Category: Featured Artists

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New Team Members, Interns, Residencies, Earth Day, Submission Prizes, Oh My!

Spring has sprung! But first, ‘About My Mother:’ Submit your poem or short story about your mother by April 30th for a Mothers’ Day publication with MoM on our Blog, Newsletter and Social Media. Submit via word document, 1,000-2,000 words for the short story/essay. Poems of any length. First prize is $50 for the story. Poem is $25 and the runner up gets love and publication too. Share widely, just one week left! Send to: INFO@MOMmuseum.org

Thank You Authentic Florida for including us on your website as we approach May (Mothers’ Month). MoM is working hard to increase memberships – 300 in the next 3 months! See our special offer and JOIN OUR FLOCK! We are grateful to work with Melanie Lentz-Janney at Authentic Florida towards this mutual goal of sharing information and cool stuff to do in the Sunshine State. Authentic Florida.

Welcome New MoM Facilitator Sierra Clark

Welcome Sierra Clark our new Empowerment Facilitator at MoM. Her workshop designs- based on her chapter “From Sweet Nothings to Sweet Everything” in Repair Of The Black Family as part of the edited collection by Nayyirah Muhammad- are transformational. We are all better for her leadership and strong voice! More about Sierra at www.sierraclark.life

INTERNS

April has us bustling with a new group of amazing interns from around the world. Please welcome these amazing international collaborators (from left to right):

Audrey Paquet-Frey: My name is Audrey Paquet-Frey, I’m a 32-year-old Master’s degree student from the TEMA+ program 2021-2023, an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree program. I am currently in Paris at the EHESS completing my degree. Prior to this program, I did a bachelor’s degree at the Université Laval in Canada, Québec in historical sciences and heritage studies in museology, ethnology, and archeology. During my studies, I worked at the Canadian museum of history from 2015 until 2020, where I worked in the photographic archives divisions and the documentation of artefacts divisions. So why am I doing an internship at the Mom Museum? Simply because in the last years I’ve developed an interest in museum communities and especially now with the new museum definition from ICOM (International Councils of Museums) redirecting their attention to communities and the public, I felt it was time to explore that avenue. After this Master’s, I hope to be able to create an online museum directed at and for different communities of women to empower them through their immaterial heritage and their collective memory. I would like to give a voice to different communities of women through online exhibits. I hope to learn a lot from this internship and to be able to apply it to my future projects.

Megan Hsu: I will be assisting MoM with identfying, researching, and applying for local or national grants in order to assist with fundraising efforts that can further assist MoM in being able to achieve its goals and create deeper connections with the local community. A native of Tampa, FL, Megan (she/her) is in her final year at the University of Florida, where she is pursuing a double major in International Studies and Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics along with a minor in European Union studies. A lifelong student, she believes that education never ends and is always eager to learn more about the world around her. She has worked with non-profit organizations in the past and is excited to devote her skills to MoM and its mission of educating and celebrating women and mothers of all reproductive identities.

Clea Dobrish: I am Clea Dobrish, a junior at Eckerd College studying Sociology and Women and Gender Studies. Especially with the political climate, it is more important than ever to join together and educate ourselves and others about feminism and gender studies, this is my main goal through this internship. Working with the EC Feminist club on campus has ignited a passion in me to further my education on the matter as well as helped me find my calling in helping people desexualize and accept how amazing their bodies are through the events done on campus. I hope to bridge the gap between Eckerd and MoM by helping others get internships here and collaborating with the feminist club. I also hope to learn about and assist with grant writing for MoM.

REMOTE RESIDENCY AT MoM

Yes, it is possible to do a Remote Residency at MoM. It’s also possible to have a remote internship at MoM as well! Apply through our website on the appropriate page, work with your institution, and make progress on your project through interactions with the Museum of Motherhood and Director, Martha Joy Rose.

Christina Doonan PhD: is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Gender Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Her research interests include the politics of health, human rights, the right to health, and motherhood and parenting in the context of chronic illness.

My current project, “Mothering Through Cancer,” explores how breast cancer affects motherhood for mothers of young children, and how mothering young children affects the experience of cancer. Taking my own experience as a starting point, I am interested in how idealized versions of motherhood work in both directions, influencing what mothers expect of themselves as they experience cancer and what others expect of mothers—and how this translates into the types of supports that mothers receive (or not).I first presented a portion of this work at the M.O.M. Conference in 2022: “Creativity for a Cause.”I felt invigorated by the supportive feedback I received from the M.O.M. community.Staying in touch with the project has been difficult given the dual demands of work and reproductive labour.My residency with M.O.M. this week allows me to reconnect with and refocus on this project and give it the time that it deserves. Thank you to Joy and Tracy for arranging the details and for welcoming me so warmly. I’m grateful and delighted to be here as part of this vital community! (Christina is pictured about with her husband Lincoln and MoM Director, Martha Joy Rose).

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Activism Art Blog Education Featured Featured Artists Feminism History International Living Board Announcements MOM Art Annex MOM Conference Sociology Spiritual Motherhood USF

OPEN CALL: SUBMISSIONS for a special online publication at MoM for our Mothers’ Day Blog.

For a limited time only, OPEN CALL : SUBMISSIONS for a special online publication at MoM for our Mother’s Day May Blog. But first, about the photo here at the top of the page. We inherited an ugly cement wall. What did we do? Make it beautiful! Thank you Batya for your gorgeous residency and ongoing mural work, now viewable in the annex gardens. Read more at the bottom of the blog!

Submit a story about your mother. 1,500-2,000 words or poem (any length).

Our team will review all entries and we will select one special story, one runner up, and one poem for publication online for our May Mother’s Month Blog, social media and Newsletter issue.

