Creative Mourning
Presented by PAUSE & FCCW
Seven monthly sessions on Fridays, October–April
5:30–7:30PM
FCCW: 3053 Rosslyn St. LA CA 90065
Info on our space here
Max Participants: 10
Free
Starting this fall, PAUSE and FCCW are co-presenting Creative Mourning, a seven-month, in-person, peer support group for people of color in Los Angeles to explore grief through art. Each session invites participants into collective reflection, art-making, and storytelling — not as therapy, but as a shared inquiry into how grief lives in us, and how art helps us hold it.
This program is free and open to 10 participants who identify as people of color. Participants must be available for all seven sessions, as we intend to build a group of people who will hold this container consistently together over the course of seven months.
Session dates:
Friday, October 3
Friday, November 7
Friday, December 5
Friday, January 9
Friday, February 6
Friday, March 6
Friday, April 3
Time: 5:30–7:30PM
Location: Feminist Center for Creative Work
ABOUT THE FACILITATORS
Alica Forneret (she/her) is an educator, speaker, and consultant dedicated to creating new spaces for people to explore grief and grieving. She is the Founder and Executive Director of PAUSE, a nonprofit focused on supporting Communities of Color through grief and end of life.
Alica consults on product development and systems change to help companies create resources and tools for grieving communities. She facilitates sessions focused on inclusive bereavement responses and how to address grief at work for companies including Google, NASA JPL, Nielsen, and The California Department of Education. And she has partnered on international events and projects with The Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, Columbia University, and Lululemon.
Alica is currently a guest facilitator with Humane Prison Hospice Project, Claire Bidwell Smith’s “Grief Training Program”, and is an expert Contributor with Help Texts. Alica previously held roles as the Chief Operating Officer of Going with Grace and the Program Lead and Content Strategist for School Crisis Recovery & Renewal’s “Pedagogy of Grief”. She’s a member of Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC), Association of Death Education and Counseling (ADEC, membership committee), Sage, and The California Black Healthcare Network. She previously sat as an associate board member for Our House and an inaugural member of the BC Women’s Health Foundation Young Women’s Council.
Alica’s writing and work about grief, work, and race have been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Huffington Post, GQ, and has been translated into Spanish, French, Tagalog, Polish, and Hmong.
Stevie Luna Ibarra (they/she) is a self-described “jack-of-all-trades and a Master of Social Work.” With over 12 years of experience, their work spans across program development, direct clinical services, research, and systems-level advocacy. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at UC Santa Cruz and her Master’s degree in Social Work at CSU Long Beach.
They are passionate about providing heart-centered support as an Associate Psychotherapist with the Pink Moon Healing Collective and as the co-host of the Bleeding Hearts Club podcast. As a bereaved sibling and griever in diaspora, they also feel beckoned to cultivate collective spaces to nourish our relationships with grief and with each other through sound baths.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Malavika Rao I am a multidisciplinary artist and educator primarily working in painting, fiber, and installation. In my practice, I recontextualize practices of homemaking as methods of worldmaking, using craft to heal generational trauma and tend to the fragile relationship between care and survival. In my installations, I employ various crafting practices as modes of speculative world-building—creating spaces to interrogate inherited structures of care. These spaces propose alternative relational frameworks grounded in reciprocity and collective sustenance, invoking a deeper, cosmological sense of interconnectedness, where the act of making becomes a ritual of repair, attunement, and orientation toward life-affirming futures.
Megha Jairaj is an artist from anti-god’s own county, Kerala. Their practice is shaped by a call to collaborative repair of what has been disfigured by caste, capital, and carcerality. Through performance, text, and pedagogy, they explore how ecologies, personal archives and body-knowledge can be activated to imagine and live otherwise.
Marissa Herrera is a 3rd generation Chicana/Indigenous woman and a lifelong Angeleno. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Artistic Director of 4C LAB (501c3) and CEO of De Mi Alma Productions creating work for stage, tv and film as a director, choreographer and producer. As a leader in Arts Education, Marissa firmly believes in using the arts as a tool to empower and nurture young creative visionaries to develop empathy, leadership and become advocates for social justice and civic engagement. Her leadership and vision at 4C LAB has impacted over 18,000 youth and community members since 2016.
Marissa has been featured in a cover story of the NY Times and Vanity Fair in recognition for her leadership and championing the value of representation, equity and inclusion across all media and artistic platforms. She is the 2018 recipient of the Jubilation Foundation Fellowship Award and was recognized by The Ford Motors Company in their “Unstoppable: Latina On The Move” national campaign. Marissa was selected for the 2024 ArtEquity National BIPOC Leadership Circle as well as receiving the honors as the Civic Grand Marshall for the Azusa Golden Days Parade for her dedication to civic and community work.
Marissa Herrera has become a visionary force by blending creative leadership, cultural storytelling, and youth empowerment. Whether through nonprofit programming, community and cultural engagement or theatrical productions, she consistently uplifts underrepresented voices, inspires the next generation of artists, and builds vibrant, inclusive communities. For more information please visit www.marissaherrera.net
Angie Emily Joseph was born and raised in Naples, Florida to Haitian parents. Her family had the mentality that it takes a village to raise a child, so she was really raised with over 15 distinct parent figures and 10 sibling figures. Angie also comes from an agricultural background. Growing up, she would spend time with her grandfather in his outdoor vegetable garden for hours on end. Because of this, her work uses vibrant and bold colors while also pulling inspiration from nature. Other themes of her work includes family, her Haitian culture, and emergence. Though she dabbles in most mediums, she is known for her use of water-based media and use of transparency.
Anna Luisa Petrisko (she/her) is an artist, musician, and healer. Her work spans sound, performance, video, sculpture, and ritual. She investigates the body as a site of paradox – transcendent of time and space. With roots in community and collaboration, she builds spaces of cultural memory and spiritual connection. She has over 25 years of study and teaching in body-based practices and healing arts such Yoga, Meditation, Sound Healing, Dance, and Somatics. She has her own dedicated spiritual practice that includes annual silent meditation retreats and pilgrimages to temples of devotion. Through her work, she studies and distills various spiritual and artistic practices to create a unique communal healing experience.
Suhn Lee is a Los Angeles based artist with a focus in ceramics and textiles. Her work is heavily influenced by her Korean American upbringing and her culture’s obsession with image and overachievement. Her repetition-driven practice synthesizes material exploration into a process akin to a physical mantra of transmuting suffering into a reverence for the present moment. Each piece is meticulously constructed from countless individual parts with an intentional disregard for time saving techniques. The slow nature of her work is, in part, an act of silent rebellion against society’s preoccupation with productivity.
Lee received a B.A. in Communications from UC San Diego and graduated Cum Laude from Southwestern Law School. She has a legal background in Intellectual Property licensing and experience in Fashion Buying and Merchandising. She has recently exhibited at Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles; Space Ten Gallery, Hawthorne; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions’s (LACE) Art Benefit; LH Horton Jr Gallery, Stockton; and completed residencies at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine.
Lee currently teaches ceramics and serves as the Contemporary Clay Minor Area Head at Otis College of Art and Design.