Photography by Ginger Fierstein
The Workshop
Join us at Blue Willow Teaspot for an equinox evening of flower totem making, collaborating with the season’s autumnal flower offerings from our local farms. Connect with your intuition and desires, while you arrange and imbue your own totem, in a vase, with powerful intentions for the season’s beginning.
Guests will be guided along sensory, seasonal, gentle somatic movement, astrological, and mythic lines, while learning fundamental skills for how to prepare and arrange flowers for vase activations. The evening will include a tea service by Blue Willow Tea, organic bites, and enchanting nature soundscapes.
The evening will include a tea service by Blue Willow Tea, organic bites, and enchanting nature soundscapes.
A portion ticket sales will go towards Ibrahim's mutual aid kitchens.
Prep Work
This workshop includes 30-60 minutes of pre-workshop prep work oriented towards reflection and intention setting, 1:1 prep emails for in person students, 1:1 prep calls for virtual scholarship students, and take home slides for future practice. 1:1 prep offerings are contingent on sign up dates and must be scheduled by Sept. 14 5pm PST. After purchasing a ticket we will connect with you to schedule prep meetings.
By Joan Petranovich
Kit Alston, Your Workshop Guide
Born in the creative crux of Brooklyn, with Caribbean, West African, and Southern American ancestry, Kimber-Lee 'Kit' Alston is a floral artist and alchemist whose journey has been shaped by a diverse array of renowned floral artists and spiritual teachers, including Lidia Sadoun of La Fluriste, Swiss floral artist Evelyn StilundStiele, Marigold SF, Natalie Bowen Brookshire, and Mikaela (Mama) de la Myco. Deeply touched by Brookshire’s belief that "flowers are the medium, arranging is the ritual," and by StiundStiele’s approach of “arranging with soul,” Kit expanded on these concepts, weaving intuitive rituals of power and pleasure into her work, guided by the rich tapestry of her modern and mythic ancestry, and her gifted creative instincts.
Through continued studies at Marigold SF, celebrated for its untamed and whimsical floral arrangements, Kit’s work evolved to embody a deeper connection to wildness, painterly pleasure, play, and mythology; also informed by her Fine Art studies at Brown University in Pont-Aven, France,
studies of art in Morocco and London, her nearly lifelong career as a dancer and writer, and her commitment to imaginative futurism. Her floral designs, recognized for their breathy naturalness, exquisite color theory, daringly liberating forms and compositions, and deep poetic resonances, have earned her significant recognition in the field as an unconventional newcomer. Kit continues to explore intersections of ritual, mythic and modern ancestry, and artistic theories through her floral offerings. Her workshops, bespoke totems, showcases, plays, and community ceremonies inspire and transform ‘the everyday’ into portals of creative liberation, power,
pleasure, and play.
Photo by Ry Noor
By Kimber-Lee ‘Kit’ Alston
Ali Roth, Blue Willow Tea Partner
The Secret Flower Show’s partnership with Blue Willow Tea is one rooted in shared values of delving into our inner truths, through presence filled sensory ritual with our Earth’s preciously blooming offerings.
"Every tea has a story to tell. If you pay close attention and surrender your senses to the moment, you can witness it unfold. There is an intimate connection that is achieved when sharing tea; just as the leaves open and reveal their inner truths, so do we."
—Ali Roth, Owner, Blue Willow Tea
Blue Willow tea is a community-oriented labor of love. Owned and operated by Ali Roth since 2012, Blue Willow is one of the few tea distributors in the United States committed to providing single-origin teas directly from farms dedicated to sustainable practices and humane living conditions for tea workers and their families.
A lovely flower-front tea service will be provided by our Blue Willow Tea friends. A locally baked goods and savory treats service will also be available.
Blue Willow Tea in Berkeley, CA
Blue Willow Tea in Berkeley, CA