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 FamilyAnthology, 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
M.A.M.A.Procreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 54th edition of this scholarly discourse. Literature intersects with art to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA #artandmotherhood #mama
Introducing: Mathilde Jansen
Bio: Mathilde Jansen hails from Deventer (at the IJssel river valley), in the Netherlands. She graduated from the Royal Academy, The Hague (KABK) in 2006. Dar es Salaam has been a second home and source of inspiration. In 2016 she completed the postgraduate studies Education in Arts (Beroepskunstenaar in de Klas) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. Her primary photographic practice seeks the universal value of natural resources and minerals as a means of tracing the complex relationship between people and the global economy. She aims to create new perspectives from which to examine social structures and the connections between the local and global, which, for Jansen, form the basis of human attitudes, social positioning and intercultural communication. In her practice Jansen consciously interweaves market-driven ways of thinking with an integrated holistic vision of nature, teasing out the borders between the two. Using experiments in analog photography, incorporating awe-inspiring constructions on location and manipulating medium format negatives, she creates a dynamic interplay between subject matter and representation, navigating areas as diverse and all-encompassing as nature and ecology, spirit, and community. Jansen envisions trees and organic structures being planted and preserved in urban spaces, gardens, national parks or anywhere – on a micro or macro level. Her current Landscape projects represent this interplay and interaction between modernization, wilderness and consciousness. [Web Link]
How does motherhood, reproductive identity, or experience inform your work?
Through my recent Landscape projects such as Potential Landscapes, I’ve escaped from the limitations that single motherhood has put onto my life (as a former full-time art and freelance photographer). I was a fully single mom, without a co-parent or similar support, from 2011-2019. All of a sudden, I couldn’t easily travel for an art project, even freelance work in short term or in the evening was hard to undertake. With my Dutch-Tanzanian daughter Daleila, I’ve enjoyed a great time, but the stress and urgency of side jobs, distracted my mind and made me focus too much on external and organizational matters instead of the essence of my life and purpose: what do I feel, need, love and desire (to share in the community)?
To my surprise, I’ve witnessed that people often prefer to judge rather than to offer support. As if my vulnerability triggered hidden fears in people, to stand alone. It takes courage to listen openly. I’ve felt connected to the continent during my time of single motherhood; I had to give up privileges, heal my romantic heart, get used to a more basic lifestyle and nurture my family with resilience. It made me grateful from within.
There came a turning point after meditating as a daily part of my self-care. This restored a creative flow of ideas and palpable steps in my day-to-day life. My resistance against my living circumstances transformed into acceptance and surrender. I truly enjoyed my life with my daughter and allowed any lovely outcome. Besides that, I started to experiment with a technique, to manipulate my medium format nature (and portrait) photo-negatives with ink and organic substances, creating a new type of art photography from my home.
I’d like to highlight the power of neural networks and emotional connection, to expand inner space and outer or creative productivity. Which shifts the focus to the quality of relationships and inner connectedness, as a desired condition for reproduction, also in the form of raising a loving or healthy family.
Reproduction should ideally be a result of mutual interconnectedness in any way. It’s not a goal in itself, to me. Sharing a way of life which supports happy childhoods should be key. So (step)parenting is then a result of love, a responsible task for life and a desire for personal and communal growth, worthy of various forms of support or caring networks. I’d love to call this trans-parenting. There may be no doubt that all people are worthy of love and love-supporting rules and laws, if we can allow society to level up.
As a mother in a family of five (our 3rd child will be born in ’23) I am pro diversity and pro taking social responsibility by free will. Truthful and co-creative connections are my primal desire. Sharing a commitment with my partner, enables me to open up deeply and show my vulnerabilities and powers. Including my biological power to give life to new people born.
Women and men need evolving and daring relationships. I don’t want to exclude men or avoid male structures, instead I’m set to find new structures, regardless origin (or species), which are open to collaborate with (my) feminine and other energies. So we as people can flow in better directions.
