Mourning Altars: Beloved Pets 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 our beloved pets who are now waiting for us on the other side of their rainbow bridge. So often the deaths of our beloved pets is not held with the same gravity or weight given to our other beloved dead, and we wanted to create a space where the loss of our animal kith and kin is held in the light and honored with all the love and grief it deserves. Altars offer sacred space for us to visit each day and make offerings of devotion to what we hold dear. Allow your beloved pets to be part of your daily ritual in order to strengthen your bonds with yourself 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 for your beloved animal family, 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.