The prize is $50 first place only / Poem is a separate award $25

We know you are ALL winners and we are excited to hear your creativity and legacy productions.

Submit by April 30th midnight via email by midnight. Include Title and Bio with Submission in word document: INFO@MOMmuseum.org

THE MONTH OF MARCH RECAP

Community is where it’s at – even as technology rises, we must remember our humanity, our earth bodies, and our mother planet. HAPPY EARTH DAY IN APRIL!

March was busy with gatherings focused on food health, motherhood, sisterhood, meditation, poetry, and outdoor mural making. Thanks to Jeff Herman, Leslie Culbertson, and Yusuke Ouchie from Creative Grape, and gratitude to Localtopia, Winter in the Woods, AEHK Studio Tour, Tombolo Books, YesChefVillage, Gloria Muñoz, our Conference Attendees, Mothers’ Group and MoM Facilitators: Its been a GREAT season for MoM.

Over the course of the past year, we have joined in events with direct engagement opportunities equalling 40,000 + people.

We have partnered with groups from ages 1-80 yrs old that include people in recovery, local high school students, housing insecure individuals, and those seeking education on the subject of healthy food to feminist studies. Those smaller groups, have totaled in the hundreds.

What Next?

Where are the women’s stories and spaces? We are only 10 % of school text books and 13% of museum exhibits.

Our lives are an inspiration. They are a miracle. They are each and everyone great. How can we illuminate the vacuum, fill the voice, reverberate with intention?

Help us honor these stories. Help us keep going. Help us be Visible, Solvent, and Celebrated. We Thank you! We are you! We need you to thrive! Together we are strong, together we rise, together we love. Help us continue our work by becoming a legacy donor.

DONATE

THE ANNUAL ACADEMIC & ARTS CONFERENCE ROCKED!

REPRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPES– The conference saw participants from England, Australia, South Africa, Canada, USA, Poland, South America, Israel, Spain, and Ireland. Videos and papers to come. Find out more by accessing the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS) and upcoming announcements about these scholarly works. The CFP for the Journal of Mother Studies is open through April 30th. SUBMIT.

Here are a few concepts to mull over (from my notes):

Can we mother a ghost? Rebecca Marcelina Gimeno

Not every pregnancy results in the birth of a child – Laura Bissell

Human care is anchored in communal activities – Sara Sudhoff

Mothering is invisible – Kate Golding

Batya Weinbaum, b. 1952, is a Jewish American visual artist and award-winning writer from Cleveland Heights, OH and Floyd, VA, and artist-in- residence at MOM Dec 3 2022-Mar 31, 2023. Her first mosaic art project was a feminist installation of fertility and warrior goddesses, Feminina Sube, Isla Mujeres, 2013-2020. A film about this magical shrine to the goddess can be seen on YouTube by typing in Dr. Batya Weinbaum. She got her doctorate at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, founded the journal Femspec, and has spoken frequently at Radical Feminist Perspectives of Women’s Declaration International. More of her art can be seen at goddessvibe.org.

Special Shout Out to Brittany DeNucci & All Our Fab Volunteers!

Special shout out to Brittany DeNucci who stepped in to run tech for us a MoM during the conference. She’s also been hard at work editing the conference videos. We are so grateful for all Brittany’s contributions. THANK YOU to all our incredible interns, volunteers & team members!

KEEP ROCKIN’ IT!

Love, Love, Love,

Martha Joy Rose, Director

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Art Featured Artists MAMA motherhood

M.A.M.A. Issue 54 Mathilde Jansen & Lisa DeSiro

M.A.M.A. Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 54th edition of this scholarly discourse. Literature intersects with art to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA #artandmotherhood #mama

Introducing: Mathilde Jansen

Bio: Mathilde Jansen hails from Deventer (at the IJssel river valley), in the Netherlands. She graduated from the Royal Academy, The Hague (KABK) in 2006. Dar es Salaam has been a second home and source of inspiration. In 2016 she completed the postgraduate studies Education in Arts (Beroepskunstenaar in de Klas) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. Her primary photographic practice seeks the universal value of natural resources and minerals as a means of tracing the complex relationship between people and the global economy. She aims to create new perspectives from which to examine social structures and the connections between the local and global, which, for Jansen, form the basis of human attitudes, social positioning and intercultural communication. In her practice Jansen consciously interweaves market-driven ways of thinking with an integrated holistic vision of nature, teasing out the borders between the two. Using experiments in analog photography, incorporating awe-inspiring constructions on location and manipulating medium format negatives, she creates a dynamic interplay between subject matter and representation, navigating areas as diverse and all-encompassing as nature and ecology, spirit, and community. Jansen envisions trees and organic structures being planted and preserved in urban spaces, gardens, national parks or anywhere – on a micro or macro level. Her current Landscape projects represent this interplay and interaction between modernization, wilderness and consciousness. [Web Link]

How does motherhood, reproductive identity, or experience inform your work?

Through my recent Landscape projects such as Potential Landscapes, I’ve escaped from the limitations that single motherhood has put onto my life (as a former full-time art and freelance photographer). I was a fully single mom, without a co-parent or similar support, from 2011-2019. All of a sudden, I couldn’t easily travel for an art project, even freelance work in short term or in the evening was hard to undertake. With my Dutch-Tanzanian daughter Daleila, I’ve enjoyed a great time, but the stress and urgency of side jobs, distracted my mind and made me focus too much on external and organizational matters instead of the essence of my life and purpose: what do I feel, need, love and desire (to share in the community)?

