The Artist’s Studio: A Cultural History, Hall writes that “the flame from candles and oil lamps was Promethean fire, propelling artists to new creative heights and depths.” For this program, we will invite over 25 of these “creatures” to create site-specific works in collaboration with the community or offer hands-on activities inspired by their natural and mystical counterparts. The festival itself will have a strong performance component as, with its ephemeral nature, it is uniquely suited to explore the threshold world of night, offering a momentary space where the unseen becomes momentarily felt. 🌿 ABOUT ATELIER DE LA NATURE Atelier de la Nature is a STEAM education center, 30-acre nature reserve and sculpture park in Cecilia/Arnaudville. Our programs combine art, science, nature and Louisiana culture to encourage curiosity, creativity and ecological stewardship. All festival programming is FREE. Artworks created for the festival will remain on the property for visitors to experience after Halloween, in some cases until they naturally decompose. Performances will also be documented and made available online. Wildlife observations collected through festival activities and artist residencies will help us continue monitoring the biodiversity of the Atelier property. 🤝 FESTIVAL PARTNERS This year’s festival will include collaborators from across Louisiana and beyond, including: Acadiana Master Naturalists Creative Gulf Network Fluker’s Cricket Farm International Crane Foundation Louisiana Amphibian and Reptile Enthusiasts / L.A.R.E. Louisiana Master Naturalist of Greater Baton Rouge LSU AgCenter Aquatic Germplasm and Genetic Resources Center LSU AgCenter Entomology Department LSU Museum of Natural Science TECHE Project University of Louisiana at Lafayette Department of Biology West Baton Rouge Museum And more to be announced. ❤️ FESTIVAL SUPPORTERS The 2026 Halloween Art & Nature Festival: Creatures of the Night is made possible with the generous support of: The National Endowment for the Arts The Stuller Family Foundation St. Martin Parish Tourism Commission Al Berard Memorial Music Fund Peter H. Warny Conservation Fund Super1Foods 🌙 🦇 🐺 🐈‍⬛ 🦉 🎃 🔮 🕯️