Tag: maternal art

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MoM Knows How To Have Fun!

ANNOUNCING EVENTS – PROGRESS – RHYTHMS at MoM in August and Beyond.

Our team sure knows how to have fun. Last week we did a little research in St. Pete. We explored local escaper rooms for inspiration as our volunteers continue to design and plan for our future ‘Escape Womb Experience‘ – (Anticipated opening in October). We also celebrated the opening of friend and neighbor Lucky Leroy’s Florida Famous exhibit in the gallery at The Factory. The exhibit is up through August. Make sure to experience it when you visit MoM in August this summer.

Yes, to those who have been following the news that I’ve been having some health hiccups this summer. I am moving much better now as is evidenced in these pictures. Yay Team! I aim to continue with the healing process. Also, on a recovery note – if you’ve seen the weather reports, Hurricane Debby just came raging through Pinellas County, and thankfully we are okay here with only one event cancellation on Monday and our lactation event with Amanda Bartles on Wednesday, August 7th this week at 6PM, still happening! (Our hearts go out to anyone impacted by extreme weather everywhere). August is Breast Feeding Awareness Month: raising awareness about the challenges and rewards of chest feeding! Whichever direction you choose, MoM is here for you. We are in Florida – HOME OF THE ENDLESS SUMMER. It’s hot, hot, hot at the Museum of Motherhood where Christen Clifford’s INTERIORS: we’re all pink inside Exhibit is up all month along with a Womb of Our Own – Seeing RED and Molly Duffy’s Lil Dicki.

Joy, Leroy, Barbara, Tracey, Mary, Sierra, Deanna, Allen

You may have heard the news that The Factory property – where MoM is currently located was recently sold to investors. The transition has been a bit chaotic with no firm news of our future spot in Gallery Row and many of the artists are also up in the air. We anticipated moving at the beginning of September. Now it may be later in September and we’ll let you know as soon as we have any news. The arts make everything great, so I hope St. Pete can keep the cool vibe going with all the recent gentrification of the city.

Meanwhile, we persevere with all our committees are meeting regularly. We still need onsite volunteers. If you have 3 hours a week and are local to St Petersburg we are looking for responsible volunteers to spend time with us as a docent in a beautiful, warm, and inviting space, MoM needs you! Even if you are only available once or twice a month – Sign up on our volunteer form here. MoM is open for regular hours throughout August.

Lots and Lots of Love – Enjoy the end of your summer,

JOY (Martha Joy Rose, Founder, Director)

Here’s the rest of the GOOD NEWS report – Keep reading below:

MoM Art Auction for the Museum of Motherhood

An upcoming MoM Art Auction is planned for October in Tampa with chairperson and arts gallery owner Odeta Xheka and our entire Executive Board spearheading the event. The goal is to raise funds for MoM and build on our permanent collection. The submission announcement is live and open for artists to submit through August. We will have a great big bash and a post auction exhibition. Please spread the word! In collaboration with OXH Gallery.

Artist Submissions Mom Art Auction

MORE NEWS

The Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS) is in final edits with lead editor Meagan Welch.

Going into our 2024-25 season we have an operational Executive Board with newest board member Anna Lieggi. See our full board here and our updated Team Page.

MoM was awarded three grants last week! We can’t wait to announce all the details – but we can spill that one of them was with the Arts Alliance of St Pete for their Pitch Competition. Congrats Barbara Lynch for that team success on behalf of all of us!

25th Anniversary MoM Annual Arts & Academic Conference CFP is LIVE! The Conference is being organized under the leadership of Brittany DeNucci and our Academic and Conference committee. Thanks to all and Deanna Barcelona and Mary have visited USF and are actively seeking to coordinate conference space on campus in 2025. Artists, Scholars, Activists, SUBMIT NOW!

MoM Art Auction - Call for Submissions!

Thanks to New Community Partner/Sponsor, BayFirst Financial. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, BayFirst Financial offers personal and business banking services, including checking & savings accounts, loans, and more. MoM thanks BayFirst Financial.

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Featured

MoM Goes Abroad – Message From the Founder

LONDON ENGLAND – I attended the Procreate Project’s Oxytocin Conference, organized by Dyana Gravina, and team, mid-May for two days of intensely powerful commissioned art, scholarship, and workshop work at Kings College. Scholar, poet, and accelerator Hannah Brockbank and I were scheduled to lead a workshop together.

Inspired by the work of Sierra Clark, the workshop was titled “Repair Work, from Sweet Nothings to Sweet Everything,” the title of her chapter in Repairing the Black Family Anthology, edited by Sister Nayyirah Muhammad. The aim of the workshop was to disrupt narratives in order to facilitate healing, which was indeed the goal of the entire conference.