Domestic Goddess
Ego Management – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
Sink – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
Connectivity – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
Embrace – Mathilde Jansen (Domestic Goddess Series 2018)
In this series I’ve re-shaped my conditioned mind as a (by that time) single working mum, within the domain of my home as a studio.
My role as an artist is entangled with my household and that of a mother and woman. Am I seeing through the fabric of a curtain, or am I hidden behind it? Cleaning, dancing, resting and organizing at home feels as natural to me, as a walk in the forest. It connects me to my heart, body and mind, where intention, dust, touch, move and scents co-exist in an emotional space with walls, doors, closets and transparent windows. As a (former) single mum, our house started to become a spiritual cube to me. It is were we’ve survived and learned to surrender and thrive, from within.
By exploring my natural connection to my home as an extension of Earth and its resources, I’m letting go of old patriarchal structures in which feminine senses and intuitive powers have been dominated or exploited (for the benefits of a power system). In fact I’ve talked to my shower and been drinking water as if coming from a well or source.
In the history of the Netherlands, a natural or spiritual connection to nature has been repressed by the institutional Church for centuries, whilst supporting economical activities and slave trade of the State overseas. A lack of sensual and free emotional expression has caused abuse of (so called) exotic women or even children, without a mutual equal connection.
Nowadays, people tend to project a wild inner nature on (trans)gender diversity. Yet heterosexual mothers often remain ignored or invisible, because the debate about reproduction focuses on a lineair and statistic point of view, rather as the contagious power of love as a reproductive energy. And relationships built on free will and a symbiotic harmony.
Natural forces have first been rediscovered at home, to affect social and economical domains as well. It’s a subtle and playfully provoking process. Poet and Jungian psychoanalytic Clarissa Pinkola Estés describes myths and stories in ‘Women who run with the wolves’.
Domestic Goddess plays with various interpretations of ‘the female archetype’ vocabulary. For people from western or market oriented countries this title might refer to a fantasy world or socially submissive status, defining the role of a woman or tasks in a household in a more less static way. Whereas in various cultures and beliefs a ‘family’ spirit is associated with social integrity or emotional responsivity and implements these qualities on a professional level as well. Nevertheless, this series isn’t about left or right, but about exploring the subconscious and act from that source in daily reality, within your community and living material surroundings too.
Mothership, part 1: Symbioscenes
Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
Symbioscenes Mathilde Jansen Mothership 2023
Mothership, part 1: Symbioscenes
“As the symbiotic interconnections come back into the soil, the ecosystem, and the macrobiomes, the neural and emotional connections return to the psyche to a form of health. What is new in this field is the discovery that many of the foundational forces are invisible to us. We were simply ignorant of them. … The fact that, for the bulk of our time on this Earth, humans have not had to analyze or even be conscious of our positive relationships to the Earth accounts to some extent for our not naming or recording them in the languages that have coalesced to become the English language. They were taken for granted when the world gave generously and continuously of these connections. As the Anthropocene has peeled away the protective layers that held our positive Earth emotions in place, we have come to appreciate and value their role in our psychic health. I have illustrated this loss with my own example of witnessing the destruction of endemism and my endemic sense of place in Western Australia.”
– Eco philosopherGlenn A. Albrecht (Earth Emotions, page 194-195)
Through the container project Mothership, I’m exploring how to navigate in my working and family life, pregnancy and motherhood, while evolving a conscious relationship with the Earth as a symbiosis. My first analogue photographs of a happening at the beach, Symbioscenes, will take part of a multimedia video work which is in progress, as the start of my artist residency in Motherhood, with the long term project Mothership.
Our consciousness is rooted in the soil (under our feet) and skies (beyond our control). What is the message of inner voices that we construct and perceive our reality from? I’ll edit unique audio fragments to play with daily, social structures and invisible powers. Such as eye opening fragments of my grandmother’s diary, which I got after she passed away.
