We do rely on art for healing purposes, but art that directly heals often requires a performative component. That is not to say that it delivers results, but there needs to be an interactive element in which the art appears to “give back” to the viewer. I visited the shrine of St. Anthony in Padua, for me, it was mostly to see the Donatello altarpiece and the Antonio and Tullio Lombardo friezes, but it was impossible to ignore the numerous worshippers at the shrine, their foreheads resting against the saint’s sarcophagus, inserting small pieces of paper with requests for St. Anthony. For nine years, Shervone Neckles has wheeled her healing cart — the Creative Wellness Gathering Station throughout the five boroughs and dispensed potions to fascinated and grateful onlookers.
The potions are herbal combinations: nettle root, Rooibos, hibiscus flowers, and other fragrant and desiccated vegetation, and each has specific curative capabilities. Even in the gallery the delicate two-wheeled trolley of wrought iron curlicues was still activated insofar that one could read an information sheet, self-diagnose one’s ailments, and combine ingredients to make a personal tincture; though it would have been far more fun to have the artist herself in person dispensing wisdom (photographs of various public interaction were on the wall to illustrate the cart out in public).
Neckles is obviously not angling to cure cancer on street corners—her herbal wisdom is drawn from communal and family remedies handed down in Grenada (she represented Grenada in the Venice Beinnale in 2019) — and wellness refers to the alleviation of both physical and mental burdens with the intention of facilitating the general harmony of society and the individuals’ place as part of that whole.
This harmony is expressed in a series of transparent quilts which hang in the gallery space and through their neat cubicular patchwork assemblage, represent the notion of a healthy community/society. The process of experiencing the Creative Wellness Gathering Station is two-part: the main objective is providing visitors with a small wellness packet of herbs, but they are then requested to make a small sachet of their individual recipe and contribute it back to the community, also including their first name, location, and perhaps a thought.
These sachets form the medium of the quilt, with a few decorative embellishments, and offer a stark evocation of a society of wellness, in which one member suggests what worked for them to the rest. On a formal level, the transparency is both a literal metaphor and a visual cue: we can see the wall behind, and the marvelous geometric shadows cast by Neckles’ creations. The quilts don’t hem anybody in, instead they act as portals to what can be accomplished by unity, clarity, and transparency.
Neckles has long been involved with the process of making books and paper as well, and worked with Dieu Donné as a resident artist in 2021 to craft a series of assemblages that incorporated food into the process of paper making. In Steeping Memory, she creates a new series of papers, this time incorporating the twelve healing ingredients found on her wagon. Taken out of context, these papers would not necessarily speak to their particular origins, but the intriguing graininess of the papers, their familiar light ochre, beige, and rich mahogany pigments, hint at their natural origins, as well as the specks of organic patter encased within the hearty sheet.
The artist’s intentions are poetically contradictory—“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.” On the one hand, she presents a grassroots method of dispensing wellness — her herb-laden cart — but on the other, she creates matrices and solid, geometric representations of communal and tradition-based activities that allude to these histories but avoid didacticism. It is an unexpected juxtaposition, but a moving and engaging one.
All photos courtesy of the artist.
York College Arts Gallery through December 1st, 160-01 Liberty Avenue, Jamaica 11451
About the writer: Will Corwin is a sculptor and writer from New York. He makes cast metal sculptures and writes regularly for the Brooklyn Rail, Art & Antiques, and ArtPapers. His most recent curatorial project was 60s Synchronicities this past summer at the Collegiale Notre-Dame de Riberac in Perigord, featuring the work of Perle Fine, Marguerite Louppe, and Jann Haworth. His most recent exhibition was a survey of the work of his last ten years of sculpture, at River House Arts in Toledo Ohio. @william_corwin