The power of stories shared and the work we did together to dialogue about contemporary issues facing mothers and the women who labor through this important work could not be denied. Laura Godfrey Issacs shared information about the Birth Cafe (see more at http://www.birth are.org), PhD candidate Anna Horn’s interactive workshop on ‘Inclusive Infant Feeding’ compelled.

The conference itself was funded by the Public Arts Council of England amount others. The Procreate Project, Museum of Motherhood, and MER: The Mom Egg Review have been working together since 2015 to feature the art and literature of m/others. I am looking forward to bringing new knowledge(s) back to Florida when I return. But first, the second portion of my trip takes me on a three hour flight to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea.

Scenes from Oxytocin, London England

XEMXIJA, MALTA with its windswept bay, Mellieha with views that stretch past the isle of Goza, Mostar, with its magnificent dome, Mdina the silent city, and Rabat. Hot, dusty, and international. Roses, cactus, olive trees and lemons. In Malta, we go to see the Goddess temples Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. These two temples comprise one of the three UNESCO Heritage sites on Malta, but together there are seven megalithic temples. So, of the three sites heritage sites, one represents all of the temples combined, plus the city of Valletta, and the Hypogeum. Additionally, located at the island of Gozo are the temples rumored to built by the giants.

These Megalithic temples comprise some of the oldest free-standing structures on earth. Older than the pyramids, they are thought to be Goddess Temples for both fertility and transformation as part of a prehistoric culture that appears to be centered around women and the three spheres, heaven, earth, and the underworld as embodied through the pot, house, temple and tomb. We catch the bus and hold tight swerving up narrow inclines twisting and turning above the sea.

When we get to the temple, I am quivering with excitement. We buy tickets, walk through the small but impactful museum, and head outdoors along a windswept path towards the structure which overlooks the Mediterranean. The breeze is slight. Hagar Qim is crowned with a giant white canvas to lessen the impact of the elements. As one approaches her entrance, the tent fades away and all focus turns to the massive rocks shaping what appears to be her portal beyond the giant curved walls. According to Cultural Anthropologist Veronica Veen, we enter the Goddess’ body through her vagina (Pg. 8 The Goddess of Malta).

Goddesses of Malta

There is so much to write about here. Both portions of my trip have offered so much in terms of knowledge, blessings, friendship, and collaboration. I’ll bring all this newfound knowledge of Goddesses and the art of many m/others back to the Museum of Motherhood with me. It will certainly inform my work moving forward and I look forward to the future conversations, creativity, and future collaborations this will inspire.

Yours in Love, Light, and M/otherhood. I hope my American friends have a great Memorial Day Weekend – Martha Joy Rose

More about my personal perspectives can be found at my blog: MarthaJoyRose.com

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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

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Art Caregiving Digital Media Internships Featured Featured Artists gender health International Literature MOM Art Annex motherhood Residency

Pandemic Parenting Interview with Batnadiv Hakarmi, by Rachael Grad

RG: How did motherhood change your art?

BH: To my surprise, when I became a mother, my work became so much more collaborative. Before I had children, I worked alone in the studio on personal projects. I used the space whenever I wanted, including late at night.The idea of sharing did not work with my entire approach to art-making. The changes began during my first pregnancy, when I had to change mediums because I developed an allergy to turpentine. After my first child was born, I worked at home painting small works in watercolor on a desk. Later, I started working with other moms.

All my support came from other mothers. I was lucky enough to be part of the group “A Studio of Her Own” which included a lot of other young moms with kids. A few of us got together to rent collaborative studio space that was child-friendly, and people used it at different times.  We did a series of site-specific projects together, working on big murals and projects in historic buildings and public spaces.  I love working big and not having to clean up a studio space. My friend Julia Aronson and I did a series of collaborative murals. We discussed the idea, then alternated painting days  with each other, in a kind of visual game of Exquisite Corpse. We had to let go of control and let someone else in. We kept a blog about our last project [Link below].

At home my kids get into my art materials, so I got them their own sketchbooks and supplies. They still always want mine though. 

RG: Were the changes in motherhood a surprise?

BH: I knew something was going to change but didn’t know how. I foresaw needing to work smaller. The opening of working collaboratively with other mothers was a good surprise.

RG: How do you fit in studio time with kids?

