THE PRECIOUS ALMANAC
In 2021, I received an ancestral calling to build a relationship with nature. How, where, and with whom was up to me to find out. In 2022, I moved to the Lenni-Lenape lands of Philadelphia and explored what it meant to put my hands in soil, feel sunny warmth on my skin, fight mosquitoes, and cry over a wilting flower. For the past three years, I have been discovering myself, my ancestors, my spirit team, and my divine purpose through the power of plants.
I am grateful to the teachers who have helped me in this journey, Bartram's Garden’s Building Your Home Apothecary instructors, People's Medicine School at Rootwork Herbals, Gerard Miller from Altared Roots, Ashley C. Whiteside, and many more humans and plants who have guided me on this path.
The Precious Almanac: Herbal Discovery, Volume 1, 2025
This zine is a collection of notes and drawings during this learning journey from 2022-2025, specifically materia medicas/plant summaries of 38 plants and herbs that I built a deep relationship with. It can be used as a reference book, a discovery journal, or just an archive of some cool and powerful plants. It is by no means a complete synopsis of herbalism, plant veneration, or gardening. But it is a capsule of my time in reflection, expansion, renewal, and alignment. They are riso printed zines on French Paper made at Soapbox Community Print Shop in West Philadelphia.
The Precious Almanac: Plant Care and Dreaming, Volume 2, 2025
This zine is an application of plant knowledge I acquired through my herbal studies from 2022-2025. It includes photo documentation of how I applied my plant medicine knowledge to my creative, community, and spiritual practice. It includes notes on my herbal medicine making process, herbal formulas/recipes, pictures of spring parties and fall fetês, linocut prints, collages, and garden dreaming plans. They are riso printed zines on French Paper made at Soapbox Community Print Shop in West Philadelphia. Both zines were available for purchase and gifted to friends and family as a part of my third annual Winter Herbal Medicine shares. To learn more about my herbalism practice, see here.
CELESTIAL BEINGS
Celestial Beings was a visual journalism project that collected oral stories, portraits, environments, and visual ephemera documenting Black femme spiritual practices as a healing art. CB captured the various ways women from the African diaspora have embraced spirituality in different forms and transformed their art into pathways for wholeness. The project was awarded a 2019 Ruby’s Artist Grant. See @thecelestialbeings on Instagram for a look back at the unfolding of this project.
VISION AND PURPOSE
Celestial Beings charts the intergenerational journeys of women and femmes of African descent who have infused spirituality in their creative practice. This may take shape in religious conversion, African spiritual traditions, tapping into astrology, or even exploring undecided contemplation. Celestial Beings will serve as a living art form to highlight deep interconnectedness, resilience, and truth created on this plane and above. The purpose of this project is to shine a light on the personal stories of Black women and femmes who identify as creative spiritual healers. Too often Black women are practitioners of services to others as mothers, caregivers, or spiritual guides and hardly care for themselves. Celestial Beings is a space for radical truth sharing on an individual, collective, and community level.
THE ARCHIVE
The Archive serves as an online repository documenting the conversations, portraits, photographs, audio, and video created in response to the interviews with several Black women creative healers in Baltimore. The Archive serves to break down silos and celebrate the wisdom of these Black women who do heart and soul work for themselves and others. See archival video on the Celestial Beings Youtube page.
THE ZINE
The Zine (Volume 1) and five featured posters are printed imaginings of several pieces in the Archive. The portraits, hand-lettered words pulled from quotes in interviews, and the narrators’ own creative responses to the concept of “Celestial Beings” come together as a kaleidoscopic weaving of storytelling, conversation, and daydreams. The Zine (Volume 1) features the five pilot Narrators who embarked on this journey in Spring 2020.
