Offerings

Offerings

TAP YOUR TRUTH

My mission is to honor your creative well-spring, to encourage you to believe that it is sacred, to help you experience it as your best resource, and to then provide you with toolsĀ to share the gifts that will rise forth as a result.

EVENTS

EVENTS

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 

Advent Dark Journal

NOVEMBER 30, 2025 - JANUARY 6, 2026

Online and in your home


An online and at home workshop rippling with poetry, prompts, and book arts explorations designed to stoke your inner flames during the holiday season.

What you get

A luscious package of art materials mailed to your home with secret treasures packed in beautiful envelopes that correspond with 6 weeks of lessons, a centering meditation, and provocations on the Kajabi learning platform along with 4 optional live meetups with Suzi and the Advent Dark Journal community. The live sessions will be recorded and available to you through March 31, 2026.

Do you feel a clench in your belly weeks ahead of the holiday seasonā€“a sort of pre-emptive ache about all the things you already know you canā€™t/wonā€™t/donā€™t want to do?

Can you imagine a holiday season where you have a small creative oasis to return to daily, a way to be nourished while the world spins out in glitzy holiday chaos?

Ā 

A regular habit of using our hands grounds us. Daily attention to the natural world calms our bodies.

Do you feel a clench in your belly weeks ahead of the holiday seasonā€“a sort of pre-emptive ache about all the things you already know you canā€™t/wonā€™t/donā€™t want to do?

Can you imagine a holiday season where you have a small creative oasis to return to daily, a way to be nourished while the world spins out in glitzy holiday chaos?

Ā 

A regular habit of using our hands grounds us. Daily attention to the natural world calms our bodies.

With each weekly lesson in our online learning platform, Suzi urges us to reflect on the journal page, to be outdoors and watch the moon, and to venture into art with collage and a diminutive book form.

In Advent Dark Journal there is room to be messy, intuitive, and metaphorical, but accountable to a group of others.

To be part of a collective engaged in artistic behaviors regardless of organized religion or other affiliations brews empathy and growth in our ordinary lives. We feel threaded to one another in a new way. We are not alone in a season when we are often expected to be cheerful no matter what is going on in our inner life.

ADVENT DARK JOURNAL

Carving Connection in Creative Community

ADVENT DARK JOURNAL

Carving Connection in Creative Community
Advent Dark Journal

is a six-week art, ritual, and writing workshop that invites a sense of reverence, creativity, and community during the holiday season led by Suzi Banks Baum fromĀ NovemberĀ 30, 2025, through January 6, 2026.

This workshop is not religious, though we follow Advent as a time frame. This workshop is rooted in nature, designed to feed you spiritually and creatively. The Moon is our guide. We create a new tradition that seeks to solve the places that current traditions leave us empty. We create handmade rituals that connect us to nature and each other.

  1. Six lessons released weekly on the Kajabi learning platform. The lessons include prompts for creative practice in the journal and with collage, a weekly centering meditation, video lessons on techniques, and other tantalizing provocations which complement a vibrant package of sumptuous supplies that comes to you via the postal service.
  2. Four Live Meetups on Kajabi for community gatherings plus a preparatory gather on Zoom on Saturday, November 22 at 11 AM EST.
  3. A Spotify music playlist
  4. Treasures from the community of Rising Forth including miss polly of herban enclave and Georgia Wall, The Ceremonialist.
  5. The invitation to share images of your journey in ADJ through a shared Google folder and your reflections or comments weekly within the lesson.

ADJ begins with a preparatory Live Meet-Up on Kajabi on Saturday, November 22 at 11 AM. The first lesson is released on Sunday, November 2025. The course concludes on January 6, 2026. Materials on Kajabi will be available to participants until March 31, 2026.

Advent Dark Journal

is a six-week art, ritual, and writing workshop that invites a sense of reverence, creativity, and community during the holiday season led by Suzi Banks Baum from November 30, 2025, through January 6, 2026.

This workshop is not religious, though we follow Advent as a time frame. This workshop is rooted in nature, designed to feed you spiritually and creatively. The Moon is our guide. We create a new tradition that seeks to solve the places that current traditions leave us empty. We create handmade rituals that connect us to nature and each other.

  1. Six lessons released weekly on the Kajabi learning platform. The lessons include prompts for creative practice in the journal and with collage, a weekly centering meditation, video lessons on techniques, and other tantalizing provocations which complement a vibrant package of sumptuous supplies that comes to you via the postal service.
  2. Four Live Meetups on Kajabi for community gatherings plus a preparatory gather on Zoom on Saturday, November 22 at 11 AM EST.
  3. A Spotify music playlist
  4. Treasures from the community of Rising Forth including miss polly of herban enclave and Georgia Wall, The Ceremonialist.
  5. The invitation to share images of your journey in ADJ through a shared Google folder and your reflections or comments weekly within the lesson.

ADJ begins with a preparatory Live Meet-Up on Kajabi on Saturday, November 22 at 11 AM. The first lesson is released on Sunday, November 30. The course concludes on January 6, 2026. Materials on Kajabi will be available to participants until March 31, 2026.

A Note about this course

Once you are registered for this course there are no refunds issued.
There are limited spaces available for this course which is conducted on the Kajabi learning platform and supported by a handmade package of art supplies.
Please honor the creation of this course by not sharing access to Kajabi or the prompts with people who are not registered for this course.
Suzi reserves the right to expel anyone who does not comply with this request or who does not conduct themselves by the Kajabi community agreements about hate speech.

What People Are Saying

ADJ was my faithful companion during the dark weeks and such an enjoyable and engrossing one!

JUDITH THOMAS

Dearest Suzi,

Thank you thank you thank you. Advent Dark Journal gave me permission, in a sense, to pause more deeply. To lean into the artist of my soul.

