Andrea Walls: Seeding Joy Through Art, Ritual, and Intention Jars by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Kudos to creator and curator Andrea Walls of the Museum of Black Joy, who once again facilitated a powerful workshop to usher in the new year. Hosted in one of the stunning open galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this intention-setting gathering was rooted in African diasporic spiritual practices of reflection, ritual, and care.

Playwright and Workshop Participant Mona R. Washington with Andrea Walls 

Participants were invited to release what no longer served them-to name this- and to call into being what they desired for themselves, their families, and their communities using an amalgamation of herbs, oils, sacred objects, and spoken intention.

Workshop facilitator Andrea 

Walls, creator and curator 

of the Museum of Black Joy, 

opens Seeding Joy by sharing 

the intentions and goals for 

the gathering.

Ahead of the workshop, participants received a list of herbs and the spiritual work associated with each. Hibiscus, red raspberry leaf, lavender, nettle, holy basil, Spanish moss, and dandelion were among them, along with cowrie shells and rose quartz. Oils such as sweet almond and sunflower were also introduced. In the open gallery space, surrounded by artwork created by young people, a long table was laid with an abundant offering of herbs. Each participant received a notebook and pencil, a mason jar, and squares of African fabric to later decorate the jar.

Participants Octavia McBride-Ahebee and Patricia Eads

We were then invited into the gallery where Zoe Leonard’s Strange Fruit is on exhibition. Our time there unfolded as a collective conversation shaped by individual responses. The installation, which consists of nearly 300 hand-sewn, slowly decaying fruit peels, commemorates losses from the AIDS crisis and takes its title from the anti-lynching song. Intended to decompose, the stitched skins challenge traditional ideas of preservation while evoking mortality, memory, and the dehumanization of the epidemic.

Hand-stitched fruit peels in
 Zoe Leonard’s Strange Fruit,
holding grief, memory, and endurance.

The work asks us to bear witness to histories of endurance, grief, and presence. Like African diasporic spiritual traditions, Strange Fruit holds what is difficult without turning away and gestures toward care, survival, and transformation as collective possibilities.

Following our discussion, we returned to our workspace to create our intention jars. 

  

We were given a sheet of paper with a line dividing it down the middle: on one side, we wrote what we did not wish to carry into the new year; on the other, what we hoped to bring forward. After tearing the paper in two, the list of what we were releasing was folded away from the body and collected to be burned later. The list of desires was folded toward the body and placed inside the mason jar. 

The open gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, filled with light, art, and shared intention.

We then filled our jars with chosen herbs and oils and offered prayers, each in our own way, to God, our ancestors, the natural world, or all three. The jars were sealed and taken home to be placed in our living spaces. Andrea also invited participants to consider creating additional jars for other meaningful places in their lives. 

Poet and artist Victoria H. Peurifoy
shares words of wisdom for the new year.

Teddy Poneman, supporting creative programming that connects Drexel students and community neighbors.

Participants hold their New Year’s desires, sealed in intention jars.

Participants shared how deeply they enjoyed SEEDING JOY: An Intention-Setting Workshop, leaving with both a ritual object and a renewed sense of purpose for the year ahead.

*Special thanks to Teddy Poneman, Associate Director of Programs & Engagement at Drexel’s Writers Room.