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Amulet Making with Rachel Leah Cohen
October 18, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
FreeThroughout the Jewish diaspora, people have created small pouch amulets to hold anything with protective energy and value. These are often made with everyday materials already on hand: medicinal plants, salt, metal, stones, and symbolic objects. The recipes and the names for these amulets vary by place. In Ladino-speaking Sephardic communities, they are called “bulsika” and in Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi communities, “baytelech.” The ingredients connect us to our ancestors, the environment, and the places we live. The pouch can be worn on the body, kept in a pocket, or hung up in the home. Come make an amulet for yourself or as a gift for someone else, as an embodied ritual of care, connection, and protection.
About: Rachel Leah Cohn is a visual artist and educator based in Indianapolis. Her muliti-disciplinary practice is concerned with themes of communication, mythology and rituals. She exhibits her work internationally and teaches at Ball State University in Muncie, IN.
SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy, the City of Indianapolis, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission — and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.
At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.