museum workshop

chanda and i participated in a workshop today at the rubin museum.

it's for their next exhibit in which several tibetan artists will be presenting different pieces.

today we made tsatsas . . tsatsas are votive offerings made to commemorate the dead. these offerings are made with clay that is often mixed with the loved one's ashes and then shaped into a figurine. they are placed in sacred spaces to acquire positive merit for the deceased person as well as for the one who placed the offering. for our tsatsas we rolled a piece of paper (along with a small stick of incense) on which we had written wishes for love and peace for specific friends or family or for groups of people and the world. she had several seeds we could also add to the figure. we made a cylindrical hole in the bottom of the piece into which we placed the scroll and seeds. 

we were provided with clay, a scroll of paper, incense and a copper mold of the same design as the artist's mold. we had to push the clay into the mold and pound it on the table to help it settle into the point.

chanda had to help me separate the clay from the mold.

artist sonam dolma brauen is helping to smooth out the bumps on my tsatsa. 

chris, another workshop attendee who sat next to me. 

the seeds . . (i'm not sure of their name)

the artist's tsatsa made with the mold her family brought with them from tibet when they fled in 1959 to india. she shared that she walked across the mountains when six years old with her father, mother and four year old sister, whom her mother carried. her father carried several pounds of roasted barley on his back which they mixed with water in wooden cups for their dinner when they stopped at night. in india they settled into a refugee camp where, sadly, they lost her little sister, and her father eventually died also. she finally was able to emigrate to switzerland with her mother where she was able to attend art school.

my finished tsatsas.

chris saying good-bye and thank you to sonam dolma brauen.

chanda's tsatsas . . it was a very special event that i'm glad we could attend.

afterwards, we met greg at chelsea square diner for lunch . . 

heading home (though chanda veered off to study at school for the afternoon).