Help Charmaine Secure a new home and Open a Creative Community Space in Salvador, Brazil

I have been experiencing a serious leak in my apartment from my upstairs neighbors over the course of two years, without and repair intervention from my landlords that has worsened over the course of the last six months. Black mold is developing in my apartment and I urgently need to move, within the next two weeks!! This extremely urgent and stressful situation has put me in a space of deep reflection of what I want my next space to feel like and what purposes it can serve for a larger community.

While in this process of reflection and apartment hunting, I have found a space that would not only serve as a safe living space for me, my cat and my loved ones who visit me but also an incredible space where love and community can be built.

Once I secure the space, I will begin the process of opening a studio centered around art, community and collective well-being. This space will also be my home and will launch as a creative and community space in late 2026. This space will be more than just a studio, it will serve as a place where people can gather, dream, create, and be restored. The initial deposit of $2500 must be paid by Tuesday to secure the space.

This space will serve as:

Why This, Why Now

I want to create a space that is stable, affordable and welcoming where artists, wellness practitioners and people needing spaces to rest can decompress, work, teach, create and connect. My vision is to open a home that is also a place where artists can come to restore their energy and expand their practice and get paid for their services. Within the space there will be a meditation room where wellness practitioners can offer their gifts and services to the community. The space will also be available for travelers and people from Salvador to gather so that new collaborations, friendships, and creative projects can flourish.

There will also be a Black and White photography dark room, I have experience building darkrooms and I have confirmed donated dark room equipment such as enlargers, trays etc to place within the dark room.

Herbalism and cooking have always been a part of my self healing journey especially as someone who navigates and have family members who have navigated chronic pain and auto immune issues. I am excited to offer an apothecary and supperclub space where people can be nourished by healing tea blends and foods that I and other healing cooks in Salvador prepare for others.

This space will be rooted in Black and Indigenous plant medicine traditions, sustainable making, and community care. It will uplift local artists and makers while welcoming visiting artists from around the world.

Needed Support

To bring this vision to life, I need financial support. The funds will help with the final steps of securing and preparing the space: moving costs, setup expenses, and essential renovations that will allow us to open the doors to the community by late 2026. The total cost to launch this project is $10,000.

Your donation will help cover:

About the founder, Charmaine Bee

Raised in South Carolina on the water, after college and after my grandmothers passing I moved to Brooklyn New York to pursue my dreams of visual art while in New York I started a tea company and studied herbalism formally as a way to connect with my Gullah lineage and I am now based in Bahia, Brazil. I am a multidisciplinary artist and herbalist who uses photography, sound, video, writing, movement, textile, and plant matter, including historically charged materials such as rice and indigo, to connect with African diasporic spirituality, memory, histories, and my Gullah heritage.

I aspire to support physical and psychic health through traditional plant medicine, dreamwork, and the healing practices of my ancestral community. Descended from ancestor futurists who nurtured seeds, I draw from and expand on a vast archive of Black herbal healing practices. My work offers a counternarrative to structures of oppression through an ethics of care that speaks with quiet yet unshakeable force at the intersection of liberation, decoloniality, and spirituality.

I am the founder of Bee’s Well Apothecary and Gullah Girl Tea, which focuses on making healing blends for Black communities. I teach workshops that guide participants through exploring their inner worlds with herbal support. I also run the Dream Support Hotline, an independent radio show that serves as a forum for dream decoding and collective dream research.

My work has been shown at The Armory Center for Arts ( Pasadena, CA 2024) ,Southern Exposure (San Francisco, 2021); Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles, 2019); Five Myles Gallery ( Brooklyn, NY 2018), 18th Street Arts Center (Santa Monica, 2015). I have been in residence at Pivô Research (São Paulo, 2023); ACRE (Steuben, WI, 2019); Five Myles Gallery (Brooklyn, 2018); and Fountainhead (Miami, 2014). I have received grants from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation (2016), the Puffin Foundation (2012), and the Brooklyn Arts Council (2012). I earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2017) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For many years, I have been dreaming of a space where all of my practices can live together and where others can come to recharge, create, and be held. The move from my current home studio, though unexpected and urgent, has become the doorway to that dream becoming real. With your support, we can open a space that will nourish not just me, but an entire community. If this vision moves you, please donate and share to help us bring this to life.