Tag: MOM Art Annex

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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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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.”

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Art Blog Caregiving Featured Featured Artists motherhood Residency st petersburg

Remote Artist Residency with Rachael Grad: This August at MoM

Rachael Grad is a mom of three and former lawyer who has studied and worked in the US, France, Italy, Hong Kong, and Toronto. Grad left practicing law to study painting full-time at the New York Studio School and New York University (NYU) before transferring to OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Trained as an observational painter, Grad has focused on colourful painting that blurs the distinction between abstract, figurative, and representational styles.

Recently her art practice has expanded to incorporate digital painting and collage to further recreate her observational drawing and painting. Grad combines her experience as a mother, former lawyer, and traveler into her artwork, creating art that reflects parenting moments. Her current art series include “Motherhood Hit Me Like A Train” works on paper that use trains as paintbrushes and “Mommy Mayhem” digital collages and abstract expressionist paintings.

Grad’s artwork has been shown in solo and group shows in Washington, DC, New York City, Venice, Italy, and the Toronto area. She holds degrees from Brandeis University, Duke University School of Law, and Sciences Po in Paris, France. She earned a BFA with Distinction in Painting and Drawing from OCAD University in May 2022 as the Governor General Academic Medal and Mrs. W.O. Forsyth winner. This fall Grad will start a Master’s in Fine Arts program at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Mayhem Bunny
Elephant and Doll

Artist Statement

Motherhood is mayhem. When I became a parent, carving out time and space to create (not just people but artwork) became essential.

My current art practice is driven by an obsessive-compulsive need to document my three kids and their perpetually changing debris (meaning their messes of toys, books, clothing, and crafts). Daily household and art routines, rituals, and schedules reflect my attempt to reign in the chaos of parenting. Numbers, habits, and repetition are crucial to my sanity and survival.

There are 52 weekends in each year when my children’s school, daycare, or summer camp are closed for 65 agonizing hours in a row. To symbolize the slow passing of parenting time, I created 52 digital collages each containing 65 artworks layered together in photoshop. The artwork layers include my postcard drawings, abstract colour paintings, and paint mark experiments with toys.

Recent Mommy Mayhem series paintings are loosely based on these collages and blur the distinction between representation and abstraction. Gestural paint marks use the bright colours found in toys and messes.

In my Motherhood Hit Me Like a Train series, rolling a toy train across my artwork as a not-so subtle metaphor for being a mother artist. Toys have overtaken my home and my artwork, and they are always in mind and in my way. For my abstract watercolour on paper artworks, I reverse the ubiquitous toy train and turn it into a paintbrush.

Repetitive marks starting from observation are a way of building up unclear layers to form abstraction. Loosely based on the digital collages, I paint colourful abstract portraits of stuffed animals and toys that serve as transitional comfort objects for children as they grow and learn independence from parents.

My painting subjects reflect moments of motherhood, and my painting technique is a reference to, and mocking of, art history movements such as the machismo of the Abstract Expressionist painters. I am conceiving a visual language informed by abstract expressionism, playful mark making, and the contradiction between my dream of control and order versus my reality of constant pandemonium and mess at home. Routines, patterns, and symbolic numbers are expression in my art.

I research contemporary parent artists and their artwork including Mary Kelly (Post-Partum Document. 1973-79), Monica Bock (Maternal Exposure (or, don’t forget the lunches), 1999-2000), and Paul Campbell (Koosh Series and Remote Control Series). When painting, I think of Denyse Thomasos’ powerful gestural marks, Susanna Heller’s experimental studio practice, and Amy Silliman’s abstraction.

Museum of Motherhood Artist Residency Project

During her MOM Residency, Rachael will curate an online art exhibition of artwork made by artist mothers who manage to create artwork and keep up their studio practice while parenting. The show will include weekly blog posts interviewing participating artists to explore their work and parent experiences. During the period of her artist residency at MOM, Rachael will attempt to create a drawing or painting each day related to her “Mommy Mayhem” or “Motherhood Hit Me Like a Train” series.

You can view more of Rachael’s artwork at RachaelGradArt.com

If you are interested in connecting with Rachael, you can find her on social media @RachaelGradArt

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Featured

A Look Back

As January ramps up, Americans and indeed, people around the world, are experiencing a kind of deadening whiplash that feels deeply problematic. From pandemics to earth shattering social events, our planet seems to be pushing back in unprecedented ways. Are we going to listen?

