yâlo kormilyâ

yâlo kormilyâ
protoceltic [4,000 year old european mother tongue bone language] to english: a prayer within a grove, offered within a medicine tree

When I contemplated about creating an art offering which reflected our community, I wanted to incorporate plants and practices that connect with settler ancestry. Today, non-hispanic white people make up the majority of nevada county; and have displaced native people who have held this land, and despite many odds, still continue to do so since time immemorial.

Settlers brought plants with them intentionally and unintentionally; and yâlo
kormilyâ is created with a collection of introduced plants who have become noxious, escaping their boundaries, like scotch broom, plants who are bi-continental, like mugwort and yarrow, and also those who stay within their bounds, sourced from local farms and gardens, like strawflower.

Yâlo kormilyâ is a ritual object woven together in a pastiche referencing ancient celtic lore of sympathetic magic. During the summer solstice (~June 20th), also known as Litha, the sun shines for the longest day of the year. Ancestors partnered with the season and the herbs to create bundles, wreaths, and medicines full of the suns peak light power, and made offerings to sun deities, such as the celtic sun goddess Áine.

Art was created to honor the poly beings on earth; from mineral, fungal, plant, to people, and to the celestial ancestors and gods, in exchange for their blessings of a bountiful growing season and an abundant harvest to come.

Yâlo kormilyâ is a contemporary practice of these ways; a restoration through removal of nonnative plants .. through loving reclamation of us.. bad kin; and maybe.. beyond bad – toward remembering these beings as wise, soul kin.

It is a complicated and ongoing process.. with little room for rightness.. but a lot of room for the refusal to look away from mess.

yâlo kormilyâ
June 2026

materials
✴structure:
outer circle cultivated grape vines wrapped in cultivated mugwort,
gods eye fasteners woven with english ivy,
sunrays made with hawthorn branches and himilayan blackberry,
center circle woven with english ivy

✴center circle:
strawflower, sweet annie, eryngium, echinops, craspedia, yarrow, scotch broom, rue, calendula, feverfew

✴sunrays:
st. john’s wort

✴photography:
the moon rise and sunset; symbolizing the dark half of the year, or, shortening of days beginning
the following day of the summer solstice.

✴watercolor paintings:
night flying nevada county native lepidoptera: the ceanothus silk moth, and a day flying native lepidoptera: the western tiger swallowtail butterfly

･☀⋆.ೃ *:･
Thank you Soil Sisters, Calmil Teoyotica and Honey Circle Farms, my garden and family and
friends gardens, and all the honorably foraged plants that make the body of yâlo kormilyâ. ༄