Stephanie's Studio

Today for the letter T, I am writing about my relationship to trees, as part of the A to Z Challenge, by sharing the Preface to my book "A Healing Grove: African Tree Remedies and Rituals for Body and Spirit." Seeing the Forest for the Trees I owe my early camaraderie with the woods to my patience, my willingness to search, and my love of mystery. The trees became my friends after my family moved from an urban suburb near New York to the desolate Pine Barrens of New Jersey. My father’s logic for moving from the city to the country seemed counter-intuitive. Most African Americans had begun the sojourn from the South and rural areas to cities in the early decades of the twentieth century, but in the late 1960's we moved to a rural community in the Delaware Valley . Whereas both sets of my ancestors had lived in Virginia, my father’s people having lived in the original shires of that state since the mid-1700's, our families left those rural communities to seek ...

Gran Bwa is a lwa that helps you connect to ancestral roots or the spiritual home of Vodou. A friend of mine, who is an expert on Haitian Vodou, who has spent a lot of time in Haiti with the artists there, told me I had painted Gran Bwa when I made this spontaneous work out of walnut ink and sumi-ink on handmade paper. I had considered this painting a self-portrait. She now holds this piece in her private collection: Quite a few people are afraid of Vodou but it is an awe-inspiring tradition of bringing together plant energy with divinity, spiritual and personal energy. My friend who is very involved with Vodou, especially the art that surrounds it, is from European ancestry. She is light in spirit and bubbly, with a close relationship to nature and her garden.  Vodou affirms the relationships between cycles of life, trees of knowledge and spirit.  The Vodou vision of lwa , understands them as the intelligence of energy present in humans, nature and thoughts.  ...