Here at the Museum of Motherhood our aim is to inspire as well as to educate. How do we balance dire predictions, and unrelenting reality, with uplifting content? Do we pretend, making conscious decisions to ignore what is right in front of our faces, like the movie Don’t Look Up? Or, do we create small changes through everyday actions by staying vigilant, practicing tolerance, and also heeding the call to make amends, offer support, or reach out to someone in need?

What does change even look like anyway? How can we possibly have any affect on anything when everything feels bigger than us as individuals?

In my experience, it is the little things that count. It is the everyday actions of many people doing one brave, smart, or kind action that inspires connection, healing, and hope. I think our lives are made up of little moments. Those individual moments can be transformative: One football play can win a Super Bowl. One song can reach millions of ears with a message of encouragement (or laughter). One person, holding someone’s hand in a hospital can mean the difference between fear and comfort.

At MOM, we are comprised of the individual academics, artists, and students who gained insight during their time with us, the visitors who told us their secrets and asked for help, and the strangers who have connected through the years– who are not strangers anymore.

We are a small museum with big dreams. But, more than the big dreams, we aim to touch hearts and minds individually. We aim to offer a safe space of illumination and awe. I’m excited to introduce some new initiatives in the coming months that include an online community, our upcoming conference, and a newly launched storefront that will feature guest artists.

When a friend wrote me recently, and included a note (along with a check), that stated my/ OUR museum was wonderful – I realized a simple dream of mine – the dream that others would want to take MOM on as their own. It was never intended to be ‘my’ museum, even though I have been nursing it along all these years.

As we look back, let us also look forward. Let us rally against the darkness by joining our individual lights into a collective of lights, each bright, each different, and all connected. Let us remember the souls we have lost, while lifting our own spirits in unity and appreciation of this brief, difficult, and tenuous life we share on this planet and try to ‘do better’.

I send you peace in the New Year.

Martha Joy Rose, Founder/Director

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Art Birth Blog Books Caregiving Featured Feminism health MAMA MOM Art Annex motherhood Residency Spiritual Motherhood st petersburg

MAMA Issue 50: Mothers and trees. Roots and families. Art and love.

The Mother Tree

I want to write about mothers and trees. Roots and families. Art and love.

Last year our world appeared to be on fire. Headlines captured devastating events around the globe. From politics to pandemics, the news cycle, as well as our personal lives, were upended in so many ways. In the midst of one of many California blazes, a story about a redwood matriarch dubbed the Mother of the Forest in Santa Cruz, California caught my attention.

Mother of the Forest is one of the tallest trees in Santa Cruz Park. A symbolic womb at her core forms an 8 x 13 foot room, or a hobbit hole, or a sacred space — depending on your perspective.   

I have become obsessed with trees. 

Trees are a testimony to patience and resilience. They offer shelter, contribute to healthy ecosystems, and fight climate change. Redwoods protect and support each other as well as other sapling growth by creating family circles sprouted from the roots of a parent tree. These families may or may not be genetically related. These lessons in cooperation can be a metaphor for humanity in its current fragmented state.

One month ago, I headed back to the MOM Art Annex in Florida after a prolonged absence. Ready to explore the next steps with our community and see to the ongoing growth of the Museum project, I arrived energized. Rising in the midst of display artifacts, art, and birthing objects, a new exhibit towers in the heart of the Annex. Artist Helen Hiebert’s Mother Tree is a brilliant illuminated sculpture made of paper and thread on loan to us for the year.

In preparation for the Mother Tree’s arrival, I pursued the book Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, a deeply inspiring tale of scientific discovery and maternal care. I pondered our new directions with the Museum of Motherhood and gladly welcomed a guest artist residency proposal by Polly Wood, which included constructing an empty nest as a ceremonial acknowledgement of her daughter going off to college.

“A nest,” I exclaimed. “How timely for the Mother Tree’s arrival.”

Polly and I spent a glorious two weeks spinning magic. A blog about her residency is online at MOM. The next guest artist arrives in mid-December with work featuring among other things, landscapes and trees in gorgeous muted watercolors. 

Polly Wood working on her “Empty Nest” at MOM

As the year winds down, I gratefully acknowledge the manner in which I’ve been able to spend time with emerging mother artists here in St. Petersburg, and also family as well. My son, his wife, and their baby have been on-site for the last six weeks, crowded into the MOM Art Annex’s tiny space– along with the exhibits, myself, and visiting guests. My one-year old granddaughter crawls around the carefully childproofed perimeter while I proudly chase after her.  