BH: My three children are now in kindergarten, pre-school, and daycare, respectively. Until each baby was a year old, I hired a babysitter once a week so I could have painting time, and I attended a late-night sculpture group. During the pandemic, for a year I didn’t have childcare so couldn’t do any art, except what I called my ‘stolen sketch time’. Before then, I found ways to paint or draw daily.

RG: Was there a big shift going from one child to 2?

BH: Yes. Two is more complicated because there’s a toddler to run after. I am always outnumbered. But for me the biggest shift was going from 0 to one child. The actual transition into motherhood has been transformative.

RG: What books, groups, web resources do you recommend?

BH: I find that working with other mothers is the most helpful way to navigate creativity amidst the chaos of motherhood. I am part of a wonderful poetry group called Mama Poets Write who used to meet once every two weeks for a night of writing. For art practice, I have artist friends who I would meet regularly. I worked with Julia Aronson on the mural projects and I participate in a regular sculpture group of women of different ages. I found my tribe and painting friends after having kids.

RG: Is there anything you would change or do differently?

BH: I was teaching before the pandemic in 3 different places. During the pandemic, it was a real struggle to teach on zoom with kids at home. I didn’t go back to teaching until after lockdown was over because it was too difficult to get childcare. I used to teach art at Brandeis University in the summer and I really miss it. I found there isn’t that much flexibility in teaching so between lockdowns and quarantines, I transitioned to giving workshops and doing freelance editing. The work does take away from my art practice – it’s a constant juggle to make time and space.  

RG: What’s your biggest struggle?

BH: A big struggle- quoting Virginia Woolf and her ‘Room of One’s Own’ – is a prescient issue. The lack of space for a mother-artist is huge. I need a space for myself to maintain my art practice. Yet, now even my bedroom is not my own. When you are pregnant, even your own body is not your own. I was never alone during the pandemic and I would like to find another collaborative space. Our original space was located in Beit Alliance, a subsidized cultural center. We had an amazing synergy and did some exceptional projects. But, as mothers of young children, we were not typical artists. We look or behave like people assume artists do. We didn’t attend late night events. We set up alternate events which were well attended, but our landlords did not renew our lease. I do think there is some discrimination against mother-artists and caretakers. I’m currently working in Ha Mifal where my sculpture group has a residency and exhibition. I am sure new things will arise as the future unfolds.

Blog Project with Julia and Batnadiv is here.

Full exhibit with Batnadiv at MoM is here [LINK]

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Art Featured Featured Artists Residency

Pandemic Parenting Exhibit with Rachael Grad and Natalie Majaba Waldburger

“My artwork grows itself like children. I set the path, feed them as needed, and create the right environment, then you’re good to go.  Monitor and tweak as needed. You just enjoy what happens after that. There are many unknowns after that but that is part of the joy of trusting and letting go.” ~ Natalie Majaba Waldburger

Natalie Waldburger Pandemic Parenting Exhibit

Bio: Natalie Majaba Waldburger’s current art practice is open-disciplinary and seeks to understand the complexities of respectful collaboration and participatory work in the context of anti-colonial research.  In recent years, institutional critique has become the focus for collaborative art practices as a co-founding member of The Drawing Board.  As an Associate Professor at OCAD U, Natalie has served as Chair for a number of programs in the faculty of Art including the inaugural Ada Slaight Chair of Contemporary Painting and Print Media and, most recently, Interim Chair of Sculpture/Installation and Life Studies and Grievance Chair for OCADFA.  The Life Studies area was the focus of Natalie’s appointment at OCAD U.  Life Studies is a specialization positioned in the Faculty of Art that brings together the arts, sciences, and humanities to cultivate interdisciplinary studio art practices.  These pedagogical approaches speak to Natalie’s own art research practice positioned at the intersection of sustainability, social justice, and ecologically-respectful art practices. [See full exhibit LINK]

Interview with Rachael Grad:

RG: How has your art changed during the pandemic?

NW: My work changed in the last year. I don’t make my own work when teaching, except for the collaborative work with The Drawing Board in which we talk about kids, work, and everything that’s happening in our lives. We are all mothers, teachers, administrators and artists and The Drawing Board became a way to support each other beyond the studio and outside of the institution.  It is an entity and a collective that is porous by necessity and a way to support each other as whole people with intersecting pressures that come with the different roles we have. The Drawing Board is where we can be silly, make commentary and give ourselves permission to try things that might fail. I am currently returning from a sabbatical from teaching at OCAD University. This opportunity allowed me to get out of the school/work grind, go offline, get back to materiality in art.

RG: What was your most recent collaborative project?

