Grief is a Garden: tending the heart through Spring is a collage mixed-media course that aims to facilitate tending to the growing matter of grief through creative, visual art and multi sensory experiences.

Sundays, 1-4pm, January 21 - February 25, 2024

Hosted by the Denver Botanic Gardens

(this small class has sold out, but please reach out if you would be interested in another upcoming grief tending class)

Grief is often misunderstood as a sad mind-state from which to try to escape, but we may better understand grief as a rich, dark feeling place - a healthy “soil” from which we grow and find beauty, meaning and our own style of tending. Finding and using ready-imagery, color and texture to visually communicate the grief that is often difficult to express in words, participants will follow the intuitive process of collage. Assembling a personal grief garden, one may find a place for the grieving psyche to rest and to discover one’s own resilient creative practice of soul-tending.

Participants will learn how anyone can use creative art processes to process emotion and settle during disorienting states of normal human experience.

Utilizing accessible media - paper, scissors, glue, pencils, pastels, paints, etc. - Students will be guided through the beginning to end of landscaping their personal grief metaphorical container as a growing garden.

Along with visual arts activation, there will be corollary “breaks” or additions to active art process - for example: poetry, doodle sessions, “get-up-and-move”, observing and sharing times. The indoor tropical conservatory at DBG will be included in each day's first 15 minutes and participants will have access to the garden beyond class-time.  Non-lyrical music will be played during studio sessions to further engage senses toward creativity.

https://www.botanicgardens.org/programs/grief-garden