In these accompanying photos, I introduce my granddaughter to a world of female sheroes, the art of motherhood, and a variety of messages aimed at empowering women and girls. The images for this MAMA exhibit also include my own self-portrait surrounded by the Mother Tree’s yarn roots in a symbolic gesture of rebirth, renewal, and generational connection. 

Martha Joy Rose ; rebirth with Helen Hiebert’s “Mother Tree” sculpture and Polly Wood’s “Nest”

Every major tree metaphor reminds me to trust in the slow, yet, steady growth of the museum project. Good things take time. Like a redwood, we want the museum to stand as a testament to the ages. We want to collaborate with our community and our surroundings. These things develop and deepen slowly. We are the connection. We are the women. We are the love. We are the trees.

If you would like to donate to our Mother Tree acquisitions campaign, please consider helping us purchase the Mother Tree in perpetuity by making a tax-deductible donation here.

In gratitude and perseverance, Martha Joy Rose

Frank and Sojourner Truth at MOM 2021

Raising the next generation of empowered humans means teaching them about our past: our struggles, problems, issues, and herstory. At the MOM Art Annex we do exactly that, while building towards our future by developing the footprint for the Museum of Motherhood project as an international education and exhibition destination.

I look forward hopefully, understanding deeply the importance of engaging with people of all ages in an inclusive, supportive, and smart environment. Together we can elevate the voices and artistic endeavors of all humans, and in our case, especially m/others, procreators, dreamers, childless by choice, women in history and present day sheroes– as well as those who have suffered loss and infertility.

My granddaughter and I have started this conversation early and often – even though she is still pre-verbal. A picture is worth a thousand words in this case!

Martha Joy Rose: Martha Joy Rose is a community organizer and Museum of Motherhood founder. Her work has been published across blogs and academic journals and she has performed with her band Housewives On Prozac around the world. She is the NOW-NYC recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Award, her Mamapalooza Festival Series has been recognized as “Best in Girl-Power Events”, and her music has appeared on the Billboard Top 100 Dance Charts. She founded the Museum of Motherhood in 2003, created the Motherhood Foundation 501c3 non-profit in 2005, saw it flourish in NYC from 2011-2014, and then pop up at several academic institutions. After teaching Mother Studies at the college level, she moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. Her current live/work space is devoted to the exploration of mother-labor & performance art while she oversees the continued growth of the Museum of Motherhood project.

Helen Hiebert: Helen Hiebert constructs installations, films, artists’ books and works in paper using handmade paper as her primary medium. Her sculpture Mother Tree serves as a symbol of the vulnerability, strength and sense of community she feels as a mother. The seven-foot tall handmade paper dress/tree features single strands of thread which extend from the bodice of the dress, representing mother’s milk, and cascade to the floor, transforming via crochet into roots which pile up, filling the surrounding space as a tree’s roots would fill the ground beneath it. The transformation from dress to tree and root to soil symbolizes the mother as a provider and nurturer throughout human development. Since her inception, hundreds of people have contributed to crocheting roots with messages of family, friendship, and affirmation.

Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 50th 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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Featured

MOM Welcomes September Residency: Mär Martinez, Interdisciplinary Artist

MOM is pleased to welcome Mär Martinez for our September Residency at the MOM Art Annex in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mär is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptural painting. Her work dissects dominance, aggression and power dynamics through the lens of a culturally-enforced binary system. She received a BFA in Painting and a BA in Art History at the University of Central Florida.

Mar Martinez: Photo by Tori Stipcak

Selected Awards include: Bridge Ahead Initiative Grant, Bronfman Artist Grant Finalist, Jewish Art Salon Student Fellow, FusionFest Best in Show Award, Order of Pegasus Finalist, Katherine K. & Jacob Holzer Art Scholarship, Frank Lloyd Wright Scholar Recipient, and the Miniature Fine Arts Society Award. Select 2021 Exhibitions include: A Tiny Bit of Fire, London, GENESIS: The Beginning of Creativity, NY, Raw Fibers, FL, GALEX 55 National Juried Competition, IL, ARTFIELDS 2021, SC, Collaborative Animals, OH and Sugar, Spice, and Not Playing Nice, NY. Select 2020 Solo Exhibitions include: FRACTURE, FL, Illusions of Safety, PA, and Schism, FL. Select 2020 Exhibitions include: 2020 Florida Biennial, FL, B20: Wiregrass Biennial, AL, Feminine/ Masculine, Hungary, 2020 College Invitational, IN, and Artfields 2020, SC.        