To my surprise, I’ve witnessed that people often prefer to judge rather than to offer support. As if my vulnerability triggered hidden fears in people, to stand alone. It takes courage to listen openly. I’ve felt connected to the continent during my time of single motherhood; I had to give up privileges, heal my romantic heart, get used to a more basic lifestyle and nurture my family with resilience. It made me grateful from within.

There came a turning point after meditating as a daily part of my self-care. This restored a creative flow of ideas and palpable steps in my day-to-day life. My resistance against my living circumstances transformed into acceptance and surrender. I truly enjoyed my life with my daughter and allowed any lovely outcome.
Besides that, I started to experiment with a technique, to manipulate my medium format nature (and portrait) photo-negatives with ink and organic substances, creating a new type of art photography from my home.

I’d like to highlight the power of neural networks and emotional connection, to expand inner space and outer or creative productivity. Which shifts the focus to the quality of relationships and inner connectedness, as a desired condition for reproduction, also in the form of raising a loving or healthy family.

Reproduction should ideally be a result of mutual interconnectedness in any way. It’s not a goal in itself, to me. Sharing a way of life which supports happy childhoods should be key. So (step)parenting is then a result of love, a responsible task for life and a desire for personal and communal growth, worthy of various forms of support or caring networks. I’d love to call this trans-parenting. There may be no doubt that all people are worthy of love and love-supporting rules and laws, if we can allow society to level up.

As a mother in a family of five (our 3rd child will be born in ’23) I am pro diversity and pro taking social responsibility by free will. Truthful and co-creative connections are my primal desire. Sharing a commitment with my partner, enables me to open up deeply and show my vulnerabilities and powers. Including my biological power to give life to new people born.

Women and men need evolving and daring relationships. I don’t want to exclude men or avoid male structures, instead I’m set to find new structures, regardless origin (or species), which are open to collaborate with (my) feminine and other energies. So we as people can flow in better directions.

Domestic Goddess

  • Ego Management – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
  • Sink – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
  • Connectivity – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
  • Embrace – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)


In this series I’ve re-shaped my conditioned mind as a (by that time) single working mum, within the domain of my home as a studio.

My role as an artist is entangled with my household and that of a mother and woman. Am I seeing through the fabric of a curtain, or am I hidden behind it? Cleaning, dancing, resting and organizing at home feels as natural to me, as a walk in the forest. It connects me to my heart, body and mind, where intention, dust, touch, move and scents co-exist in an emotional space with walls, doors, closets and transparent windows. As a (former) single mum, our house started to become a spiritual cube to me. It is were we’ve survived and learned to surrender and thrive, from within.

By exploring my natural connection to my home as an extension of Earth and its resources, I’m letting go of old patriarchal structures in which feminine senses and intuitive powers have been dominated or exploited (for the benefits of a power system). In fact I’ve talked to my shower and been drinking water as if coming from a well or source.

In the history of the Netherlands, a natural or spiritual connection to nature has been repressed by the institutional Church for centuries, whilst supporting economical activities and slave trade of the State overseas. A lack of sensual and free emotional expression has caused abuse of (so called) exotic women or even children, without a mutual equal connection.

Nowadays, people tend to project a wild inner nature on (trans)gender diversity. Yet heterosexual mothers often remain ignored or invisible, because the debate about reproduction focuses on a lineair and statistic point of view, rather as the contagious power of love as a reproductive energy. And relationships built on free will and a symbiotic harmony.

Natural forces have first been rediscovered at home, to affect social and economical domains as well. It’s a subtle and playfully provoking process. Poet and Jungian psychoanalytic Clarissa Pinkola Estés describes myths and stories in ‘Women who run with the wolves’.

Domestic Goddess plays with various interpretations of ‘the female archetype’ vocabulary. For people from western or market oriented countries this title might refer to a fantasy world or socially submissive status, defining the role of a woman or tasks in a household in a more less static way. Whereas in various cultures and beliefs a ‘family’ spirit is associated with social integrity or emotional responsivity and implements these qualities on a professional level as well. Nevertheless, this series isn’t about left or right, but about exploring the subconscious and act from that source in daily reality, within your community and living material surroundings too.

Mothership, part 1: Symbioscenes

  • Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
  • Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
  • Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
  • Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023

Mothership, part 1: Symbioscenes

“As the symbiotic interconnections come back into the soil, the ecosystem, and the macrobiomes, the neural and emotional connections return to the psyche to a form of health. What is new in this field is the discovery that many of the foundational forces are invisible to us. We were simply ignorant of them. … The fact that, for the bulk of our time on this Earth, humans have not had to analyze or even be conscious of our positive relationships to the Earth accounts to some extent for our not naming or recording them in the languages that have coalesced to become the English language. They were taken for granted when the world gave generously and continuously of these connections.
As the Anthropocene has peeled away the protective layers that held our positive Earth emotions in place, we have come to appreciate and value their role in our psychic health. I have illustrated this loss with my own example of witnessing the destruction of endemism and my endemic sense of place in Western Australia.”

– Eco philosopher Glenn A. Albrecht (Earth Emotions, page 194-195)


Through the container project Mothership, I’m exploring how to navigate in my working and family life, pregnancy and motherhood, while evolving a conscious relationship with the Earth as a symbiosis. My first analogue photographs of a happening at the beach, Symbioscenes, will take part of a multimedia video work which is in progress, as the start of my artist residency in Motherhood, with the long term project Mothership.

Our consciousness is rooted in the soil (under our feet) and skies (beyond our control). What is the message of inner voices that we construct and perceive our reality from? I’ll edit unique audio fragments to play with daily, social structures and invisible powers. Such as eye opening fragments of my grandmother’s diary, which I got after she passed away.