NW: The Drawing Board had a collective exhibition at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto during the height of the Omicron wave of the pandemic. We bubbled together and created work in the gallery. We invited 9 other artists to zoom in and participate. Six out of nine of the artists were moms. The guests gave us assignments and directions while we made art together in the gallery. We allow life to come in as commentary as well in our work –  the things that happen in our personal lives, our working lives and our individual artistic pursuits.

RG: What was your most recent individual project?

NW: I just finished a Bio-Art Residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. It was 6 weeks on my own, which was difficult for my family. I worked in a Level 1 Bio Lab.

RG: How did you get interested in biology and lab work?

NW: I started art and science work right out of OCAD seeking out anatomical studies in my figurative painting. Then I got interested in other scientific questions about what makes us human, like the human genome project. I later moved into installations then microscopic and cellular based works. I explore things that grow and ways in which materials grow themselves like having a child where you set the conditions, care and nurture the beings, and let them grow the way they want to. The surrounding environment impacts this particular work. My work has used wheatgrass, bioplastics, mycelium (the roots system of a mushroom). For my most recent project, I took molds of Victorian ceiling medallions that represent traditional Toronto architecture and also colonialism. I then filled them with mycelium while in the lab, allowing them to grow into these ornate forms.

RG: Why mycelium?

NW:  I wanted to continue with a material that, once started, would grow autonomously and introducing an element of the unknown to the process.  After doing some research I found that mycelium was used in research to predict the growth patterns of tumours. Because mycelium grows more quickly, in 2 to 3 weeks, it is a useful predictor of tumour behaviour. This resonated with me because my son has a brain tumor, diagnosed at 9 years old. The symptoms manifested initially as paralysis effecting his face, then arms and legs on the right side. He had to learn to walk again and undergo surgery, rehab and chemotherapy. It’s been challenging and yet amazing to see him grappling with this while still being a kid in school and eventually succeeding getting almost straight A’s in school. The disease has been unpredictable, and we never know what to expect. I’ve learned so much about Neurodiversity and navigating both the health and education systems.

RG: will you continue your research now that you’re back in Toronto?

NW: I’ll continue exploring but I don’t have the same lab access in Toronto. Life Studies will be able to build a mini-lab through a generous donation from the Joan and Clifford Hatch Foundation so that I can introduce some of these processes to Life Studies students. We can purchase an autoclave, which is a big giant sterilizing machine, alongside our current microscopes.  Next for our order is DNA sequencing equipment and growing equipment for plants. Interestingly, Life Studies was partnering with MaRS and Sick Kids and while on a tour of the SickKids research area I saw the lab housing my son’s tumor, two years after his surgery. Frequently, my research has mirrored and predicted what happens in my life.

RG: What’s next for you?

NW: In October my most recent residency work will be shown at Art Quarters on St. Clair Avenue West in Toronto. The works, alongside mosses and terrariums will likely be installed on walls, not hung from the ceiling as in New York.

RG: Anything else you’d like to share on motherhood and art?

NW: Being a mother is why I explored this way of making. At first, I used a paintbrush and encaustic – body-like materials that do their own thing. Having a child encouraged me to give up more control and make the unknown even more the driver of this work. I enjoy being open to results and thinking about how both science and art practices speak to each other. My materials are experimental, and I employ the same letting go and relinquishing of control that is necessary in the collaborative process and in parenting.

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Art Featured Featured Artists Residency

JJ Lee – Featured Artist Pandemic Parenting Online Exhibit

The Pandemic Parenting Exhibit is curated by Rachael Grad as part of her Remote Residency with MoM. Each week during the month of August, Rachael interviews and collects information about four outstanding mother artists and their practices. Then, her interviews will appear here and also link to the exhibit page online.

Pandemic Parenting FULL EXHIBIT ONLINE

“My work as a professor is to challenge the status quo and show that there are different ways to be an artist.” ~ JJ Lee

RG: What is your current focus?

JL: I have an upcoming exhibition next June through August in a Halifax Museum. I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to clear out my parents’ house and found all kinds of things. I started drawing based on these discoveries and proposed a show to the Museum. I was going back and forth to Halifax while my mom was sick. My recent work is about losing my mom and ancestry. The drawings of my mom were emotional and healing.

RG: How does being a mother impact your work?

JL: My 15-year-old non-binary child Mei came to Halifax during one trip while I was taking care of my dad. Mei was a comfort to me. The death of my mom and Chinese funeral rituals were a learning experience. I brought my dad back to Toronto to live. I have 4 siblings and am the youngest. The past few years during the pandemic have been an incredible amount of caretaking a child and my parents: first my mom and then my dad. Caretaking takes up an incredible amount of time and energy.

