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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

Letter from the Founder- Joy Report and Welcome Rithik

WELCOME RITHIK:

Welcome to the MoM Internship program, Rithik Pramod. Rithik (pictured above in the banner working on one of his research projects) is an archaeology student who will be creating an online exhibit of fertility goddesses of ancient India. He is currently pursuing Master’s degree in Archaeology and Ancient History from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, where he completed his undergraduate degree as well. Rithik has a keen interest in Ancient Cultures, Ancient History, Heritage Mapping, Documentation of Neglected Sites, Public Archaeology,History of Cuisines and so on. He is associated with various esteemed Organizations like ICOMOS India, Asiatic Society For Social Science Research, Puratattvasamvardhan NGO, Europa Nostra and European Students Association for Cultural Heritage. He has written and presented papers on Intangible Heritage , Architecture, Ancient Water Heritage at both national and international level.

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER- JOY REPORT:

It has been a busy summer! I was so pleased to meet with the New York MoM Academic Board. These gals have been part of the museum project for over a dozen years. Thank you Laura Tropp, Aurelie Athan, and Roksana Badruddoja. I <3 you so much! (pictured left with Martha Joy Rose, Founder).

MoM has launched MEMBERSHIPS: Finally! We are so pleased to announce this new addition to our museum initiative. Now we can better build together. Please consider signing up for a membership and help us grow, grow, grow. Pick the annual membership that’s right for you by clicking here.

This summer we welcomed Artist in Residence, Jessica Caldas, and our current Artist in Residence is Tara Blackwell. Also joining us in August are remote Residency artist Rachael Grad who will be creating an online art exhibit. More to come.

Our summer interns have been working hard. They are: Emma Andrews, Sarah Akomoh, Teddy Friedline, and Mary Noah. A hearty welcome to each! They are working on a variety of initiatives including grant writing, teaching tools, journal publication, and social media. Welcome too, Rithik Pramod, mentioned above.

Since I last wrote, we have completed our Florida Vendor License, our W9 application, our Candid (Guidestar profile), our DUNS and our SAM applications.

So, what’s the action item here? Big goals here are keeping you updated, inviting you to become a member at MoM, letting you witness the progress for yourselves, and bringing team members together in the spirit of MoM. Also, we have launched our Ally program. Please sign our letter here to state your support of MoM’s initiatives locally in St. Pete. We will be using these signatures to demonstrate to our community the need, importance, and significance of a museum devoted to M/others and those exploring reproductive identity. SIGN OUR LETTER.

In that spirit, we are now seeking a new Internship Director who might manage our growing body of intern applicants and projects. Please help put the word out about this volunteer position on our great team. The position requires approval of interns, assisting in assessing internships goals and objectives, and then weekly zoom meetings with each intern. It requires approximately 6 volunteer hours per week. 

*IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO YOU THINK MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN US: one of our boards, our new MEMBERSHIP community, pt staff, or MOM development, PLEASE DO SEND THEM OUR WAY! They can also fill out this form online or write: INFO@MOMmuseum.org

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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

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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Conferences

Guerrilla Radio meets Motherhood?

CUNY_cast_Logo_2

Where: Online at CUNYcast.net

When: April 30 – May 2, 2015

Why: The digital humanities aim to make visible work in the humanities through mediums and tools that empower communities with information.

As part of the DH Praxis class pioneered by Mathew Gold and Stephen Brier at CUNY, The Graduate Center, students look to create new projects that challenge existing modes of education while creating cool new tools that aid students in their search for information.

The spring semester praxis class, lead under the tutelage of Luke Waltzer (Baruch) and Amanda Hickman (School of Journalism) has identified four worthy projects that are currently being spearheaded over the next 15 weeks, culminating with a presentation to the Provost on May 19th.

One of those projects is CUNYcast, a rogue radio network whereby students can capture content from classes, events, and even protests. The brainchild of masters’ candidate James Mason, CUNYcast’s small team also includes Julia Pollack and Martha Joy Rose who on track to earn their master’s in Digital Humanities and Mother Studies respectively.