Mothership intertwines female family lines and a psychological connectedness within a natural environment. I’ll visually explore the relationship between my (sub)consciousness and the way my body is one with nature.
The project forms a dialogue between my changing life, body and emotional system, but also seeks for new meaning within a collective consciousness. To find a dynamic and valuable truth which is solid enough to be able to build upon the concept of a symbiocene, a term by Glenn Albrecht.

WORDS

Lisa DeSiro is the author of Labor (Nixes Mate, 2018) and Grief Dreams (White Knuckle Press, 2017). Her poetry is featured in various anthologies and journals, and has been set to music by several composers. Lisa is employed as the Production & Editorial Assistant for a non-profit organization; in addition, she is an editor for Indolent Books and a freelance accompanist. Read more about her at thepoetpianist.com.

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AEHK Art Digital Media Internships Education Events Featured Featured Artists Feminism gender History International Internships JourMS MAMA MOM Art Annex MOM Conference motherhood Residency Sociology Spiritual Motherhood

Final PUSH to 2022 Fundraising Goals and A Big Move!

Donate To MoM

This is our final countdown to the Mother Tree Fundraiser in 2022. As of now, we are over halfway to our goal of purchasing this one-of-a-kind artwork from world-renowned paper-maker Helen Hiebert, on loan to MoM until June 2023. We have raised $13,300 towards the purchase price of $25,000. That means only $11,700 left to go! Won’t you help us clinch the deal? The Mother Tree is a seven-foot high handmade sculpture installation featuring single strands of thread which have been crocheted by over 400 participants around the world. Helen is an internationally acclaimed artist, author and educator. The Mother Tree is currently onsite at the MOM Art Annex. She is impactful, lovely, and represents the connection we have to the earth, our families, and our community. Any amount, no matter how small, helps us to secure her for our permanent collection. Your name will be added to the webpage and also onsite at MoM. You can write a check, donate through Paypal or go through our GoFundMe. We thank YOU!

Read on to see all our successes in 2022 and see what we hope to achieve in 2023.

This year we commenced with BIG goals at MoM. In addition to branded content, thanks to our summer interns, we revamped our mission statement to maximize inclusivity while staying true to our goals of elaborating on the art, science, and herstory of m/others.

We recommitted to serving up visible, educational, and inspiring offerings by conducting onsite tours on a regular basis. These tours oftentimes included children. We added to our collections and exhibits, built a vestibule to better enable visitors to view our interior space regardless of pandemics, and held postpartum groups and mothers’ playdates in our garden.

Easy QR MoM Donation with Stripe (Secure Payments)

New team members came on board. Specifically, we welcomed legal advice from local lawyer Larry Dillahunty, and are most pleased to be working with Deborah Gelch in the position of Strategic Advisor, Elena Rodz in website development, Marcile Powers as Arts Facilitator, and Connie Burgess as our new Membership Director and Community Laison.

We continued with our Residencies both remote and onsite, as well as our internship program, adding four new interns poised to start work in the new year. Our international relationship with MAMA collaborators continued, bringing online art exhibits from around the world.

We heartily thank the neighborhood of Historic Kenwood and the Artist Enclave for their great work on the Studio Tour as well as Winter in the Woods, and Bohemia Night at (Kenwood Gables) which MoM participated in, and also want to shout out to SPACEcraft for including us in their latest round of installations in St. Pete, and St. Pete High School for inviting MoM to present at the Art & Feminist Club.

One piece of big news is that our director, Martha Joy Rose took up permanent residence in Florida this year, relinquishing her NY-based teaching job at Manhattan College and further cementing her commitment to MoM locally in St. Petersburg.

We thank you Living Board 2022, Zabrina Shkurti, Nicole Musselman, and two-term Residency Coordinator Tracy Sidesinger. The Annual MoM Conference and the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS) are ongoing with this year’s hybrid conference scheduled for March 24-26. (Join us online or in person).

This year, we wrote two grants: one was denied and we are waiting to hear on the second one. We received one anonymous foundation award in the amount of $1,000, and we thank all our new members and donors! While our needs are great, as is the case with many non-profits, we have persevered through geographic moves, personnel changes, pandemics, and great and we have SURVIVED and THRIVED!

MoM belongs to you – the public, our members, and our community. Please consider getting involved or making a donation today. Use our donation link or checks can be sent to 538 28th St. N St Petersburg, Florida 33713. Help us GROW!

Donate To MoM
  • SPACEcraft, Photo by Sandra Sonik
  • Marcile Powers, Photo by Sandra Sonic
  • SPACEcraft, Photo by Sandra Sonic
  • SPACEcraft Mama!
  • SPACEcraft, Joy and Connie
  • SPACEcraft founders Mitzi Gordon & Carrie Boucher
  • Journal of Mother Studies
  • Martha Joy Rose, St. Pete High School
  • Bohemia Night, Kenwood Gables
  • Bohemia Night Kenwood Gables
  • Tour MoM Alexis Baum
  • New Art
  • MoM Postpartum Group
  • Deborah Gelch and Connie Burgess
  • Feminist Club
  • MoM’s Playdate
  • MoM Playdate
  • Playdate at MoM
  • MoM Merch
  • Winter in the Wood
  • Winter in the Wood
  • Gloria Munoz- St Pete Poet Laureate and former MoM Resident
  • MoM Tour w/Family
  • Babies are the Future!
  • Summer visits/ Birth Chair
  • Friends from NY Visit MoM
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Art Birth breastfeeding Classes Featured Featured Artists Feminism History Residency Spiritual Motherhood st petersburg

Batya Weinbaum, Goddesses, and the Season of Light

‘Tis the season of grace and friendship. Let us shine our lights brightly and wide. Let us reflect on the past as we approach the new year. Let that include in our reflections a little understood, often neglected vast herstory of Goddess-wisdom from within the pagan evolutions of this holiday season rooted in mystical wisdom and earth worship.

