Healing & Repair Fellowship: Healing Centered Practices

The Healing and Repair Fellowship is a bridge for healing across and throughout Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities. 6018North and Red Line Service worked with Rhonda Wheatley as the inaugural Healing & Repair Fellow.

This series was offered to the public as Healing Centered Practices, a series of free, customized healing workshops held in conjunction with Art Design Chicago projects. Activities offered during each workshop range from guided meditations and fire rituals to storytelling and herbalism primers. The objective of Healing Centered Practices is to help audiences connect to exhibitions on deeper levels while helping Chicago cultural institutions strengthen their relationships with their audiences. 

Rhonda Wheatley is a multidisciplinary artist, intuitive energy healer, and wellness workshop facilitator. Throughout the past nine years, she has integrated healing-focused events into her art practice, which is grounded in the speculative, metaphysical, and spiritual. Rhonda’s workshop topics include journaling, self-care for creatives, confronting self-doubt and self-limiting beliefs, and manifesting, to name a few. She also facilitates interactive group tarot readings and offers workshops to help participants strengthen their own intuition. To help bring these topics to life, Rhonda incorporates guided meditations, sound healing, affirmation-writing, art-making, writing exercises, and energy healing into her workshops. “My purpose is to connect with people in deeply meaningful ways to help them achieve personal breakthroughs, cultivate radical self-acceptance, and ultimately, to contribute more authentically to their communities.”

Rhonda has facilitated workshops with art spaces, non-profits, and academic institutions, and more across the Chicagoland area and beyond. She has worked extensively with 6018North as an organizer and workshop facilitator; she is in her second year as a “Culture of Care Collaborator” with Threewalls; and for ten years has worked with teens, adults, and older adults at Hyde Park Art Center. Additionally, Wheatley has led workshops with spaces in and around Chicago, including ACRE; 3Arts; Chicago Artists Coalition; Columbia College; the University of Chicago’s Logan Center; UIC’s Gallery 400; Lake Forest College; Urban Rivers; Governors State University; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; DePaul University (Art Museum and Office of Alumni Relations); the Smart Museum and CHA Summer Teen Program; Youth & Opportunity United, Y.O.U. (In collaboration with Northwestern University); Northern Illinois University, Aurora Public Art and more. Beyond Illinois, Rhonda has facilitated workshops with Creative Capital (International online workshop), Indiana University’s Black Women’s Retreat, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Ox-Bow School of Art, Loghaven, and Artists at Work.

Healing Centered Practices Events

Jabena Buna Coffee Ceremony

November 12, 2024 at Museum of Contemporary Photography

Owner of Chicago’s renowned Demera restaurant, Tigist Reda, and her team led a traditional Jabena Buna Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony. The daily ceremony, which alludes to Ethiopia’s history as the birthplace of coffee production, continues to be a powerful way of gathering community, strengthening social bonds, community story-telling, and appreciating the complex flavors of coffee and the labor it takes to produce it. The coffee ceremony, almost exclusively led by women, is led by Reda, who explains the national, historic, religious, and cultural significance of the roasting of the green beans, the grinding of the darker brown beans, the preparation of the jabena pot, the brewing stages, and the serving of the coffee in the traditional sini. The ceremony provides an opportunity to gather communal stories and reflect on how this ceremony resonates with your own traditions.

Presented in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s exhibition, Dawit L. Petros: Prospetto a Mare, this event is open to the public. Registration is not necessary.

Words of Wisdom: Connect with the Mind and Art of Robert Paige

October 24, 2024 at Hyde Park Art Center

Artist Robert Paige led an afternoon of conversation and art making in his solo exhibition, The United Colors of Robert Earl Paige.

In this free “Artful Aging” workshop for older adults 65+, Robert spoke about his art, the wise words he lives by, and the stories behind them. Later, participants were invited to share their own words of wisdom by making decorative ‘wisdom art cards’ filled with vibrant patterns much like those in Robert’s work, followed by a lively discussion! Art supplies are provided and refreshments are served.

Resilience & Renewal: Connecting with the Earth, the Ancestors, and Your Hidden Gifts

October 19, 2024 at South Side Community Art Center

Khadijah Kysia and Rhonda Wheatley led a hands-on workshop exploring and strengthening resilience — our brilliance, our ability to make a way out of no way, and our capacity for self-renewal, body, mind, and spirit. Khadijah, a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, provided an interactive primer on herbs involving taste and touch. Rhonda, a multimedia artist and energy worker, shared tools and practices for connecting with ancestors, often a source of our resilience; for connecting with the earth; balancing our energies; and calling forth our hidden gifts. She facilitated a guided meditation, discusses crystals, consults the tarot, and provides writing exercises.

This session is presented in conjunction with South Side Community Art Center’s exhibition, ReSOURCE: Art and Resourcefulness in Black Chicago.

Transformation by Fire: Release Limitations & Renew Your Life!

September 16, 2024 at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Artists Rhonda Wheatley and Elsa Muñoz led this self-reflective and interactive healing workshop that helps release limitations and clear blockages. Elsa, whose recent series of paintings entitled “Controlled Burns” explores themes of fire and renewal, discussed the power of fire to transmute pain and promote growth. She led the group through a burning bowl ritual. Rhonda, also an intuitive energy worker, shared writing exercises and a guided meditation to facilitate the release and renewal process on deep levels. She also discussed tools for continuing the work on your own. Bring a journal and an open mind and please participate at your level of comfort. This workshop is presented in conjunction with Jane Addams Hull-House Museum’s exhibition, Radical Craft: Arts Education at Hull-House from 1889-1935.

We are all Loving Energy

September 13, 2024 at Chicago History Museum

As we listen to and see images and videos of events from around the world, as well as from our own backyards, we can feel a wide range of emotions in a very brief amount of time which can linger within us for extended periods. At times we can feel helpless. As human beings, it is our nature to be of service to others, especially to those in crisis.  We are also discovering that we are energy and that everything is energy. When we see ourselves as energy, we have the power to be of service far beyond the limited capabilities of our physical bodies. We can emit loving energy to anyone anywhere. We are all linked through the air we breathe.

During this deep relaxation and sound bath, participants close their eyes and allow the sound of the gong to relax their nervous systems and slow their breathing. Aneela Dean takes them through a guided meditation of being in their energy-body, in love energy, and guides them to expand this heart energy out to the planet.

This session is offered in conjunction with the Design as Activism Symposium. Although the full symposium requires registration, drop-ins to We are all Loving Energy are welcome.

Healing and Closing Celebration: Breaking Free, Releasing What Was & Moving Onward!

June 15, 2024 at 6018North

Wheatley lead this workshop to cut ties with limitations and move forward on your terms. This is a chance to break free from the limitations placed upon us by tradition. Whether you’re ready to take a small step forward or make a giant leap, this workshop will help you begin to let go and liberate yourself.

You are invited to create and step into a new version of yourself, unbound by the weight of the past or the expectations and demands of others. Give yourself grace and permission as you release the version of yourself that may have once accepted limitations.

Participants share in discussion, a reflective writing exercise, a healing ritual, and a guided meditation, while also learning practices for continuing to “break free” beyond the workshop. Please bring a notebook or journal and participate at your individual level of comfort.

The workshop is followed by music and the closing celebration of Opening Passages: Photographers Respond to Chicago and Paris at 6018North.