Heart Strings: A Beading Ritual
2022
Heart Strings: A Beading Ritual was a month-long contemplative and embodied ritual conducted in solitude and with others intended to foster connection to the body and the earth using specific parts of the rose.
It was created through the 2019-2021 Jerome-funded Art(ist) on the Verge Fellowship.
Photos by Bruce Silcox
In the formless days of the pandemic, I began stringing rosehips. It turned into a private ritual: first soaking the rosehips to soften them, and then ending the day by stringing them onto strings of various lengths. Prayers, mantras and songs came to me through the mundane act, and I was moved to tears, thinking of my lineage, my body, our collective body, the hardship of the pandemic, and the trauma and genocide this country was founded on. In essence, I was tending to the sacred work of grief. Without realizing it, I had recreated an ancestral practice that was made clear to me later through research of the rosary.
For Heart Strings, I brought my materials into a solitary studio in the backyard of a friend in the neighborhood where I live. I combined days of stringing beads alone, along with opening up this practice to others. I invited people to come sit with me and shared simple instructions about how to string the rosehips, then let the beading itself guide the interaction. When it felt right, I asked how people connect to time, ancestors, or descendants. Participants could either take the string of rosehips home with them or leave them in the space. As the strung rosehips accumulated, I hung them in the small studio, creating an installation inspired by the month of shared creation and reflection that was open for public viewing. A series of songs (sample below) were written through the duration of the practice and accompanied the installation.