As the director of the MoM for almost twenty years, I have met with academics, artists, and m/others from around the world. They often share elaborative perspectives on women’s issues, family studies, and feminism. I often meet people who have lived experiences vastly different than my own. They always inspire.

For example, artist, scholar, and Femspec editor, Batya Weinbaum arrived onsite at MoM for a month of mural-making and herstory speaking at the beginning of December. Everyday, there is some new story. Beginning with her early years in Manhattan as a young feminist participating variety in consciousness-raising collectives to her systematic sharing of stories of art-making and land-living. Batya regularly teaches college coursework, hosts online art circles, and speaks at international gatherings. For me, she has become a wise, welcome daily fixture onsite at MoM, where young families regularly visit to hear her stories and where we collaborate on some art-sharing circles.

  • Batya Weinbaum Mural at Museum of Motherhood
  • Batya Weinbaum Mural at Museum of Motherhood
  • Batya Weinbaum Mural at MoM
  • Feminist Circle Art-Making at MoM
  • Family Hannukah in the Feminist Playhouse
  • Batya Weinbaum

Batya is a graduate of Hampshire College and a mosaic muralist acclaimed for an eight year art installation project on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, where images of fertility goddesses from around the world and across cultures were assembled in large figurines in order to lend strength to the Maya fertility goddess, IxChel. Her work elaborates on the Neolithic period, influenced by the works of Marija Gimbutas, Riane Eisler, Monica Sjoo (The Great Cosmic Mother) and Elizabeth Barber (Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years), who discuss periods of human history when motherhood was not a liability but something to be revered.

While visiting the MOM Art Annex, she will be constructing a fertility goddess mural from 6000 BCE. She believes women need to get in touch with origin myths in order to be strong women today. I agree!

This energy is significantly meaningful for students of all ages. Beyond contemporary celebrity icons, it is important to channel the power of the little studied leaders of a more female-friendly, woman-centric world.

Dr. Weinbaum’s contributions to MoM will serve up inspiration as well as a powerful legacy of connection to community members touring the MOM Art Annex as we build together towards our vision of a Museum of Motherhood here in St. Pete.

“Batya’s work hits on so many different levels for women, whether or not they’re mothers or feminists… And even in our current political climate, I think all women can and will find a unique resonance with this booming goddess that she’s installing at MOMMuseum. For me personally, as someone who has always struggled with balancing humility and pride, Batya’s raw, bold work inspires bravery and pride in addition to capturing the colorful joys that mothers contribute to a community.” – Dannie Snyder, Artivist & Educator 

BIO: Batya Weinbaum is a visionary artist whose works have been sold at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the Oberlin Art Museum, and many galleries in NY, Boston, VA, OH, Hawaii and Michigan as well as Mexico. She has been active in the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology. Some of her work can be seen at goddess vibe.org. Dr. Weinbaum teaches online at Boston College in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, and American Public University. She earned her doctorate at UMass Amherst, her Master’s at SUNY Buffalo, and her Bachelor’s at Hampshire College. She has published numerous creative and critical works, including award-winning essays, fiction and poetry. She was a cofounder of the Feminist Mother’s and Their Allies Caucus and Task Force in National Women’s Studies Association, where she petitioned for child care, and has published extensively about the impact of motherhood on grassroots political organizing in Palestine/Israel, in numerous journals and anthologies. 

Great Cosmic Mother

As Batya writes, “A museum dedicated to the study of motherhood deserves a message from the past via an image of a goddess, a fat fecundity image seated on a throne flanked by lions from Catal Huyuk now in Turkey, conjuring up shrines where goddesses were revered for giving birth.”

Ms. Weinbaum splits her time between Floyd VA and Cleveland Hts, OH, is happy to grant interviews about the project. Her art, publications, workshops and adventures can be followed on IG #divinefemimineartworkshops

More on Goddesses Brooklyn Museum [here].

Yours in Affirmations for World Peace, Feminist Equalities, and Friendship,

Martha Joy Rose, Director

Categories
Art Education Featured Featured Artists Fl MAMA MOM Art Annex motherhood Residency

M.A.M.A. Issue 53 – Jessica Caldas

The Museum of Motherhood, ProCrete Project, the Mom Egg Review present M.A.M.A. Our collaboration celebrates the intersection of art and words. Wherever we live, work, and play, the art of motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA  @ProcreateProj  @MuseumOfMotherhood @MERliterary

ART

BIO: Jessica Caldas is a Puerto Rican American, Florida and Georgia based, artist, advocate, and activist. She completed a residency at MoM onsite in 2022. Her work connects personal and community narratives to larger themes and social issues. Caldas has participated in numerous emerging artist residencies, including the Atlanta Printmakers Studio in 2011, MINT Gallery’s Leap Year Program from 2012-2013, The Creatives Project form 2018-2019, Vermont Studio Center in 2020, and was the Art on the Atlanta Beltline AIR in 2020-2021. Caldas was awarded The Center for Civic Innovations 2016 Creative Impact award, named Creative Loafing’s Best of ATL Artist for 2016 and 2015, received the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs Emerging Artist Award in Visual Arts for 2014, and was a finalist for the Forward Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award in 2014. Her work has been featured at Burnaway, ArtsAtl, Creative Loafing Atlanta, Atlanta Magazine, Simply Buckhead, and more. Her work has been shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA and is included in the collections of Kilpatrick Townsend, The City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Kyoto International Community House.