  • JJ Lee Works
  • JJ Lee Works
  • JJ Lee Works

RG: How did this parent caregiving come into your art?

JL: Caregiving changed my work, making and understanding. I started drawing on paper from my grandfather’s laundry that I found in my parents’ house. For a while I couldn’t do work on my mom so I did work about my grandfather. It’s difficult to capture my mom and her essence from photos. I started drawing on the found paper. Physical impressions of my mom’s writing in Chinese letters started coming through the paper. Intergenerational trauma is passed through DNA. I feel that that this show is not my show. For 30 years, the art was mine but not this new work. I am making drawings of my mom on laundry paper, my mom sewing in a shrine, and my grandmother and her friend. My recent work is about matriarchy and Chinese culture. My grandmother ran the house. There is a tradition in Chinese culture of the eldest son and his wife moving in and taking care of the son’s parents. I used to have a different impression of my grandmother then later learnt from family that she had had difficult life.

RG: How did your work change when you became a mother?

JL: My work changed when my baby was born but became more interesting when I started collaboratively working with Mei. My child taught me a lot including forcing me to face my own biases about art. Mei draws freely in her mark-making and stories.

RG: How do you balance creating, parenting, and teaching?

JL: My first exhibition with Mei was when Mei was 7 years old. My next exhibition didn’t include Mei and Mei wasn’t happy about it! At the time I was the Chair of First Year Painting and Drawing at OCAD University with a tenure track job. We realized later that Mei is hard of hearing and is autistic, so the show was about non-verbal communication. I was drawing on tags that represent labels about being autistic, Chinese, Canadian, and others. Then Mei ripped up my drawings into tiny pieces. I felt upset, violated, and destroyed but then Mei and I made a collaborative work out of putting the pieces together.

RG: Do you still collaborate with Mei now that she’s a teenager?

JL: Mei no longer wants to collaborate or get feedback on her art from me. Mei is part of the new digital generation.

RG: Are you collaborating in other ways?

JL: My work expanded through collaboration with dance-choreographer sister and The Drawing Board. In The Drawing Board collective with Natalie Waldburger and Amy Swartz, I lose individuality and have the freedom to make what I want. We can’t separate being moms and creatives. The Drawing Board formed because we didn’t have time to make our own work. The art practice responds to what’s happening through our lives. My work as a professor is to challenge the status quo and show that there are different ways to be an artist.

Full JJ LEE EXHIBIT ONLINE
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Art Featured Featured Artists health MOM Art Annex

MOM Welcomes Guest Artist Jessica Caldas

We are excited to announce our newest Guest Artist, Jessica Caldas. During her guest artist residency, Jessica will expand on her research and writing dedicated to exploring her matriarchal line.

Continue reading to find out more about Jessica and their journey.

What do you hope to accomplish during your residency?
Much of my time right now is devoted to others and work outside of my studio: I have a small child and family, a part-time telecommuting day job (although a very flexible and supportive one), and run a volunteer nonprofit arts organization in my community with robust programming. I love these things, and they are all important to my happiness and, ultimately, my practice as an artist, but so is my studio, and I am not always able to dedicate the time I would like to my studio. At my MoM residency, more than anything, I look forward to returning to a rhythm that is me and making centered because even a brief two weeks of this kind of time is invaluable to me (and I think most artists).
As far as the work goes, I have been slowly, very slowly, building up a body of research and work about Puerto Rico and American social and political history and how my family’s story fits into that history. In the past year, I have finally begun multidisciplinary experiments in tangent with this writing and research. I will continue those experiments and hope to create a few more formal works within the overall body. I am especially interested in visually exploring my family’s matriarchal line, as there is an abundance of incredible women characters in my family’s story.

How would you describe the connection or relevance of motherhood to your art or approach to creating?

In the context of this work specifically: I am myself a mother figuring out the best way to pass down my Puerto Rican heritage to my daughter. For me, it is a source of anxiety, pride, and complicated feelings that are not easy to describe. It’s also a joke. How can this sorta-Rican (me) teach anything to my quarter-Rican (my daughter). The matriarchal line of history that I have access to is more limited as the writings and research I am conducting are predicated on my Grandfather’s memoirs, so the work here is more abstract, more imagined. I think, like motherhood and child-rearing, this feels appropriate because nothing can prepare you for the reality of children – it is an act of faith, creativity, imagination, and world-building, no matter how well or poorly you do it.

What message would you send to other artists in this field?