Mothership intertwines female family lines and a psychological connectedness within a natural environment. I’ll visually explore the relationship between my (sub)consciousness and the way my body is one with nature. The project forms a dialogue between my changing life, body and emotional system, but also seeks for new meaning within a collective consciousness. To find a dynamic and valuable truth which is solid enough to be able to build upon the concept of a symbiocene, a term by Glenn Albrecht.
WORDS
Lisa DeSiro is the author of Labor (Nixes Mate, 2018) and Grief Dreams (White Knuckle Press, 2017). Her poetry is featured in various anthologies and journals, and has been set to music by several composers. Lisa is employed as the Production & Editorial Assistant for a non-profit organization; in addition, she is an editor for Indolent Books and a freelance accompanist. Read more about her at thepoetpianist.com.
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!
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.”
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
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.”
SLQS is a Franco-Vietnamese artist living in East London. Her work is interdisciplinary and questions the politics of space and who is excluded from it. SLQS makes and holds space as a woman, a person of mixed heritage, a foreigner, a mother and an artist. She invites her audience to decolonise spatial orders from imperialist, sexist and racist structures. SLQS has presented work at Totally Thames, Spitalfields Music, Rich Mix, Procreate Project, the Live Art Development Agency, the Royal College of Art, the Brunel Museum, the Migration Museum and the Attenborough Art Centre. She is a board member of the Creative Think Tank for UK New Artists.
The HBAC Performance Manifesto was written from my personal experience of being pregnant and not given access to a home birth or the birthing centre. Having previously had a caesarean, I was labelled ‘high risk’ and was not being heard.
On 4th and 5th November 2018, over 25 hours, I performed the act of giving birth at home with the support of two independent midwives. The birth was documented as an act of everyday life in the domestic space, with cameras set up in my kitchen, my bedroom and my living room. The Manifesto declares my views on birth as an every day performance and Home Birth After Cesarean (HBAC) as being a safe birth
option. It was published by the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS) in 2020.
Independent midwifery supports choices for women by providing evidence based information and continuity of care to women. Since 2020, due to their insurance product being annulled, their home birth practice is now prohibited, threatening an ancestral profession and restricting women’s birth rights. A group of independent midwives are taking action and fundraising to set up their own insurance product owned by women, with the long term goal to set up a hardship fund. You can support their campaign here: Childbirth Choices Matters.
HBAC PERFORMANCE MANIFESTO
To the medicalised institutions, their medical staff and the health governmental bodies
ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?
NO I am not high risk
NO I will not go to the labour ward
NO I will not be immobilised by continuous monitoring NO I will not labour under time pressure
NO I will not listen to you
NO I will not be given a trial of labour
I WILL LABOUR!
Giving birth is an ancestral ritual which has been performed at home by women for centuries. An act which has ensured the survival of the human species.
Women and daughters have witnessed the act of giving birth for millennia. Women can perform the art of giving birth and every performance will be unique.
Giving birth is a creative act.
The ultimate act of transformation.
A HBAC (Home Birth After Cesarean) is a political act attempting to shift the power from an obstetrically-led medical institution to a woman-centred care approach.
Labour is a durational performance: starting spontaneously with an unexpected duration.
A HABC gives time to the performance of labour. There is no failure to progress, only failure to wait! Patience and respect for the process is practiced.
A HBAC requires participants to support the performer throughout the act of birth. Midwives, partners, family members, friends will be chosen in advance by the performer to participate in the event.
A HBAC enables the performer to control her birth. She is informed and capable of making the right decisions for herself and her baby. She rejects the politics of fear and failure institutionalised by hospital birth.
A HBAC should be available to all women without resistance. All women are eligible for care and should be in control of their choices without judgement.