In her advocacy work, Caldas has spent time lobbying for policy at the local level in Georgia and spent time with the YWCA Georgia Women’s Policy Institute at the 2016 general assembly to assure the passage of the Rape Kit Bill and in 2016 to stop HB 51 in 2017, a bill that would have harmed the safety of sexual assault survivors on college campuses.

Caldas received her Masters of Fine Arts degree at Georgia State University in 2019 and received her BFA in printmaking from the University of Georgia in 2012. She currently runs Good News Arts, a small community arts space and gallery in rural North Central Florida.

Jessica Caldas

Statement

My work is driven by personal experience and its connection to contemporary and historical issues. Overall, my work addresses the complexities and intricacies of care and identity in our current culture. I seek to make challenging experiences accessible to those without the same somatic knowledge while still engaging in conversation and confrontation. In my practice, I incorporate layered, labor intensive drawings, collage, sculpture, performance, et al, into fully realized mixed media works and immersive installations. Within my work, the viewer is met with bodily experiences that mirror the complexities of the stories I share, with a focus on shared knowledge, awareness, empathy, and change.

My recent work is mostly divided in two ways:
1. Focus on the daily lived experiences of women; their triumphs, their struggles, and everything in between in several bodies of work which reflects on the complicated spaces, both personal and public, that women inhabit and move through.
2. Exploration of the complexities of identity where family history, cultural and social influence, politicization, and personal desire are both at odds and overlapping. In this exploration identity becomes a fact-based excavation of personal history alongside a kind of fictional mythological world building.

My artistic process has become a slow one. Where once I worked quickly, and almost frantically, I have learned in the years since completing my graduate work  that a slower, more methodical approach serves me and my work much more completely than the ways I used to create. I spend an inordinate amount of time, months and sometimes longer, reading, writing, and researching ideas, stories, and concepts that inform the work I am creating. I probably spend more time thinking about the work I will make than actually producing it, because by the time I have gotten to the point of making, I have a lot of knowledge about where I am going and what I want from the work. This is not to say that I create without reacting to what is happening, because that is another important part of my practice. Much of my production is also organic and reactionary as well. I like the ability to respond to change, materials, problems, and other things that happen in the studio as they happen, rather than strictly adhering to a plan. I find that flexibility has produced far better work than rigidity ever does. It is more real and more realistic.

As for my journey, I am one of those fortunate people who have been creating my whole life. I was privileged enough to be surrounded by art from a young age, and to be surrounded by people who took art seriously and supported my desire to practice art professionally. So going to school for art was never an issue.

(Quote from the art journal: an online journal of art and cultural commentary. Link: https://www.theartsection.com/caldas)

WORDS

Dayna Patterson is the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If
Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Her creative work has
appeared recently in Duende, EcoTheo, and Gulf Coast. She is the founding
editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother
in Mormon Poetry. She was a co-winner of the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry
Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. daynapatterson.com

Categories
Activism Featured Featured Artists Feminism Fl gender health History home International JourMS Literature MAMA Media MOM Art Annex MOM Conference MoM Pop Up motherhood Residency Social Justice Sociology Spiritual Motherhood

Joy Report: Team Art Shows, MoM Conference, and #Giving Tuesday

Hello Friends,

It’s sunny in Florida and a balmy 76 degrees and many of us are celebrating together in traditional ways. The Christmas tree is ready to be illuminated downtown, fake snow is in the air, and lights abound. Whether you are prepping the family menorah, or simply looking towards Festivus, may we be glad and of good will. May we lift up those suffering through hunger and war and let us show kindness to our neighbor and gentleness in our homes.

Let us create! Let us show our souls! Let us paint our dreams and mold images out of clay. Let us stitch together a herstory that weaves its way from the city of the arts, in the neighborhood of Kenwood, ‘where art lives’, all the way to you, wherever you may be.

This weekend, MoM team member Elena Rodz has a solo art show at Redbud Gallery 303 E. 11th St. Houston, TX 77008, Texas. The title of her show is, Dilly Dally. Dates: Dec 3 – Jan 1/ Reception: Dec 3, 6-9PM

Artist Statement: The show’s title “Dilly Dally” refers to the practice of enjoying life at a walking pace. Like many of my generation, I’m overwhelmed by the enormity of the Now — the biannual once-in-a-millennia events, the metropolitan cultural hubs we all rushed to after undergrad, the gauntlet from grade school to (maybe) retirement. A move to a small city in Texas in 2013 prompted a reconsideration at the pace I experienced life. I learned to look each moment in the face rather than over its shoulder.

This series of paintings challenges the viewer to suspend thought. The imagery and composition are superficial, and the response should be primal. I want the viewer to feel instinctually rather than put thought into deciphering the hidden meaning of the artwork. The purpose of the artwork is to pause and appreciate the slow moments and the overlooked beauty of the average. Although the scenes are all real places in Corpus Christi, TX, they recall anywhere once called home.

We applaud Elena and love her dearly for her creativity, spunk, and expertise. She greatly contributes to the MoM team and we are all better for knowing her. See more of Elena’s art which is available for purchase here.

We are excited for our Annual Conference this March 23-24 in St. Pete and on Zoom. THE DEADLINE to SUBMIT IS EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 10th. You only need to submit a 250 word abstract about an academic paper, art project, or other medium on the topic of Reproductive Landscapes: This conference call is for papers, performances, conversations, and art, focused on new gender identities and discourse. Here is the full CFP and submit via the JourMS website. Won’t you please join the conversation about this very important topic!