The Annual Academic M.O.M. Conference in its 10th year is being hosted on April 30th at The Graduate Center with Barbara Katz Rothman giving the keynote: Women as Fathers. “This just seemed like the perfect opportunity to let people know about two great initiatives,” says Rose, founder of the Museum of Motherhood in NYC. Both the idea of guerilla radio at The Graduate Center, and the fact that Mother Studies, a completely new field of inquiry, would be fostered and allowed to flourish, says so much about the spirit of adventure and the excitement of learning at CUNY.

CUNYcast is a live online radio website offering students an opportunity to stream audio using original content from classes, lectures, and projects. CUNYCast’s aim is to empower a DH guerrilla broadcast community. The team hopes to launch its first all day broadcast at the conference this year, so those who cannot attend can at least listen online.

For more information contact: Martha Joy Rose – Outreach Coordinator CUNYcast.net

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Featured

Delaying Motherhood: Employment Incentive?

Delaying Motherhood: Will it work?

As you may have probably heard by now, Apple and Facebook had stated that they would be covering up to $20,000 of their employees’ egg freezing costs. The statement has received mixed reactions so far and, it seems that the debate will continue for a long time.

So what is egg freezing exactly? It is a procedure known as oocyte cryopreservation in which, a woman’s eggs are extracted, frozen and stored for future use. A round of freezing eggs costs something between $7,000-$12,000, plus the annual fees for drugs and storage that vary between $1,000 and $3,000. 

In 2012, The American Society for Reproductive Medicine lifted up the “experimental” title from the procedure yet warned against misleading women and it stated “Marketing this technology for the purpose of deferring childbearing may give women false hope and encourage women to delay childbearing”.

Traditionally, the method was used for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy yet Dr. Jamie Grifo, the program director of the New York University Fertility Center, states that in 2013, the majority of egg freezing cases were elective.

The supporters claim that the application gives the women the option to choose when they would like to have children without the pressure of a ticking biological clock. The experience seems to be psychologically liberating as well, as 53% of the women who have frozen their eggs describe the experience as “empowering”.

Despite its advantages, the new policy should also be evaluated from a critical perspective. First and foremost, egg freezing is no guarantee of getting pregnant. In addition to ASRM’s warning on “giving women false hope”, National Center for Health Research explains that “fewer than 1 in 4 women can expect to get pregnant and have a baby” after successfully freezing the eggs.

It is also important to look at how this coverage will affect the culture of the organization. Seven years ago, Christy  Jones, the CEO of Extend Fertility, reached to companies to inquire about including egg freezing in their benefits yet got a pushback as they stated “Well, we don’t want to seem Machiavellian, that we’re paying to freeze a woman’s eggs so she just keeps working harder”. Such attitude might exacerbate the discrimination against women in career advancement issues, as their colleagues will have the impression that they could have waited. Glenn Cohen from Harvard Law School examines the implications of such policies and asks if such policies imply that work and pregnancy are incompatible. 

Addressing, the alarmingly low numbers of women in technology should start with treating the causes, not the symptoms. Currently, women account for only 30% and 31% of the workforce in Apple and Facebook, respectively.  Additionally, according to a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 56% of women in tech, leave their careers at the mid-level, double the quit rate of men. Fortune’s study on 716 women who left tech shows that 68% cites motherhood as a reason to leave tech although only a small 6% wants to be stay home mothers. Most mothers would have happily returned to their jobs if the maternity policies were better. These numbers, combined with a 19% of women who’s frozen their eggs saying “they might have had a child earlier if their workplace had been more flexible” from New York University’s 2013 survey, show that the real problem lies within the compatibility of parenting and work. 

Although, tech companies offer long maternity leaves and cash support, some fail to offer resources to support their employees in parenting. Facebook, for instance, announced plans for a $120 million housing community with amenities that even included a bicycle repair shop and a doggy care but no daycare for kids.  Similar to Michael Lee, I would have preferred to see these companies come up with creative solutions that changed the corporate cultures without penalizing women for motherhood.

Lastly, no matter what our stance is in the issue, I think we all should consider the following questions posed in Quora:

  1. What effect does this benefit have on fetal/maternal health and aggregate health care spending?
  1. Is there a comparable benefit provided to men?
  1. What behavioral effects will this have on affected employees?

 

Please comment below and get a discussion started!

-Rozita