The workshop was the latest in the free HERarts N’ Crafts series hosted by the Black Girl Brown Girl Collective Inc., an arts nonprofit based in south Phoenix that empowers women and organizes educational, cultural, and arts events.
Polk, who owns the online store Polk Apothecary for “luxury organic skin care,” showed how natural, chemical-free ingredients like aloe vera, goat milk, honey, and oatmeal are fashioned into bars of soap that can be used head-to-toe.
Participants sniffed oils and fragrances and mixed herbs and colors into bowls of liquid to create their perfect bar. Talecia Richardson got some new ideas for her vegan hair care line, Beyond Classy.
“I’ve never actually made soap,” she says. “I’m going to introduce a soap bar. Now I found an organic way to make it.”
Richardson says she loved the event because “you can learn something, do something for fun, and be out mixing and mingling with other women.”
The core members of BGBG Collective are six officers who all used to work in higher education together and three on the board of directors.
“This group first and foremost is comprised of women who care about community and care about the arts,” said BGBG Collective President Roc Welch.
It’s rooted in south Phoenix, Welch says, because there’s a need for more art there. When board of directors co-chair Denise Lee grew up in the neighborhood, there were no cultural outlets other than the public library, she says, and even today, not everyone has the resources to go downtown to galleries.
A guest views a painting at the BGBG Collective second annual Queens Rise Art Walk at the Nina Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center on October 8, 2022.
Adi/BGBG Collective
That’s why it was so exciting, she adds, to see about 500 people show up for the second annual Queens Rise Art Walk at the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center in October 2022.
“It’s definitely opened up the doors to people to see things and experience things that they wouldn’t have access to,” Lee says. “It’s so powerful and it’s so empowering for other women.”
The first BGBG Collective event open to the public was an open mic for female expression called Her Voice on May 29, 2021, at Spaces of Opportunity in south Phoenix.
Her Voice “was a safe environment for women of color to come together as a community and feel as though we could share our voices and listen and hear one another,” says BGBG Collective Vice President Jes Douangchanh.
Her Voice is now also an annual event, with the next one slated for November, and the free workshops run from January through June, with upcoming classes including jewelry making, pottery making, and flower arranging. They’re limited to 25, but Welch says they might try to hold multiple sessions because they’re so popular.
The group also plans to show Disney movies in one of the south Phoenix parks so people don’t have to go as far as Tempe or Scottsdale, and they’re planning a “date night” with music “just to do something on our side of town outside of a bar,” Welch says.
Also, they’re hoping to organize a festival in a park in 2024 featuring all women vendors and artists. However, all BGBG events are open to anyone to attend.
Although BGBG Collective is funded mainly by grants, the members have raised funds with yard sales, breakfast burrito sales, and headshots, for a suggested $25 donation for three photos. Their next effort will feature family portraits around Mother’s Day that will be “kind of awkward, kind of funny,” Douangchanh says, inspired by old-school department-store portraits.
All the officers and board members of BGBG Collective have full-time jobs; this is a passion for them — and hopefully it'll light a creative spark in other community members, too.
“Life isn’t just about working and going home, but it’s about creating in whatever way feels right to you,” Douangchanh says. “So encouraging that in women and supporting that in each other and inspiring each other in a space like that is really special to me.”
To keep up on BGBG Collective events, see its Instagram page or email [email protected].