It’s #GivingTuesday! This year MAKE IT MoM and help us GROW!

We have DREAMS of a PLACE to call OUR own. A museum that ELEVATES, illuminates, DISSEMINATES, and complicates this wildly IMPORTANT identity, JOB, journey, and POSITION of care, CONCERN, birth, and LIFE- the WOMYN at the CENTER of creativity, PROCREATION, productivity, SORROW, hope, HELP, and JOY 💓– any DONATION amount MAKES a difference. We ARE the ART, science, and HERstory of M/others.

Any amount benefits our forward movement; $5, $10, $15, $25, $50, $100, $1,000. We have so much we are $5, $15, $10, $25, $100, $1,000 towards MEMBERSHIP, acquisitions, BUILDING CAMPAIGN.

We look forward to your energy, your care, your good vibes, and your financial support. THANK YOU!

DONATE

As November winds to a close and December rushes in, let us take time to reflect not only on the things we are grateful for, but the ways in which we can all heed the call to ‘do better’ in our lives, our relationships, and in the ways we work and move in the world.

Love, Love, Love,

Joy Rose, Director and Founder (Link to our December Newsletter)

Categories
Blog Caregiving Education Featured Artists gender Residency

Meet the Newest Artist Resident at MoM: Marin Sardy

We are excited to announce our newest Guest Artist in Residence, Marin Sardy! Marin is a critically acclaimed author who is currently working on her second novel.

Headshot of Marin Sardy

Q: What is your connection to m/otherhood as an artist?

A: I love the way this question is phrased, with the word that highlights both “motherhood” and “other-hood.” I’m a writer of memoir, personal essays, and other forms of creative nonfiction, and my connection to both of the above concepts centers on my explorations of mental health, caregiving, and disability justice. As the daughter and sister of two people who struggled with serious, chronic mental illness, I wrote my first memoir, The Edge of Every Day, to examine the ways that I have strived to understand their experiences, worked to help them, and been shaped by loss. My current work is more focused on dismantling the deeply ingrained cultural attitudes that continue to prevent people from seeking and receiving effective, respectful mental health care. I’d like to add too that, while I haven’t written about it, I am also a stepmother. In both of these roles, I am and have been “mother-adjacent” in ways that I believe ought to be honored and valued in the face of the too-narrow box that motherhood has often been confined to.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish during your residency?

A: I plan to make as much progress as I can on my second book, which folds together stories from the lives of two very different women who lived with long-term psychosis: an art photographer whose work I admire, and my mother. I am currently focused on completing a full draft of the portions that relate to my mother, and my role as a daughter who was pushed into, and later embraced, acting as a caregiver for her. I’m interested in questions such as: What does it mean to be a caregiver in a mental health context, when the work involved is so often intangible? What kind of support might have helped both of us to live our lives more fully and safely? And what does this mean for me, as a daughter who spent so much time mothering a mother who had, in my youth, so dramatically failed to mother me? What (if anything) did my mother owe me, and what was it fair or unfair to ask of her?

Q: What led you to MoM and the residency program here?

A: I discovered Mom when I saw former MoM resident Tracy Sidesinger’s post on Instagram announcing that she had been accepted for the residency! Having never heard of the organization, I did a bit of research and quickly decided to apply myself. I was inspired by the museum’s desire to promote community and to both explore and support motherhood in all its facets. It just felt like it made sense for me to try to connect with the organization. Tracy in fact had been a student in an online nonfiction writing course I taught through Catapult a few years ago, and I’m grateful that I stayed in touch with her through social media—partly because her fascinating, thoughtful Instagram account is so  full of wisdom and depth, and partly because she led me to reach out to MoM. 

Continue reading to find out more about Marin.

Marin Sardy is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia (2019). Sardy’s essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Tin House, Guernica, the Paris Review Daily, the Missouri Review, and many other journals, as well as in two award-winning photography books. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Sardy has three times had her work listed as “notable” in the Best American series, and she has been awarded residency fellowships at Hawthornden Castle and Catwalk Institute. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and teaches nonfiction writing for Pace University and Authors Publish.

If you are interested in applying for a guest residency here at MoM, please go to our website HERE: https://bit.ly/3uRgugm  to find out more. BE SURE TO HURRY! Spots have been filling FAST! We hope that future tours of the space will be available soon, but they are by appointment only in Artist Enclave Historic Kenwood: “where art lives.”

Categories
Blog Caregiving Education Featured Artists gender Residency

Meet the Newest Artist Resident at MoM: Amanda Watson

We are excited to announce our newest Guest Artist in Residence, Amanda Watson! To gain more insight into who Amanda is as a mother-scholar and to better understand her goals here during her residency, Amanda shared the following:

Headshot of Amanda Watson
Headshot of Amanda Watson

Q: What do you hope to accomplish during your residency?

A: For the past few years of pandemic-era mothering, my research and writing have been conducted sporadically, in piecemeal ways, and in stressful conditions. I hope to make space for my research and writing in this residency in order to analyze new data with fresh eyes and write about it with renewed vision for my purpose as a writer, scholar, and mother.

Q: What led you to MoM and the residency program here?

A: I shared research on motherhood at the MoM in Manhattan nearly a decade ago as a graduate student before becoming a parent myself. The cozy space and warm interactions with community members and diverse scholars and practitioners made an impression on me I have always been interested in returning to MoM. On a recent visit to New York City, I found out about the residency in Florida and applied immediately. It seems like the perfect offering for artists and academics who need to make space for their creative ideas and practices to flourish, particularly as mothers coming out of pandemic isolation having spent so much time doing caregiving.

Continue reading to find out more about Amanda.

