Forty-nine fragments from a five-year conversation with grief.
Original works by Jocelyn Bates
Some things are not meant to be kept intact.
They are meant to be transformed.
For five years after my parents died — seven days apart, September 2021 — I wrote.
More than thirty journals.
Rage. Memory. Questions with no answers. Things I was terrified of forgetting. Things I needed to say to people who were no longer there to receive them.
Eventually I distilled those years into a single notebook — the passages I could not leave behind. The most essential things.
Three years later, I found it again on a shelf in my basement.
And this time, I didn't read it.
I made something from it.
I brought those writings into a Soul Art journey with one intention:
I am reclaiming my Wholeness with Beauty and Wisdom.
Every surviving piece of those writings entered two canvases.
One remained whole.
The other I cut into forty-nine pieces.
Those fragments became The Grief Relics.
The writings are gone.
What remains are the relics.
Each fragment carries the raw grief writings pressed into the ground of the canvas — beneath charcoal and ink, visible like archaeology if you look closely enough.
The experience lives in the surface.
Not as symbol.
As material.
An owl emerged at the center of the original Soul Art — not planned, simply found.
Still. Watching. Witnessing everything.
Every relic carries that owl on its reverse as the mark of the collection.
The Collection
CANVAS RELICS 44 original works · $500 each
Each is a unique fragment of the second grief canvas — ranging from paper-sized to small enough to hold in a closed fist.
Raw writing remains embedded beneath the surface. Sometimes visible. Sometimes held just below — present the way grief is present, even when you can't see it directly.
No two fragments are alike.
Each is signed on the back and stamped with the owl.
Every canvas relic is accompanied by:
A hand-stapled booklet of raw, unedited grief writing excerpts — the words that became the soil of everything
A signed copy of The Midnight Carnival: A Tale of Remembering
ARTIST BOOKS Edition of 5 · $900 each
Five of the forty-nine fragments became something else entirely.
Folded. Stitched. Wired. Charmed.
Each is a one-of-one handmade artist's book containing handwritten lines from The Midnight Carnival on an accordion of handmade pages inside.
Nothing about them is polished.
Grief isn't polished.
Every artist book is accompanied by:
The full hand-stapled booklet of raw grief writing excerpts
A signed copy of The Midnight Carnival: A Tale of Remembering
TO ACQUIRE A RELIC
These are original artworks from a closed body of work.
When you reach out, I'll share what is currently available so you can choose the piece that calls to you — or, if you prefer, you can ask me to choose for you.
Email artsetc@mac.com with the subject line My Relic and I'll be in touch personally.
Please allow two weeks from the time of your order for your relic to be prepared and sent.
All sales are final. These are one-of-a-kind original works.
Someone You Carry
If this relic is connected to a loss of your own, you are invited to tell me who you carry.
Their name. A memory. Something about them you want witnessed.
You don't have to explain their whole life.
A few words are enough.
I'll hold it as I work.
Grief should echo love in the halls.
There will never be another edition of The Grief Relics.
The writings that created them no longer exist in their original form.
There is no source material to return to.
No second printing.
No recreation.
Forty-nine fragments. One body of grief. Five years of remembering.
And then something else.