Tequila Herradura Part II - Nelson ZêPequéno

Exploring and evolving with Herradura Ultra.

Nelson ZêPequéno has always used art as an avenue for exploration. After the floral designer immigrated to the United States at the age of five and settled in New Jersey with his Ghanaian family, he was immediately drawn towards art as a practice. He didn't have to look far to find the atypical materials he would come to work with, foraging from the grasses, gardens and forests around him to put together arrangements and other works. Eventually, ZêPequéno would hone his artistic inclination as a production designer, finding like-minded artists who had a uniqueness of their own and cultivating community along the way.

As ZêPequéno's practice in creating floral designs grew, he noticed a lack of Black people in the gardening space, which led him to found the Black Men With Gardens viral Instagram page, a community for Black men with green thumbs. Along with running the platform, he also designs and sells floral art and home decor as well as colorful T-shirts, embroidered with detailed flowers, cactuses and mushrooms. His online shop also showcases his commitment to sustainability, carrying thrifted items like glass-faced analog clocks and upcycled coffee mugs that ZêPequéno turns into unique planters.

Yeah, it's always changing and being informed by the experiences that I go through, but also the things that I've learned from those experiences. So, for this Herradura Ultra campaign, I combined a bunch of different skills to create the work of art that I did, which was woodwork, painting, the full artistry side of it. These are all things that I've learned in different places, through different experiences, working, apprenticing, applying in the field and learning those individual skills. I can then combine them into this one overall larger process.

I'm going to learn something new tomorrow that's going to inform what my future pieces look like. It goes back to exploration and evolution because everything that I explore and discover helps me evolve what I've been currently working on.

It's really just been a progression of my art form since being a child. From a young age, I've always looked for materials that were accessible to me, as somebody from a lower income family and not having the ability to buy certain types of supplies and other things that you would think were necessary to become an artist. I started to look at materials around me that I could use and transform into art to create value in my own life. Plants happened to be one of those things you could go outside and go forage in the forest, find some flowers, create an arrangement and turn it into art.

I'd say sustainability mostly. It goes back to what I was just saying about materials. When I look at a sustainable practice in terms of art, to me, there has to be a low barrier of entry. It shouldn't cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars just to be able to participate. In the floral industry, you don't have to have a factory to produce the materials that you need — you can actually grow the materials that you need and replenish naturally. Once they're used, I can then compost it and use it to grow more materials. Being able to recycle and practice sustainability within an art form is what really intrigued me the most about working with florals.

I'm actually able to do things nowadays that are dope because I have inspirations and people to look to, but it's hard to evolve without seeing things that you could potentially become. It's good to have those role models. It's way more difficult to do when you have no examples at all and that's one of the problems that I first encountered when I got into the industry. What I've done since then is increase the representation and create the type of things that I wish that I saw. It's hard to evolve inside of a void. We all do need direction. We all do need inspiration. And we all do rely on community in some way.

It baffles me that it's still shocking to people to see an image of a Black man with plants. That just shows how invisible we were. It's not like we don't exist. It's just that wasn't the focus. At the end of the day, I had to decide if I'm going to rely on that visibility or representation being provided for us, or if I'm going to create and contribute to those things myself.

I think the inspiration behind the piece was more of a moment. I thought of the moment in my day when I get home from dealing with everything that life has to throw at you. Being at home transports you to this different place and frame of mind. Then, you can open a bottle, pour yourself a drink, and take a sip, savoring the moment.

I do hand make every piece. I literally hand make every single order, one by one. And I take my time with the art of it all, even down to the packaging. I do see my pieces as art pieces, so they are displayed as such as well.

The best encouragement that I could give to people is to explore, because there are so many different parallels to every industry. I implore everyone to choose what their expression is, what their definition of things are, and not simply rely on other people's representations and definitions of things, but truly explore and question things.

I'm excited by the personal evolution that's taking place. I'm just eager for the future and the ability to have a chance to define what it's going to look like. I'm doing that in a few different ways; one of them is by publishing a gardening magazine called Garden Era Magazine. That's launching later this month, and then, finally moving into my first design studio so that I can create much larger pieces and take on bigger clients and make a larger impact.

To learn more about Tequila Herradura, head to the brand's website.

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For his latest project, ZêPequéno worked with Herradura Ultra to create a piece inspired by the concept of peace and savoring the moment, adorning the brand's signature bottle in his unmissable flora. HYPEBEAST spoke with the designer about how he started creating with plants and florals, his earliest inspirations, the importance of community impact and the one-of-a-kind piece he designed with Herradura Ultra.

I created the environment of the place that idealistically would be my dreamscape and my place that I'd visit. I created a bottle holder that evokes a jungle. It was a fun project, so it really was inspired by a moment of peace and enjoying something extraordinary.

It's a good question but it's a really simple question. We all go through so many different experiences and perspectives, so we have varying levels of ability, which contributes to the things that we create. Nothing that anybody creates can be replicated by another person. We all are uniquely different in the most beautiful way possible, and with that simple understanding, I've grown as an artist because I don't harp or focus on trying to be different or unique because I just am. I simply live it.

When it comes to flowers, when I tell people I make floral art, they envision me at a flower shop, making a bouquet for Valentine's Day. But if you take a look at this campaign that we did, you can see that working with art can look like something completely different. So at the end of the day, what I just created for Herradura Ultra is my version of what working with florals looks like.