Project: Honey’s Eden, late night tea lounge + salon
Role: Creator, Builder, Host
Medium: Curated experiences, immersive installations, visual design
Year: 2020 - Present
Medium: Curated experiences, immersive installations, visual design
Year: 2020 - Present
Project Overview
Honey’s Eden is a series of hyper-curated experiences designed, fabricated, and hosted by Honey, stemming from her desire to have a 3rd place outside of home and work where she felt inspired, at ease and supported in authentically connecting with others.
Initiated during the early days of the pandemic, Honey’s Eden began as a series of intimate outdoor picnics and has evolved into a late night tea lounge at the Museum of Human Achievement in Austin, TX. The project has grown into a living experiment in how space, design, and conversation can inspire community.
With a focus on sensory engagement and mindful curation, Honey’s Eden invites participants to engage deeply with their surroundings and each other through topical salon-style discussions, workshops, literary events, and guest artist experiences.
The project has cultivated a community of curious thinkers who are drawn to exploring deeper, more meaningful connections with each other and the world around them.
Process
Honey spent a year building the space from the ground up, starting with a 10’ x 13’ white wall studio space in November 2022. With the help of friends and time, Honey financed the build with scraps from her salary, late nights and extensive research.
Design Vision
The visual and experiential design of Honey’s Eden centers on creating an atmosphere where guests feel welcomed, curious, and comfortable enough to engage in vulnerable and thoughtful discussions.
The vision for the space is inspired by collective associations with coziness, intrigue, wonder.
Coziness: being in the womb, late night sleepovers with friends, forts
Wonder: whimsical portal experiences from literature - the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland
Curiosity: dark warehouses, the erotic trance of ambient jazz, hazy opium dens, mysterious women handling unfamiliar herbs
wardrobe portals
blanket forts
sitting around the campfire
tree houses
being in the womb
being inside the gym class parachute
sitting in the dark with your classmats
opium dens, theoretically
moroccan lounges
moody maximalism
snake symbolism
gong fu cha tea
Tom Sach's hyper intentional "Tea Ceremony" work
Marketing & Communications
In addition to creative directing, building, programming and hosting the experience, Honey also mans marketing and communications of the project.
The engagement strategy for Honey's Eden leverages Instagram as the primary platform for building a community and reaching 1st and 2nd-degree connections within the Austin social scene. By centralizing communication through Instagram DMs, the strategy creates a more personal and direct line of interaction, reducing online anonymity and encouraging participants to express their genuine interest in joining the project.
To attend events, individuals must message the official Instagram account (@honeys.eden) to inquire about availability, at which point they engage in a direct conversation with Honey regarding the process and payment. Event promotion is primarily conducted through Instagram Stories, with participants encouraged to follow closely for the latest announcements and event-day logistics, ensuring consistent engagement with the platform.
To create a lasting impact and increase social visibility, Honey documents each event with photos, sharing recaps post-event. These recaps not only serve as a showcase of the event but also cultivate a sense of exclusivity and social awareness, encouraging prospective attendees—especially those familiar with participants in the images—to reach out for future events.
Looking ahead, the strategy will expand to include SMS messaging for event communications, allowing for a more streamlined, direct approach while mitigating the effects of social media algorithms on visibility.
Outcomes & Impact
Honey’s Eden has become more than just a series of gatherings—it is a creative community in its own right. Attendees frequently express a sense of discovery and emotional catharsis after participating. The space has hosted workshops, performances, and discussions that encourage self-reflection, the exploration of alternate ways of relating to resources, and the reimagining of social connections.
One of the most significant outcomes has been seeing how attendees leave feeling not only creatively fulfilled but also seen and heard in ways that are often missing from larger, less intimate gatherings.
The project continues to evolve, with plans for expanded installations and a more permanent space that will offer ongoing opportunities for creative engagement and exploration.
Honey's Eden I
Prior to having the space, the project was an elaborate outdoor food experience that brought people together under tree canopies during pandemic times.
Through this phase of the project, Honey studied the mechanics of bringing strangers and acquaintances together and the art of facilitating emotional bonding, with plenty of mistakes and tough lessons.
Honey's Eden III
In September 2024, the Honey's Eden project was invited to be a part of a group show at Contracommon art gallery, curated around the theme of "Inventory-ing." The show featured multimedia works by a range of performance, interactive, and experiential artists exploring the ways in which they archive and share their works, after the experience.
For the show, Honey built a new mini installation of Honey's Eden in the gallery where visitors could sit, explore herbs, flip through a retrospective coffee table book that Honey produced for the show, and engage in a written "asynchronous salon" around the theme of inventory.
Future
For the the next phase of the project, Honey intends to find industrial space where she can build a large light-driven installation for gathering, tea drinking and sound art.
