Sarita Dougherty

Closing celebration of Living Cosmologies with the WCCW DIY PhD Cohort
Sunday, December 2, 5-7 pm
Free`

Join WCCW Artist in Residence Sarita Dougherty along with WCCW’s first DIY PhD cohort in a Closing Celebration of Sarita’s WCCW Residency Living Cosmologies, a study in ecofeminist pedagogies, riparian ethnoecologies, and the radical unschoolings inspired by this work.

A WCCW DIY PhD Cohort zine will be available for $5 donation.
This is the last public day to view her Living Cosmologies installation.
To schedule a walk-through before the closing, please email [email protected] or visit us during WCCW business hours, M-F, 10 am – 6 pm.

Living Cosmologies is a physical manifestation of Sarita’s DIY PhD in discovering what a cosmologia curativa, or world-view oriented towards sustainability and wellness looks like in daily practices, academic methodologies, and ecofeminist ethnoecologies.

Living Cosmologies
presented by artist-in-residence Sarita Dougherty

In tandem and in relation to her visual work, LA-based artist Sarita Dougherty cultivates a pedagogical practice at the intersections of earth-based spirituality and ethnoecology. Her research seeks to articulate worldviews and daily life patterns that move towards sustainability and connection of the self with habitat and community. Sarita’s process involves visioning, mapping, and creating a living cosmology that grows cyclically and seasonally. This work is unfolding as her DIY PhD Dissertation in the Postnational Department of Transcultural Youth, integrating composting, greywater systems, ecofeminism, ancestral knowledges, mapping, visioning, native habitat rehabilitation, decolonizing methodologies, critical theories, incantations, plant medicine, and an ofrenda to Pachamama, her matrilineal deity of the Earth. This research will live in her installation as a community resource center for generating visitors’ own unique living cosmologies and reflecting Sarita’s field work from her home habitat, in Yangna (Los Angeles) ecosystems, and at the Women’s Center for Creative Work.

Sarita shares her Living Cosmology Dissertation work in a crowd-funded Patreon page at www.patreon.com/saritadoe. DIY PhD co-founder David Whitaker and Sarita will host a Back to (un)School Kick-Off at Women’s Center for Creative Work on Sunday, September 23rd from 2-5 PM, to inspire participants’ own DIY Educations. Additionally, Sarita will guide a DIY PhD cohort meeting bi-weekly throughout the Fall at WCCW for participants to vision, map and participate in their ideal DIY PhDs beginning September 30th until December 2nd.

Sarita will hold public office hours in her installation at the Women’s Center every Monday, 4-6 PM, or by appointment. Practitioners from all fields of interest are invited to participate in generating their own Living Cosmologies to transform the patriarchal, anthropocentric and Western-cultural/capitalistic paradigms into one imbued with intuition, spiritual connection to the self, the earth, and the living systems our bodies are intrinsically connected to.

Events & Workshops

Semester Kickoff: DIY PhD Back 2 (Un)School Night
Sunday, September 23, 2-5pm
Artist-in-resident Sarita Dougherty
Free / RSVP here

Kick off your personal Fall Semester at the DIY PhD Back 2 (un)School Night!

Sarita Dougherty and David Whitaker started DIY PhD in 2014, after searching for a higher education program to meet their physical, spiritual, emotional needs as well as their academic and artistic ones. The DIY PhD cohort has inspired a Bay Area DIYMFA, a DIY Education cohort (2015), and now a Women’s Center for Creative Work cohort as part of Sarita Dougherty’s Fall 2018 Unschooling quarter residency.

At the DIY PhD Back 2 (un)School Night, Sarita & David will share their methodologies so you can kick-off your own DIY Education this Fall, regardless of institutional or academic affiliations.

The program includes:

+Physical, spiritual, emotional, academic & artistic “check-ins”
+Creating a school-year calendar & ideal learning scenes for the near and distant futures
+Tapping into spirit guides and ancestors who might help you locate your educations
+Articulating the deep learning desires in our collective hearts and souls
+Visiting the river to get present with the schools contained in local landscapes
+Mapping next steps for your DIY Education to flourish
+Q&A with DIY PhD Fall 2020 candidates David and Sarita

Come find out what your own DIY PhD might look like. Let’s Kick-Off the Fall Semester! More info here.

DIY PhD Cohort: Fall Semester
Sundays, 2-5pm
Sept 30 / Oct 14 / Oct 28 / Nov 11 / Dec 2
Presented by artist-in-residence Sarita Dougherty
$50–$100* Regular / $40–$80* Members
*depending on income level

Sarita Dougherty and David Whitaker started their DIY PhD program post-graduate school in 2014, while seeking a rigorous and creative higher education program that met their embodied, spiritual and intellectual thirst for knowledge. An answer to Western and mind-centered institutional learning, the first cohort met weekly at different sites around Los Angeles. The 2018-2019 school year is their fifth year doing the DIY PhD.

Each DIY PhD program meets students wherever they are in life; the program’s structure reforms constantly to meet the cohort’s needs for personal and artistic growth. The fall DIY PHD cohort at WCCW will locate and express their own DIY Educations through guided meditations, creative exercises, and intentional mapping so that by early December, practitioners will be set up on their own DIY PhD paths of learning. The biweekly class is offered on a sliding scale based on what students can afford.

Seed-Wanding Paradise Hill
Sunday, October 21, 2-5pm
Presented by Everything is Medicine
Max 20 participants

Price varies depending on income level:
$25 for low-income
$40 for income levels between $20,000 and $50,000/year
$50 for incomes levels $50,000+ /year

In conjunction with Sarita Dougherty’s Living Cosmologies installation at WCCW, Olivia Chumacero will teach this workshop on indigenous land management techniques for propagating native seed. Paradise Hill is part of Los Angeles River Basin habitat and is struggling to maintain its native flora. Come be of service to this ecosystem and introduce yourself to this land respectfully.

The session begins with the identification and removal of invasive flora, followed with an intensive seed-wanding process (the process of sowing and replanting native seeds) lead by Chumacero. Wear long sleeves, pants, and close-toed shoes good for hiking. Bring a water-bottle, sun-hat and work/garden gloves if you have them.

RSVP required for exact workshop location.

Chakra-Khan
Sunday, November 18th, 2-5 pm
*suggested donation $10-$20

A participatory healing event, or pedagogía curativa, made in collaboration with Jasmine Nyende, Patricio Morales, Rose Simons, and Johanna Iraheta.

Closing celebration of Living Cosmologies with the WCCW DIY PhD Cohort
Sunday, December 2, 5-7 pm
Free`

Shop

Sarita’s limited edition archival print, Community Bloom (Ecosystem with Ceanothus, Holly Oak and Matilija) from her WCCW/five at the Huntington residency is available for purchase on the WCCW webshop.

WCCW Edition: Sarita Dougherty
Community Bloom (Ecosystem with Ceanothus, Holly Oak and Matilija), 2017.
12″ x 15″ Giclee Print of Oil on board Painting.

Produced in conjunction with WCCW / five at The Huntington

View other WCCW Artists in Residents and learn about the program here.

Women’s Center for Creative Work’s Artist in Residence program is made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.