Sometimes my mind needs to catch up with my soul - writing, breathing, creating - simply listening to my deep inner knowing AND acting from that place. That action is divine action, and it feeds every layer of my being.

I am so deeply grateful for you. For your wisdom, for your warmth, for the fierceness of your soul, for your devotion, for all the ways you share your light.

Thank you so very much for Advent Dark Journal.

Love and gratitude,

CHARLYN

Dearest Suzi,

Advent Dark Journal was such a grounding focus during the holiday season. I loved making daily collages and writing.

The weekly envelopes were treasures shared!

I have continued a daily art practice since the end of the class.

Thank you for the guidance, generosity of spirit and joy that you provided all of us.

May you have a blessed new year.

DIANA MILLER

Suzi Banks Baum has created a safe and nurturing space for anyone who needs emotional and spiritual support during the darkest time of the year. Carefully curated and beautiful papers are included in your packet, along with one special envelope to open at the beginning of each week (for 6 weeks). Each week, there are rituals and meditations and lessons and creative activities that feed my soul ā€” and I believe they will feed your soul, too! ~

KATHY PAUL

Enroll to Advent Dark Journal

Watch the Moon. Notice where it rises and when it sets.
  1. Preparatory Meet Up on Zoom Saturday, November 22, 2025, at 11 AM EST
  2. First Live Meet Up on Kajabi Sunday November 30, 2025, 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM EST
  3. Second Live Meet Up on Kajabi Sunday December 14, 2025, 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM EST
  4. Rising Forth Word Church on Zoom in preparation for the Winter Solstice Thursday December 18th at 7 PM EST
  5. Third Live Meet Up on Kajabi Sunday December 28, 2024, 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM EST
  6. Final Live Meet Up on Kajabi Sunday January 4, 2026, 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM EST
Register Here

Women Walking to Water

Suzi Banks Baum ā€¢ Brece HoneycuttĀ ā€¢ Melanie Mowinski ā€¢ Sarah PikeĀ ā€¢ Lori SpencerĀ ā€¢ Jessica Yurkofsky

February 7- March 28, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday February 7, 5-7pm

Ā  Ā MCLA Gallery 51, 51 Main Street, North Adams, MAĀ  Ā 

HOURS:
Monday: 12:00pm-5:00pm
Tuesday: 11:00am - 4:00pm
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: Closed
Friday: 12:00 - 5:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am - 5:00pm
Sunday: 11:00am - 5:00pm

Ā 
Interested in joining the conversation?

The artists invite you to test yourself by dipping into the cold plunge at Sand Springs Pool in Williamstown. This will prepare you to view the film Smoke Sauna Sisterhood on February 26 and/or participate in a conversation centered on the Wilderness Mindset Framework on March 5. More information will be available in early February.

Here is a link for more information:

Click Here

Open Studio

with Suzi Banks Baum

Sunday,Ā OctoberĀ 12th
From 1- 4 PM ET


Eco-dyed papers, inks, & handbound books for sale, along with plant dyed embroidery threads. All proceeds benefit American Red Cross & the Craft Emergency Relief Fund.

Park on the street & walk up the driveway

Open Studio

with Suzi Banks Baum

Sunday,Ā OctoberĀ 12th
From 1- 4 PM ET


Eco-dyed papers, inks, & handbound books for sale, along with plant dyed embroidery threads. All proceeds benefit American Red Cross & the Craft Emergency Relief Fund.

Park on the street & walk up the driveway

Download Poster
BACK TO EVENTS

Join Rising Forth's

WORD CHURCH

Thursday, March 20, 2025 at 7:00 AM ET.

These creativity sessions are ripe with prompts & poetry & a shared sense of insight borne of time spent quietly writing together. These events are free. They are not recorded. Registration is required.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/_P6K20eyS42eJhIIWOK1Yg

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BACKYARD ART CAMP

AUGUST 2025

My backyard in Great Barrington, MA!


Backyard Art Camp is an outdoor book art & ritual workshop in the Berkshires

Backyard Art Camp will take place in August 2025. The first session will be a book arts intensive from August 20-27th with one rest day. The second session will be three full days of colorful book art August 29/30/31. Please join Suziā€™s mailing list for news of enrollment.

Link to frequently asked questions is here.

Backyard Art Camp September 2024

Photo credit to Pearl Elsbach

"Camp is sacred, essential, delightful, expansive, generative, meaningful, and such a messy-in-the-paint good time! This was a return to a familiar place, both in the magic that is Hollenbeck, and the familiarity of sisterhood, mudra flow, process, and celebrations with alumni sisterhood. Camp plants seeds in my heart - they root while I make paste paper - then they bloom all year long as I return to what we've created here in my daily practice." ā€¨

KARLEE FAIN

All supplies & printed instructions included in Camp fee. Also includes libations and bug juice.

You cover housing & travel & lunch. Look for rentals/hotels in the Great Barrington, MA area. Closest airports: Albany, NY & Hartford, CT.

Public transportation from the New York City & Boston area is convenient. My home is three blocks from Main Street, Route 7.

This program is for you if you...
  1. comfortable working outdoors in all weather
  2. want to nourish your attention and work with your hands-totally no tech situation here
  3. want to replace the nasty messages you got about how messy or wrong your art making is
  4. are an established artist seeking to fine tune your skills
  5. want to explore mixed media techniques, learn about inhabiting a journal, and are willing to play at the intersection of literary and book art.
  6. yearn for creative community and sanctuary where your creative expression will be valued above all else.

Mingle Magazine ran a gorgeous article about

Backyard Art Camp.

HERE IS THE PREVIEW

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CONTACT ME