Art in the Garden: Rose Beads

Did you know that the Latin word for rosary is rosarium, meaning “gardland of roses”? Centuries ago, people were practicing the craft of turning rose petals into clay to create beads for their rosaries.

Borrowing from this tradition, we will create our own rose beads to craft our own charm bracelets to wear roses like we wear our hearts on our sleeves.

While we wait for for our beads to bake, we’ll sip on rose tea and reflect on the work of our hands, and how we may choose to be in veneration of plants, communing creativly with plant kin through our artistic practices.

In a season of Shein, let’s examine the root of our adornments and that cost to our ecologies. The best custom couture is of the soil, of our hands, of our community. Join us to consider where our plants come from, not just through our foods, but how we we adorn and beautify ourselves.

Your Facilitator: Jules Jīvanī Ruby Kulaya

I focus on ritual, routine, and divinity across nature & culture in my art and holistic wellness services. Through a long-term background working in theater, I became disenchanted with the industry- as time went on… particularly, post Lockdown – it wasn’t the storytelling I thought I signed up for. I found there was a lack of intention in the processes, and a lot of waste, adding to the climate crises When I began to seriously set aside time for the care of my spirit, I began to learn, remember – that what I was called to practice, was already rooted in my body’s memory and ancestry. My lived experience & career has led me to an ethos rooted in advocacy & activism for the overlapping intersections of the global majority, LGBTQIA+ and neurodiverse communities, with a focus on mental wellbeing and resource access.

Grounded in the garden, join us to critically and creatively engage in a diversity of artmaking techniques that open us up to deeper dialogue on place, our relationships to our lived environments, ecological concerns, and contemporary culture. Learn meditative and mindful drawing, printmaking and sculptural techniques, scientific observation with plant portraiture, nature-inspired intuitive artmaking and mixed media exploration, and other various practices from botanical and ecologically-focused contemporary artists to create works of art to nurture your relationship to the garden.

Immerse yourself in the learning garden, greenhouse, and across Riverbank State Park’s green roof overlooking the Hudson River to create artwork that is rooted in place and in partnership with plants.

Workshops are rain or shine.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.