Mo(u)rning Altars: Beloved Mommas Edition

Join us in creating portals for ritual, grief, death, and devotion in this workshop led by ceramicist Janelle Gramling and death doula Abby Goelzer. In this workshop we will be constructing altars to the mothers, the mamas, the moms and/or the mother-figures who raised us as long as they could before leaving this life behind for whatever comes next. Mother’s Day without a mom can be a hurdle to endure in the month of May, and this is a space to be in community with others who carry the same grief and loss and who know that no matter how long it’s been since she died, there is often a mom-shaped hole whose absence weighs more than we can quantify. Altars offer sacred space for us to visit each day and make offerings of devotion to what we hold dear. This is an opportunity to create an altar to a late mother or mother figure you would like to involve in your acts of daily ritual with the universe and the divine. In this class we will walk through what it means to build an altar and what yours might hold for your beloved mum, from pictures and symbols 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. Beginners as well as experienced ceramicists are welcome to take the workshop. Janelle will guide us in slab-building our altars in stoneware. Templates will be provided for beginners, more advanced participants can design their own shape. The studio will slow-dry and fire the altars. They will be ready for pickup 3 weeks after class.