Blue Magick: Trade a Jar is a workshop led by Bakehouse artist Shayla Marshall that considers “Blue Magic” as a double entendre: a reference to the hair grease often found in Black homes– a staple product that has long served as a grounding force of cultural memory– and an homage to the Black community’s deep, historical, and spiritual relationships to water as a source of power, survival, and transformation.
With Shayla’s guidance, and inspired by exchange among participants, attendees will create customized jars of Blue Magic incorporating herbs, oils, and words of affirmation. These objects function both as practical tools and as vessels of care– holding memory, intention, and connection.
Presented in celebration of the closing of Shayla Marshall: Blue Magick, currently on view in the Walgreens windows at 23rd Street and Collins Avenue, this workshop invites participants into a space of intentional exchange through conversation and hands-on making.
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About the artist:
Shayla Marshall (b. 1999, Miami, FL) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice uses world-building as a tool for liberation, challenging linear notions of time to explore the complexities of history and identity. Working across sculpture, photography, painting, writing, and archiving, she creates immersive environments that reimagine Black American experiences and possibilities for healing and transformation. Rooted in her upbringing as an African American woman, Marshall’s work emphasizes storytelling, cultural preservation, and the redefinition of past and future. She holds a BFA from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles and an MA from the Royal College of Art in London, and has exhibited at institutions including Saatchi Gallery and Tate Modern.
Instagram: @shaylamonii
About The Bass x Bakehouse Art Complex Windows Project:
The Walgreens Windows Project is a collaboration between The Bass and Bakehouse. Featuring site-specific projects by emerging and local artists on a rotating basis, the projects represent the shared missions of the Miami-based arts organizations to support art that engages, challenges, and educates. The project is supported by Walgreens.
