SCHOOL

Eliza Swann integrates art and mysticism into a unified practice and, since 2014, has founded two alternative schools dedicated to the arts and the sacred—operating outside traditional institutional frameworks. She is currently director of Emerald School. Her pedagogy honors spiritual inquiry, creative experimentation, and collective care.

In 2014, Swann founded Golden Dome as a queer, intersectional school committed to exploring spiritual, artistic, and communal inquiry. Over the first decade, Golden Dome operated as a curatorial and educational platform offering immersive courses, public rituals, artist residencies, exhibitions, performances, and publications across the United States. Golden Dome has collaborated with numerous cultural institutions including Coaxial Arts, Feminist Center for Creative Work, The Hammer Museum, The Philosophical Research Society, and more.

In 2024, Eliza stepped away from directing Golden Dome to focus on teaching alchemy and related disciplines at the Emerald School, which she founded in 2025.

Rooted in the belief that matter and spirit are inseparable, alchemy resists easy categorization and opens up space for imaginative, holistic inquiry. Through classes, exhibitions, and community programming, the school explores the interconnectedness of all life, engaging topics such as ecology, herbalism, divination, mysticism, magic, and cross-disciplinary artistic practice.

At Emerald School, alchemy is approached through a queer eco-feminist framework—one that refuses dualistic thinking, embraces complexity, and encourages experimentation. This framework views the world as a sacred, sentient being and invites imaginative engagement with its mysteries.