Herbs for the Heart: Crafting Cordials for Grief Workshop

67 Broadway Street,Asheville NC 28801

30 July, 2022

Description

On Saturday, July 30th, Janet Kent, Community and Clinical Herbalist, Educator, and Co-Founder of the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine in Marshall, NC will lead a grief-supporting herbs workshop in association with the exhibition, "Hello Death, Where Have You Been All My Life?" by Macon Reed. Kent will discuss herbs that support people in times of bereavement and will cover the basics of cordial-making. Each participant will make their own herbal grief tonic and take home a cordial. Masks are required. This activity is appropriate for all experience levels and ages 18+ or with parental guidance. About Terra Sylva School of Botanical MedicineThe Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine is located in Marshall, North Carolina, in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, one of the most ecologically diverse regions in all of North America. The Terra Sylva School was founded by Janet Kent, Dave Meesters, and Jen Stovall, who work between rural Appalachia and the city of New Orleans. The Terra Sylva School's teaching reflects both Janet & Dave’s land-based herbalism and Jen’s experience teaching in urban settings. Terra Sylva evolved to meet the growing need for environmentally and socially conscious herbalists able to support their communities as healers, educators, and emissaries of the plants. From basic energetics and beginning botany to medicine making and human physiology, all the way to herbal formulation and clinical skills, the school imparts the knowledge, skills, and experiences necessary for graduates to begin working as community herbalists. About the ExhibitionThe way we think about death affects the choices we make while we are alive. In the wake of Covid-19 and the social unrest that has defined our time, the presence of death and grief in many of our lives has been unavoidable. Over the past two years, artist-researcher, community organizer, and Center for Craft grant recipient, Macon Reed has built Hello Death, Where Have You Been All My Life? an immersive installation that harnesses the social function of ritual space to reflect, process grief, heal, and envision alternative futures. Reed’s vibrantly-colored shrine-like space revolves around a monumental, central altarpiece covered in imagined ritual objects. These objects are based on Reed’s interviews with workers in the field of death and dying, including death doulas, chaplains, funeral parlor directors, grave diggers, and green burial advocates. As viewers walk around the altar, they will come upon an interactive funeral parlor scene where the artist’s voice guides them through a meditation about death. Central to this audio is the idea that individual reflection on death may create collective change towards more purposeful and sustainable ways of living. Hand-crafted primarily from paper-mâché, paper fiber clay, and gouache, Reed’s uncanny altar objects range from trumpets to loaves of bread. Seeming almost real, Reed modifies their scale and saturation just enough to indicate that you have entered an alternate realm. Unlike rituals that function in a prescribed order, Hello Death, Where Have You Been All My Life? implores viewers to prioritize what they value most, consider their cultural frameworks around death, and reflect on the potential of ritual and craft to heal. Macon Reed lives and works in New Orleans, LA and is the recipient of the Center for Craft’s 2020 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship. Each year this substantial mid-career grant is awarded to two artists who are revising, reclaiming, and advancing the history of craft through their work. Body image: Macon Reed, "These Are Not Fables" (Installation Detail), 2021. ©