Saturday October 18th 2-5pm at Tooth & Nail Studio, 2018 S 1st Street in Suite 308 Milwaukee, WI.
Join us in creating portals for ritual, grief, death, and devotion in this workshop led by ceramicist Janelle Gramling and death doula Abby Goelzer. Altars offer sacred space for us to visit each day and make offerings of devotion to the things and people, present and past, that we hold dear. They help us weave ritual into our daily lives which strengthens our bonds with ourselves and the more than human world. In this class we will walk through what it means to build an altar and what yours might hold, from pictures and symbols for your beloved dead to special trinkets and objects that remind you daily what is important to you. We'll spend our time meditating, talking (optional!), and building in community, infusing an energy of love and devotion into these small thresholds that will mark the space where you commune with the ecstatic energy of the universe.
For ages 16 and up. Beginners as well as experienced ceramicists are welcome to take the workshop. Janelle will guide us in slab-building our alters in stoneware. Templates will be provided for beginners, more advanced participants can design their own shape.
Janelle Gramling is a sculptor who uses hand-building techniques to make objects intended to interact with fiber, found objects, or other materials. She has a fine art as well as a product line of unique home decor items, and is the founder and program director at Tooth & Nail.
Abby Goelzer is a death doula, grief worker, and writer living in Milwaukee, WI. In her grief tending, she helps people who have experienced a shift in their sense of self due to loss or life change and helps them move towards embracing the person they are becoming, while holding sacred all that has been lost or changed. She loves using art and writing to help people move through grief as grief moves through them.