Nurturing Numbers
How do we tend to community, as a gardener tends to a garden?
— Nurturing Numbers, Maya Elena
A garden is meant to sustain, to feed, to support.
Nurturing Numbers, calls to focus the continuous need for active care within predominantly white institutions towards students of color. Within these institutions, students of color work tirelessly to build resources from scratch for the student body. Nurturing Numbers was created as a communal space of healing and rest for students of color that live within the Bard College Community.
Through a series of expressive arts workshops that Maya Elena developed over the 2023 Fall semester of Undergrad, Connecting Roots, Mending Space, and Networking Breathwork, were a collection of workshops facilitated throughout the Spring Semester of 2023. Providing rest as a resource and accessible art for Students of Color across Bard’s campus who work tirelessly to create safe communities here at Bard College. The titles are reflective of the questions and meditations raised within each workshop amongst the students. Nurturing and providing restful artistic spaces not only to students of color but the entire student body. Providing access to art and communal gathering as a form of collective and personal healing for the community as a whole.
The art, rest, and communal reflection is archived within the grounds of the Garden. The canvases and conversations shared during:
Connecting Roots
As a group, students practiced breathwork and movement-based exercises to ground themselves in the space and build trust in the group as they worked throughout the workshop. After the movement-based portion, students worked together on large pieces of seed paper canvas with various plant-based materials following expressive arts prompting. The seed paper canvases, embedded with lavender and chamomile seeds, are physically planted within the bowls handmade by the students in the later workshop. Utilizing the time to slow down, write, and reflect on our roots and how we bring ourselves into our communities, formed in temporary spaces. The bowls in the garden are temporary vessels made with care, holding chamomile and lavender seeds to grow and foster herbs of rest over time.
Mending Space
“We meld and bend into the individuals who stand today, shattered, retouched, and fired again, standing tall, mended with care.”
As a group, students created with their hands, working with clay collected from the grounds of Bard Farm and molding the clay into ceramic bowls and plates. Attempting to mend comfort, restoration, and support through our interactions seems to push our bodies to capacities of burnout. Especially in a high-paced institutional environment, the balance between rest and work on top of the invisible labors students and leaders of color take on at predominately white institutions. Taking the time to slow down and work with the clay from the soil, processing rock after rock to create a starting point. A foundation from scratch. Following the ceramics workshop, students ended with a color meditation. This meditation is a form of breathwork and visioning practice, where every exhale fills the room with the color of focus.
Networking Breathwork
“What food reminds you of comfort or home? What memories pop up for you? What meals do you love to share with loved ones? "
As a group, students shared dishes that brought them comfort growing up and their handwritten recipes to add to the Recipe Archive. On Bard campus, making our authentic comfort meals from our homes can be difficult due to obtaining ingredients. For students who could not bring the food that they love, they brought food that brings them closest to comfort now to share. During the potluck, students came together to reflect and share what rest means to them and reflect on the semester and their time here at Bard. Following the potluck, the students came full circle to the canvases they worked on together when they first began getting to know one another. They planted their seeds of reflection and conversations in the garden together. Their handmade bowls of planted seeds lay scattered across the Bard's Community Garden for their final temporary place.