In 2020, Martinez was Artist-in-Residence at a printmaking-focused residency in Florida. She was Artist-in-Residence at The Spruce in Pennsylvania and conducted visual research through her sculptural paintings. Martinez is a member of the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation Advisory Board in Nyack, NY. She is Gallery Admin at Parkhaus15, a DIY artist-run exhibition space in its seminal year in Orlando, FL. She is Special Programs Director at SOBO Gallery in Winter Garden, and is affiliated with the collaborative printing press Flying Horse Editions in Orlando, FL.

In 2021, she was Artist-in-Residence at the Stay Home Residency in Tennessee, and served as the Curator-in-Residence at the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation in New York. She will be Resident at the M.O.M. Museum in Florida in the fall. Martinez has recently been accepted as Art and History Museums Maitland’s 2022 Artist-in-Action, and will begin her residency this winter. She can be reached at www.marmartinezart.com or @meatvoid on Instagram.

Top photo –Mär Martinez: Photo by Tori Stipcak

Bottom Art-Titled: Habibti III

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Featured

The Journal of Mother Studies Turns 5 Years Old: 2020 Online


How is everyone? Are you hanging in there? I hope so! This has been an unusual year, on so many levels. 

The MOM Art Annex is in quiet hibernation as well, as we lower our heads, hunker down, and try to survive. At the same time, many of us are raising our voices to call out systemic racism, social problems, and inequities as we identify them.
 
Through it all, submissions to the journal came rolling in as we prepared for our fifth year of digital humanities publications with research papers, book reviews, and some artworks. Thematically, the submissions were on diverse topics.
 
I thought about putting the journal aside this year. But, Patricia English Schneider’s piece on “Mourning Mother” was deeply moving and Olatunbosun Samuel Adekogbe’s submission about “The Cultural Value of Motherhood” in Jimi Solanke’s Music (in Africa), compelled. I thought, perhaps curious scholars need to see this information?
 
Finally, at the last moment, I was contacted by Samantha Kolber whose poetry book titled Birth of a Daughter was recently published by Kelsay Books. A review was quickly organized. There are multiple papers worth exploring here, including Kimberly Hillier and Christopher Greig’s later submission titled Mothering During Covid. So, we organized editors, blind reviewers, and connected them to the distinguished authors represented here.
 
According to the way I see it, we need to support each other, celebrate each other, and keep writing. While this year’s journal is unconventional, it is certainly a powerful read. I’m deeply honored to have been able to contribute to the dissemination of these pieces. It is my sincerest wish that you and your family stay strong and healthy in light and love. [Read JourMS online here].
[Read the full Newsletter here].
 
 Martha Joy Rose

October Art by Aster Woods

Categories
Art Featured Feminism International MAMA MOM Art Annex motherhood

M.A.M.A Issue 39: Muttererde & The Language of Class

Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor Muttererde (2017) Video

Muttererde profiles conversations with five black femmes on the knowledge and non-knowledge of their mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers and as far back as the knowledge carries them to create a rich and powerful archive on ancestry.  They explore themes of motherhood, migration, cultural differences, beauty standards, queerness, kinship, death and rebirth. Their stories, although from five different countries, intertwine to weave a tapestry of herstory through the African diaspora. Through their testimonies, the viewer discovers that ritual, memory and oral history can challenge the status quo.

This work, made in collaboration with filmmaker Astrid Gleichmann, features the stories of Camalo Gaskin, Tobi Ayedadjou, Niv Acosta, Natalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Fannie Sosa. It has been supported by the Decentralized Cultural Work Tempelhof-Schöneberg, District Kunst und Kulturforderung Berlin and A Prima Vista Filmproduktion. Posted in partnership with the Museum of Motherhood, Procreate Project and the Mom Egg Review.

 Artist Biography

Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor (b. 1984, Florida) is a multidisciplinary artist and community organizer. Her roots are in the Southern United States, born in Mississippi and raised in Florida. Taylor’s work manifests through performance, text, dialogue, dance and community building for Black People and People of Colour. She is chiefly concerned with ways to dismantle oppressive institutions and the creation of racial equity in art and cultural institutions. She has performed and presented at the Barbican Centre of Art (London, UK); Chisenhale Gallery (London, UK); Hebbel Am Ufer (Berlin, Germany); Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, Germany); Sophiensaele Theater (Berlin, Germany);  The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo, Norway); Rogaland Kunstsenter (Stavanger, Norway); and the Irish Museum for Modern Art (Dublin, Ireland). She is currently undergoing a Master of Art in Black British Literature at Goldsmiths University of London.

