Image: Nydia Blas, Group #2, 2016, from the series The Girls Who Spun Gold.
From black and white to color, abstract to portraiture, there are an array of photographs in Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility reveal the connections between Black girlhood and the natural world. Individually, these images conjure up the cultural and geographical diversity of and connections within peoples of African descent throughout the diaspora; together, they reveal ephemerality, complexity and ethereality as dominant themes of the Black body in nature, as seen in contemporary Black photography.
Continue your exploration into nature with a nature based workshop. You can grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs in just about any container as long as it has adequate drainage. After the tour join Charmain La Fortune, Newark based urban farmer and founder of Giving One Tenth Community Garden as she leads a workshop on growing food in small spaces, upcycling, at home.
The topics covered in this workshop include:
· Small pots or any vessel with holes for planting
· Introduction on the benefits of planting (vegetables/herbs)
· What type of soil is used for starting seeds vs potting soil
· Different planting options, seedling trays, upcycle plastic containers, paper towel rolls etc.
· Timing of sowing seeds based on the planting zone and seed package instructions
· Last frost date based on planting zone
· Watering
· Fertilizers
· Pest control
· Germination period
· Positioning of plants
· Companion planting
Program Schedule
Curator Tour: 12-1pm
Gardening Workshop: 1:15-2:30pm
About the Curator
Zoraida Lopez-Diago is a photographer, curator, activist and co-founder of Women Picturing Revolution (WPR). Her photographs center around themes of migration, incarceration, and the undocumented and have been shown at institutions including the Photographic Center Northwest and Paul Baldwell Gallery in Medellin, Colombia. She has lectured on her work at Harvard University, Mt. Holyoke College, and La Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), among others. Lopez-Diago was the assistant curator of the Picturing Black Girlhood exhibition at Columbia University and co-curated Women as Witness, a photography exhibition about how women document survival. She recently co-presented with WPR co-founder Lesly Deschler Canossi at the Tate Modern on their forthcoming book. She lives in Beacon, New York.
About the Workshop Leader
Charmaine La Fortune is the founder of the Giving One Tenth Community Garden. Located at 715-717 South 20th Street in Newark, NJ, the vision of creating this Community Garden happened 16 years ago when she moved to the city of Newark. During her first 10 years of living in Newark she grew most of her summer vegetables in her backyard. Charmaine experienced the joy of gardening as a child growing up in Trinidad and considers herself a 4th generation farmer. Additionally, with the strong sense of community from Caribbean heritage, she felt that if she could grow more she could donate more to her neighbors.
Giving Giving One Tenth was created around the concept whereby you don’t have to give much but the blessings can be returned 10-fold. The Garden’s focus is to provide access to fresh, local, in-season organically grown crops to the neighbors, creating a safe, healthier community. Their mission is to improve the health of individuals and communities by educating and building collaborative partnerships. During the growing season they offer gardening workshops, cooking demos, yoga, and meditation sessions. One Tenth’s motto is to “plant what you eat and eat what you grow” to become stewards of mother earth.