When I first became a mother, I resisted the identity in a huge way. I was in graduate school, and I was convinced I could carry on in my life as I always had, with no differences, just with a child in tow. This is untrue, and it’s not that you can’t do this, and I watch with interest other artist mothers I know keep their art and family lives so separate and so distinct. But it’s not for me, and I don’t think it is for everyone, even if everyone is capable of it. For me, becoming a mother meant learning that I had to care for myself. This was a thing I had never done particularly well, but you quickly (hopefully) learn that there is very little you can do for your child if you are not well fed and slept, if your heart or soul is broken or hurting. That being said, I also learned that for me personally, I had to maintain my own identity as an individual as well as grow and develop my identity as a mother and how these two people were the same and different, how they could work together, and how that could create space for new things, new work, now joy, and new care. I’m not always good at it, and like any mother, I am often at war with myself over the ways I choose to balance my time. But I have learned slowness, care, and comfort in all the ways that I am as an artist and in my studio, things I did not necessarily allow myself before motherhood.

About Jessica Caldas

Jessica Caldas is a Puerto Rican American, Florida, and Georgia-based artist, advocate, and activist. 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 from 2018 to 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. Her work is currently on view at the Art & History Museum of Maitland in her first museum solo exhibition, CORPUS DELICTI.

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 Master 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.

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.”

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Art Featured Featured Artists health MOM Art Annex

MOM Welcomes Guest Artist Andrea M. Williams

Artist Andrea M. Williams

We are excited to announce our newest Guest Artist, Andrea M. Williams. A visual artist and mother of two, Andrea knows all too well the toll that motherhood can take on one’s own body, mind, and spirit and she has turned to her art as a way to heal and find peace. Andrea’s fascination with the body has led her down innovative pathways considering new ways to represent the body and its various functions.

During her guest artist residency, Andrea will continue to develop her artwork focusing on her explorations of motherhood. Continue reading to learn more about Andrea’s life and her artistic journey and about our interview with her:

Parenting is hard work. 

Becoming a parent is a profound physical, mental and emotional experience. Before I became a mom, I studied figurative art at academies in Chicago, Florence, and New York. I love the figure but more than that, I am interested in depicting the human body itself. In graduate school I discovered printmaking, which quickly became my passion. 

After graduate school, I underwent treatment for some stress-induced medical issues. I began considering the organs and systems underneath the body’s exterior. I had lost regular access to a printmaking workshop, and began carving and hand-printing relief prints at home using linoleum blocks. My work became smaller in scale. I started experimenting with chromatic inks. I drew images of organs layered with abstract linear elements. I left behind the fussiness of registering plates and printed several linoleum blocks together. I cut up prints and glued them back together in layers, adding graphite and watercolor. 

This process of assemblage has become a kind of meditation. Instead of starting with a carefully prepared drawing, I head in a direction, unsure of where I will end up. For my guideposts, I use photos of forests taken in upstate New York. Frozen cattails clustered overgrown next to a bank parking lot. Gnarled tree bark. Videos of new spring leaves softly shifting in the breeze. I think about living plants and living bodies and the connection between them. I consider what a body can do, how a body can give life, how a body can deteriorate. 

Each of my daughters was born in traumatic circumstances. My first was born 6 weeks premature and my second was born in mid-2020 during the height of the first Covid wave. Each time after giving birth, I experienced postpartum depression. My body had done incredible feats, but it now felt foreign. Over time I realized I needed to regain a balance between caring for my daughters and caring for my mental health. My art practice has become an outlet to cope with, at times, crippling anxiety. It is a meditation on what it means to be an artist, a parent, a woman.

-Andrea M. Williams 

About Andrea M. Williams

Andrea Williams is a visual artist whose mixed media works explore motherhood, birth, and the female body. During her time at the M.O.M. residency, she plans to create a suite of works on paper that join elements of relief printmaking, collage, drawing, and painting. 

Andrea received her MFA in Painting with a Printmaking concentration from the New York Academy of Art and her BFA from the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Her work has been shown in New York and Chicago. She lives and works in northwest Indiana with her patient husband and two rambunctious young daughters.

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.”

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Featured

M.A.M.A 51: Art and words by Clara Aldén

The Mother of Frankenstein’s Monster, 2021

The Mother of Frankenstein’s Monster (2021) researches the production of bodies and identities in relation to motherhood. ” My children were produced by and within my body”. Production continues after birth: children’s bodies grow and their identities develop. The identity of the mother is also born in relation to the child’s birth. This inquiry revolves around the idea of maternal “split subjectivity” and the child as an “unruly descendant” of the mother. It researches the conjunction of symbiosis and struggles present within a mother-child relationship.

The project includes an audio essay intended to be listened to at home. Listen to it while you are doing the dishes, or picking up toys from the living room floor. It departs from Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818) and invites the listener to reflect upon maternal aspects present within their own lives, within their own homes.

Link to audio essay (10:24min) here. 

THE MOTHER OF FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER, Essay by Clara Aldén

Are you familiar with the story about Frankenstein’s monster? 

Direct your gaze upon your child, and listen to this:

Dr Frankenstein was just a student when he started the creation of his creature. He struggled for two years to conceive his baby; stealing bones from graveyards, and intestines from slaughterhouses and autopsies. To create human life was his greatest ambition. 

Yet, when the creature opened his eyes the only thing Dr Frankenstein felt was fear.

Why was he frightened?

I think he could sense that he had lost control over his creation. 

Have you ever felt that you have lost control over your creations?

I imagine that Doctor Frankenstein didn’t understand what he was getting himself into when he conceived his baby. 

My children were materialized out of a moment of loss of control. We lost control for a second and they started existing. The first time it happened I wasn’t aware of it for several weeks. The second time I immediately felt a new presence within my body. 

“The idea of two people occupying one body is bizarre and disturbing. And yet, we all began life inside the body of another human being—immersed in a systemic interchange, absorbing both nutrients from the maternal body and hormonal derivatives of her emotions, while pumping out refuse through her bodily orifices.“

My pregnancy felt parasitic. I struggled my entire life to become autonomous, and now I was slowly dividing into two. My body swelled and grew. Inside my body grew the body of another.

My insides were suddenly someone else’s outsides and I bumped my stomach on tables as I tried to navigate this universe. 

“As I lean over in my chair to tie my shoe, I am surprised by the graze of this hard belly on my thigh. I do not anticipate my body touching itself, for my habits retain the old sense of my boundaries. In the ambiguity of bodily touch, I feel myself being touched and touching simultaneously, both on my knee and my belly. The belly is other since I did not expect it there, but since I feel the touch upon it, it is me.”

It is impossible to physically tell if a pregnant person is one or two people.

The subject of the pregnant is split. 

Do you recognize the sensation of your mind being two places at once? 

How many creatures do you have within your care? 

Look around you: we’ve already established that there are children within your care. But apart from that? Any pets? Or old parents that need care? Any plants that need water? How many things would not survive if you just got up and walked away?

Like Dr Frankenstein did.

During pregnancy a body is created. But a person is not just a body. Dr Frankenstein created a body but abandoned it immediately after birth. He got scared and ran away. His monster was left to care for himself. He wandered around trying to find company, but everywhere he turned he got violently rejected. The only thing he craved was love and affection. When he realized that this was something he would never obtain, he turned to his creator:

“Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall be virtuous.”

My children are neither monsters nor fallen angels. But they are my unruly descendants. 

Physically detached from me. Free to roam the world. It is impossible to understand where I end and they begin. 

Look at your baby: think about the complexity of bones, arteries and blood cells, nerves that exist under their skin. Imagine the universe that inhabits their minds. 

For the longest time I wasn’t able to face my children. I looked at them but did not see them. I was afraid that if I did, truly look at them,  they would be pulled away from me like Eurydice was from Orpheus when he couldn’t keep himself from looking back at her on their way back up from the underworld.

I tried to make a drawing of my eldest, when he was just a couple of weeks old and realized that from now on, everything I produce, with hands, mind, voice, would stand in the shadow of the creativity of my womb.

Nothing could ever compete with these creations. 

These creations also made it perfectly clear that they demanded my total focus and attention. No time for other artifacts. 

What happens when the needs and wishes of your creations collide with your own? 

Frankenstein’s monster started out as an idéa that grew into an obsession and then into a body.  The movements of this newborn body revealed a free will, detached from the intentions of its creator.

“Sometimes words trigger off cataclysms, sometimes acts, sometimes physical conditions.“

The monster followed in the footsteps of his creator. But somewhere during this race across the globe the roles were shifted; the antagonist became the protagonist, and the creator started chasing his creation.

Text with full reference list can be found here.

More about Clara

Clara Aldén (b.1988) is a Swedish artist working and living in Gothenburg. She holds a BFA from Bergen Art Academy (UIB, NO) and a MFA from HDK-Valand (GU, SE), where she graduated in 2021. Her work has been displayed in Västerbottens Museum (SE), Göteborgs Konsthall (SE), Index (SE) and Bergen Kunsthall (NO) to name a few. 