VIDEO TRAILER

LANGUAGE CLASS

Kimberly L. Becker, (written on Qualla Boundary; for C.M.)

Little by little

we are reclaiming the words

Just as the land was once large,

so, too, our voice

Some words lost on the Trail

have been found

They lived hidden in baskets,

in pockets, in the very tassels of corn

(Selu, Selu)

Now the words live again

See? When I say nogwo it is now,

both the now of then and the now

of not yet

The words work secret medicine

and strong, forming us

from the inside out

Language is our Magic Lake–

we walk in limping with loss

and emerge wholly ourselves

When Cecilia speaks

she bears with her

the future of these sounds

Listen: her voice is soft, but sure

Originally published in The Mom Egg Vol. 8 Lessons, 2010

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Diversifying Visibility to Decrease Mortality Rates

The American Medical Association says that women of color are 2- 6 times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white woman depending on where they live. There are many factors that can contribute to this disproportionality, including quality of prenatal delivery and postpartum care. This mortality rate has significant detrimental effects on the black community as countless mothers are lost to this vicious cycle.

Chinelle Rojas, Dear Little One Birth Photography

Likewise, economically disadvantaged women are less likely to receive quality healthcare and are thus also less likely to receive prenatal care. This leaves black mothers more likely than white mothers to have hypertension, blood disorders, and other medical conditions that complicate their pregnancies. A recent article by USA Today explores the surprisingly high rates of hospitals blaming mothers’ preexisting conditions for high maternal mortality rates among women of color, especially black women. Before USA Today conducted a study and critically examined these shocking maternal mortality rates, these numbers have been overlooked because hospitals are allowed to keep this information private. By keeping this information away from the public, many hospitals have been excusing their poor outcomes by blaming the health of the mother.

Apart from the legal actions that can be taken to decrease mortality rates of women of color, there are organizations and individuals who, through means of advocacy, let this information come to the light and make a conscious effort to put a stop to it. Employing advocacy through visibility, Kimberly Seals Allers, is an international speaker, author, and the founder and organizer of Black Breastfeeding Week among other things. Kimberly is on a mission to “shift the paradigm, shift the discourse, shift the infrastructure, and shift the experience of womankind and motherhood for all”.

In the Tampa Bay area, Chinelle Rojas is working hard to shift the narrative. Chinelle is the birth photographer behind Dear Little One Birth Photography and is the founder of The Melanated Birth, in which she uses photography to represent women of color in birth. She believes that photography is a powerful tool, especially when u towards a powerful cause. Chinelle has observed the lack of diversity in the birth photography community and is taking steps towards solving this problem. She advocates that ultimately visibility can be an important step in reducing mortality rates for women. Photographing the births of women of color outside a hospital setting increases awareness of different birth options available apart from the standard hospital epidural birth. She is hoping to spread a message about the possibility of giving birth in alternative settings. She argues that many mothers-to-be, only know of other women who gave birth in a hospital. Seeing photographs of black women giving birth with the help of doulas and midwives in a comfortable setting can be the start of another woman’s successful journey into motherhood.

Chinelle Rojas, Dear Little One Birth Photography

“‘Imagine a world where our little pebble of documenting births can make waves on the mortality rate of mothers across the country or the world.’” –Chinelle Rojas

http://www.tampabirthphotographer.com/

http://themelanatedbirth.com/

Additional Resources:

http://blackbreastfeedingweek.org

http://www.kimberlysealsallers.com

Article sources:

American Medical Association. State-specific maternal mortality among black and white women: United States, 1987–1996. The Journal of the American Medical Association. 1999;282(13):1220–1222.

Young, Alison, et al. “Hospitals Blame Moms When Childbirth Goes Wrong. Secret Data Suggest It’s Not That Simple.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 9 Mar. 2019, http://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/deadly-deliveries/2019/03/07/maternal-death-rates-secret-hospital-safety-records-childbirth-deaths/2953224002/.

This article was researched and made possible by Vana Madhu as part of a service-learning internship with USF. Read more below or click the image to find out more about our student authors: