Majestic and remote Madagascar is home to some of the world’s most wondrous natural growth and a striking eighty percent of the species are native only to this island. Organic textile artist Marie Alexandrine Rasoanantenaina is core to the nation’s organic arts, founding Tahiana Creation to literally uncover the country’s roots. Her artistic medium is vetiver, a fragrant and pliable wild bunchgrass that grows nearly 13 feet of underground roots a year. The Malagasy artist harvests Mother Nature’s lively fiber to weave delightful art pieces that play on its texture. From the ceiling, we’ve suspended three of Rasoanantenaina’s baskets, finely hand woven from the tropical root. Hanging from fishing wire, they look like oversized birds nests. Coveted globally as essence de parfum, vetiver in basket form maintains its delightful aroma for a lifetime; an occasional H2O misting on the fiber gives it an odiferous boost. Angled on the gallery backdrop wall is a richly colored and textured weaving of vetiver fiber and recycled denim, stripped and dyed naturally with bark in a modern checkerboard pattern. We also show a striking red striped weaving created with the root, recycled denim colored with distillates of leaves and fruit pits. Calamity never misses a swipe at the island off the southeast coast of Africa, and the brushgrass has become a lifeline to island artists and their families struggling through a three year drought, cyclones, and pestilence. Millions of residents face food insecurity and a level of starvation that the World Food Program (WFP) calls “biblical.” The island is acutely vulnerable to climate change as natural disasters step up in severity and frequency. Disease and drought have killed crops, forced market closures and job losses. The vast majority of Malagasy children live in extreme poverty, most of the boys and girls stunted by malnutrition and deployed to beg on the streets, or as child labor mining sheet mica underground. Parents send offspring as young as four to work the dangerous mica mines, and even younger toddlers to split the rock. Tahiana Creation and its weavers featured here draw on sustainable resources to produce an increasing array of art forms and critical income for their families. Wildly popular among collectors, Rasoanantenaina’s goal is to keep up with production demand while training more weavers and spreading the income opportunities.