Clara works with sculpture, drawing and text-based art. Her work is situated within the private sphere, and she employs her immediate surroundings to research general societal structures. Since becoming a mother her work has mainly focused on domestic and maternal thematics. Within Clara’s artistic research, motherhood is considered a practice and not a state of being. Likewise, this practice is not considered to be limited by biological bounds. She is inspired by Donna Haraway’s thoughts on kin-making, and even if the maternal interest grew out of her biological motherhood, her thoughts and research stretch away from the immediate biological connotations and wishes to explore the practice of maternity in the expanded notion. The notion of care, regarding interruption and control loss as a positive force, and trying to work in a relational and non-autonomous manner are examples of maternal aspects important within her work. 

Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 49th 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

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Art Blog

Stay At Home – MAM, a New Art Magazine Focused on the Maternal

MAM Press Release

MAM is a new art magazine focusing on artists from around the world producing work about the maternal.

The first issue, “Stay At Home”, due out in June 2020 is a response by 20 artists to their experiences of working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The magazine aims to support artists through this challenging time as well as raising money for Women’s Aid*.

“Stay At Home” has been edited by Helen Sargeant, an artist and academic based in Todmorden, Yorkshire, UK.

Contributions include paintings by Shani Rhys James and Jessica Timmis, collage work by Lauren McLaughlin, an interview with Paula Chambers who makes installations and sculptures about disrupted domesticity, a series of self-portraits, “PRONIA” by performance artist Nicola Hunter, “Knitted Houses of Crime” by Freddie Robins and exquisite paper-cuttings of matriarchs by Pippa Dyrlaga.

“Stay At Home” is a response to the pandemic, the interruption, and anxiety that each day we are all having to live with. MAM was born initially as a way to distract me from looking too often at the news and becoming depressed, a way to be creative, collaborate, communicate and engage with other artists and mothers during this crisis. MAM’s wish is that this first issue of the magazine will provide its readers with a small moment of joy during this international crisis. MAM: Stay At Home, has been produced at the kitchen table in-between the on-going drama of daily family life, the caring and coaxing of children to do their schoolwork, the cuddling of cats, cooking, clearing up and feeding the washing machine with yet more laundry.”

MAM Editor – Helen Sargeant

* We have chosen to support Women’s Aid as domestic violence has risen by 50 percent in the UK since the lockdown began.

www.maternalart.com ( to be launched June 27, 2020)

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maternalart/
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maternalarthome

Helen Sargeant editor of Maternal Art Magazine introduces the art work of Rachel Fallon

Rachel Fallon – The MotherHood 2015

I first encountered Rachel Fallon’s work through the Desperate Art Wives Collective. I was immediately drawn to her works about female identity, confinement and the domestic such as Built in Kitchen 2012, which holds such resonance now during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rachel is a dear friend of mine and we have been lucky enough to have worked together on many art projects such as The Egg The Womb, The Head and The Moon (2013-2014), Project Afterbirth (2015), Artist As Mother As Artist (2016) and MAM: Stay At Home (2020).

At first, I exchanged slug mail with Rachel, which included drawings and stories of our lives before we became mothers. I was enthralled by the letters that I received and of Rachels accounts of working for a traveling circus across Europe and then living as an artist in Berlin.

It is however her intelligent, personal, political, and thought-provoking art work that continues to act as a catalyst for our communications.

About

Rachel Fallon is a visual artist who deals with themes of protection and defense in domestic realms and addresses the topic of motherhood and womens’ relationships to society. More recently her work has begun to focus on reverse parenting, examining the correlation of roles and duties in elder and parental care and the complex landscapes of mothering.

Built-in-kitchen 2012

Her work encompasses sculpture, drawing, photography and performance and is firmly rooted in processes of making. As well as an individual practice, she is known for her collaborations with Irish and international artists and collectives; including Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, Desperate Artwives, Grrrl Zine Fair and The Tellurometer Project.

La Befana – performance- 2016

The two disparate ways of working feed into one another and are therefore equally important parts of her practice. She is a founding member of pff Publications – a feminist zine and Outpost Studios an independent artist-led studio. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Collection of the Arts Council of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland, the Wellcome Collection, U.K.and Goldsmiths Womens’Art Library, U.K.

Selected Images:

  1. Aprons of Power Performance – ACREA – Repeal 2018 (Homepage, featured image and below)
  2. The MotherHood 2015
  3. Built-in-kitchen 2012
  4. La Befana – performance 2016
Rachel Fallon and MAM with Helen Sargent