July 27, 4:00 PM–6:00 PM
Join Antonia Estela Pérez Rojas and Franklin Street Works for a walking tour of Mill River Park where Antonia will help us discover medicinal plants that are underfoot in our everyday lives. The walk will be followed by a workshop and wine reception at Franklin Street Works where participants will make their own herbal tinctures. This free, public event is on July 27 from 4-6pm and is part of FSW’s summer garden and exhibition programming.
The event will begin at 4:00 PM with a walk to Mill River at 4:10 PM. At 5:15 PM we will head back at FSW to make our own tinctures! Chilled complimentary wines will be served at FSW after the walk.
Antonia Estela Pérez Rojas – a Brooklyn-based creative of Chilean descent whose crafts include medicine making, community building, and painting – will lead a two-hour course where participants will learn some of the basics of herbalism. If you’re interested in plant medicine but don’t know where to start, this workshop is for you! During this walk attendees will learn how plants work within our bodies to maintain systemic balance and how to repurpose common local plants for medicinal use.
“We can often become disconnected from ourselves to a point where we get sick from overworking, not resting enough, overstimulation etc. Plants can play a crucial role in supporting us to rethink and reframe our relationship to ourselves and our time,” Antonia explains, “I want participants to leave feeling a deeper sense of connection to themselves and the plants that grow in our bioregion. Simultaneously, as we learn to care for ourselves, we must learn to care for the plants whose medicine we are using. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of their surrounding environment, learn to identify several plants and their medicinal properties.”
This workshop is an extension of Antonia’s project Herban Cura, a community organization which aims to guide an open-source, radical movement towards societal regeneration. Herban Cura opens spaces through gatherings and workshops, which allow for deep and honest communication with each other and ourselves. We know that by simply coming together to move, breathe, share, make medicine, and create, we are planting the alternatives to uproot the systems that oppress us all.
Antonia Estela Pérez Rojas is also featured in Franklin Street Works current group exhibition “Collective Action Archive: Redux” as part of the RAGGA NYC installation. RAGGA NYC is a hybrid of ideas that began as late night conversations over familial island roots, current social politics, empanadas vs. beef patties, pum pum shorts, scamming and a longing for a party that provides a for queer Caribbeans and their kin. A platform founded by Christopher Udemezue (Neon Christina), RAGGA NYC connects a growing network of queer Caribbean artists and allies working across a wide range of disciplines—including visual art, fashion, poetry and more—to explore how race, sexuality, gender, heritage, and history inform their work and their lives. RAGGA fosters an extended family that makes space for solidarity, celebration, and expression, with deep commitments to education and grassroots organizing.
Collective Action Archive: Redux includes photos, videos, artworks, pamphlets and texts by more than 3-dozen artist/activist collectives hailing from across the United States includes contributions from longtime collectives such as ABC No Rio, the Guerrilla Girls, Paper Tiger TV, subRosa, and Temporary Services. READ MORE
DETAIL OF PHOTO BY DAN GUTT FOR RAGGA NYC
Visit this LINK for FSW garden event accessibility information or contact our Creative Director, Terri C Smith anytime at terri@franklinstreetworks.org or on her cell: 203-253-0404 M-F between noon and 5pm.
Mill River Park and its pathways are built to ADA standards.