Nov 1: The Art of Remembrance w/ Cempasúchil: A Marigold Study with Nelise Charles Bey and Jasmín Durán
The Art of Remembrance with Cempasúchil
When: November 1st, 2026
Time: 3:30 - 5:30pm
Where: 435 South 5th Street, Brooklyn NY 11211 - Studio #1
Class Description
In this plant and color study, we’ll commune with Cempasúchil (aztec or african marigold) and explore natural dyeing as a ritual practice of remembrance. We will ground in the spiritual significance of this plant ally and explore its medicine with our senses. Touching, smelling, tasting: communing. Working with silk and fresh and dried plant matter, we’ll create a textile for intention and connection to be used as an altar cloth. As we move through the many portals of memory, grief, and transformation that this time of year invites in, this cloth will serve as a grounding piece to tether us through this movement.
Your Teachers
Nelise Charles Bey
Nelise is a textile artist, printmaker, and natural dyer living and creating in Brooklyn, NY. Her aesthetic is colorful and pattern-filled, a play on her Caribbean roots. Nelise works mostly with silks and other natural fibers, in which she dyes and silkscreens. She really enjoys being outdoors on a hike, foraging (mushrooms, wild edibles, flowers), and identifying local medicinal herbs that are available throughout Brooklyn and New York State.
Jasmín Durán
Jasmín Durán (she/they) is a clinical herbalist, community educator, urban grower and care practitioner based in unceeded Lenapehoking territory (NYC). Communing closely with plants, urban gardens, storytelling and immigrant communities, their work is focussed in the remembrance of ancestral healing practices, technologies and traditions in the immigrant diaspora. Today you can find her facilitating herbal workshops, vending and sharing in community under her herbal project, Meztli medicinals.
You’ll leave with:
- A handmade, plant-dyed silk altar cloth to hold your intentions and support personal ritual.
- A deeper connection to Cempasúchil and its cultural and spiritual significance.
- A sensory introduction to natural dyeing as a practice of remembrance and connection.
- Space to reflect on memory, grief, and transformation through creative practice.
The Fifth Room
This workshop is a part of The Fifth Room workshop series co - created by Krystal Frame of Sustain Frame and Cara bringing together instructors, artists, and community to explore transforming grief through ritual and craft-based practices.
Drawing on John Coltrane's The Coltrane Circle, the mathematics of jazz, and Five Element theory, the series explores the alchemical theme of Solve et Coagula — to dissolve and reform. We believe grief works in a spiral, leading us through transformation but never quite back to the place where we started.