Dr. Amanda Watson’s research explores how caregivers and community activists navigate complex institutional settings in their efforts to effect social change. Her interests include care, labour, disability, media representation of motherhood. She teaches on politics of family, global problems and the culture of capitalism, and power and conflict in Canadian society. Watson is an Associate Member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. She serves on the editorial board of Gender & Society.

Current projects include Politics of Birthstrike, exploring how young adults reconcile their desires for ethical family life with resurging population control initiatives to reduce their climate footprint by having fewer children; Imagine Kin Project, investigating how young adults talk about their future relations in the context of interlocking crises; and Politics of Social Justice Parenting, new research exploring the experiences of parents of young children through pandemic closures and trends in parenting.

If you are interested in applying for a guest residency here at MoM, please go to our website HERE: https://bit.ly/3uRgugm  to find out more. BE SURE TO HURRY! Spots have been filling FAST! We hope that future tours of the space will be available soon, but they are by appointment only in Artist Enclave Historic Kenwood: “where art lives.”

Categories
Art Birth Education Featured Artists International MAMA Medical

MAMA: ISSUE 52 HBAC Performance Manifesto

HBAC Performance Manifesto – MAMA Artist Bio

SLQS is a Franco-Vietnamese artist living in East London. Her work is interdisciplinary and questions the politics of space and who is excluded from it. SLQS makes and holds space as a woman, a person of mixed heritage, a foreigner, a mother and an artist. She invites her audience to decolonise spatial orders from imperialist, sexist and racist structures. SLQS has presented work at Totally Thames, Spitalfields Music, Rich Mix, Procreate Project, the Live Art Development Agency, the Royal College of Art, the Brunel Museum, the Migration Museum and the Attenborough Art Centre. She is a board member of the Creative Think Tank for UK New Artists.

https://www.workbyslqs.com/                                 @workbyslqs (instagram)

About the work

The HBAC Performance Manifesto was written from my personal experience of being pregnant and not given access to a home birth or the birthing centre. Having previously had a caesarean, I was labelled ‘high risk’ and was not being heard.

On 4th and 5th November 2018, over 25 hours, I performed the act of giving birth at home with the support of two independent midwives. The birth was documented as an act of everyday life in the domestic space, with cameras set up in my kitchen, my bedroom and my living room. The Manifesto declares my views on birth as an every day performance and Home Birth After Cesarean (HBAC) as being a safe birth

option. It was published by the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS) in 2020.

Independent midwifery supports choices for women by providing evidence based information and continuity of care to women. Since 2020, due to their insurance product being annulled, their home birth practice is now prohibited, threatening an ancestral profession and restricting women’s birth rights. A group of independent midwives are taking action and fundraising to set up their own insurance product owned by women, with the long term goal to set up a hardship fund. You can support their campaign here: Childbirth Choices Matters.

HBAC PERFORMANCE MANIFESTO

To the medicalised institutions, their medical staff and the health governmental bodies

ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

NO I am not high risk

NO I will not go to the labour ward

NO I will not be immobilised by continuous monitoring NO I will not labour under time pressure

NO I will not listen to you

NO I will not be given a trial of labour

I WILL LABOUR!

Giving birth is an ancestral ritual which has been performed at home by women for centuries. An act which has ensured the survival of the human species.

Women and daughters have witnessed the act of giving birth for millennia. Women can perform the art of giving birth and every performance will be unique.

Giving birth is a creative act.

The ultimate act of transformation.

A HBAC (Home Birth After Cesarean) is a political act attempting to shift the power from an obstetrically-led medical institution to a woman-centred care approach.

Labour is a durational performance: starting spontaneously with an unexpected duration.

A HABC gives time to the performance of labour. There is no failure to progress, only failure to wait! Patience and respect for the process is practiced.

A HBAC requires participants to support the performer throughout the act of birth. Midwives, partners, family members, friends will be chosen in advance by the performer to participate in the event.

A HBAC enables the performer to control her birth. She is informed and capable of making the right decisions for herself and her baby. She rejects the politics of fear and failure institutionalised by hospital birth.

A HBAC should be available to all women without resistance. All women are eligible for care and should be in control of their choices without judgement.

I AM STRONG

I AM CAPABLE

I TRUST MY BODY I TRUST MY BABY

The performance of HBAC is not a medicalised event. It is a holistic act celebrating life itself. HBAC is performed without the traditional medical props.

NO Forceps NO Ventouse NO CTG

NO Cannulas

NO Augmentation Drugs

NO Amniotomy

NO Epidural

The performance of HBAC challenges the current medical hierarchy of birth. Verticality is replaced by horizontality.

The performance of HBAC reframes birth as an event in a woman’s life in her domestic environment. There is no drama.

Giving birth is a woman’s right of passage into motherhood. A physical and mental journey leading to an act of transformation. Such a journey requires preparation and planning, knowing that unforeseen circumstances can change the course of actions.

A birth plan is a manifesto of personal preferences.

In the performance of HBAC, hospitals and obstetrics interventions are for emergencies only. Giving birth is an innate performance. A primal aptitude buried deep inside every woman.

The performance of HBAC redefines risk. Risk is not measured as a possible scar rupture but as avoiding another assisted birth and future mental trauma associated to this experience.

The performance of HBAC promotes independence. INDEPENDENCE in the choices the performer makes about her birth. INDEPENDENCE from hospital’s policies

INDEPENDENCE from unnecessary medical intervention.

The performance of HBAC respects the culture of birth and the art of midwifery. The performance of HBAC is an act of activism.

Written by Sarah Le Quang Sang, October 2018,

In Flat 55 Maitland House, Bishops Way, London, E2 9HT