I AM STRONG
I AM CAPABLE
I TRUST MY BODY I TRUST MY BABY
The performance of HBAC is not a medicalised event. It is a holistic act celebrating life itself. HBAC is performed without the traditional medical props.
NO Forceps NO Ventouse NO CTG
NO Cannulas
NO Augmentation Drugs
NO Amniotomy
NO Epidural
The performance of HBAC challenges the current medical hierarchy of birth. Verticality is replaced by horizontality.
The performance of HBAC reframes birth as an event in a woman’s life in her domestic environment. There is no drama.
Giving birth is a woman’s right of passage into motherhood. A physical and mental journey leading to an act of transformation. Such a journey requires preparation and planning, knowing that unforeseen circumstances can change the course of actions.
A birth plan is a manifesto of personal preferences.
In the performance of HBAC, hospitals and obstetrics interventions are for emergencies only. Giving birth is an innate performance. A primal aptitude buried deep inside every woman.
The performance of HBAC redefines risk. Risk is not measured as a possible scar rupture but as avoiding another assisted birth and future mental trauma associated to this experience.
The performance of HBAC promotes independence. INDEPENDENCE in the choices the performer makes about her birth. INDEPENDENCE from hospital’s policies
INDEPENDENCE from unnecessary medical intervention.
The performance of HBAC respects the culture of birth and the art of midwifery. The performance of HBAC is an act of activism.
Written by Sarah Le Quang Sang, October 2018,
In Flat 55 Maitland House, Bishops Way, London, E2 9HT
We’ve got our plan of action: MoM needs to focus on FINANCIALS moving forward.
OUR ACTION ITEM: It’s all about the money! Throughout the years, many teams and individuals have helped to develop the MoM vision; its mission, its programs, and its outreach. I have strived to do my best, bringing this into the world because of a deep personal commitment to mothers everywhere – the labor they perform, their experiences, their hearts and a passion for the artistic and academic study of mothers and m/otherhood.
I moved MoM from New York City to St. Petersburg with the intention of seeing it grow and thrive after we were unable to secure a next-level space in Manhattan. Now that I have the flexibility to focus on this project full-time, I plan to solidify relationships in St. Petersburg while cultivating my personal live/work space which is now the non-profit MoM Art Annex.
The Annex serves as an incubator project for making the MoM vision to come alive in Florida. In order to do this, attention needs to shift. To that end, the next year will be almost exclusively focused on building our coffers through memberships, donations, grants, and partnerships. We must do this if MoM is going to thrive. Please join me in this affirmation and keep this top of mind and action! This is how we put M/otherhood on the Map. Please HELP US TRIVE! Join one of our many initiatives.
It’s Not Like We’re Slackers – It’s Been a Busy Summer!
Pictured here, summer interns Sarah Akomoh and Teddy Friedline
Intern, Mary Noah. BIG shout out for her work with MoM this summer. She has reconfigured our Wisdom Sharing Document and is finishing up our Grant Sharing Document. In addition, the website has been updated with all our new information as well as our work together honing in on ‘mission‘ etc. I believe the work is well-reflected on the site! Lastly, she leaves us with new logos and a Social MediaCampaign in place. Her diligence has greatly improved our infrastructure in Florida, picking up where our New York interns left off six years ago! THANK YOU MARY!
Intern, Sarah Akomoh contributed to our Grants Database and we will be submitting to the Pinellas Foundation this week. Sarah also got MoM listed here at Florida Arts Axis THANK YOU SARAH!
Intern, Teddy Friedline has been reworking language on the JourMS site as well as the SocMS site. This has enabled appropriate updates since the project was created in 2015. Teddy will be wrapping up a social media campaign about these initiatives with us in the coming weeks. THANK YOU TEDDY!
Intern, Emma Andrews has been working on a book project for Queering Parenting. She is endeavoring to create materials that will facilitate both a child’s perspective on identity as well as adult’s perspectives. Her presentation will be available online and she will present her work on August 22nd in our Online Community Portal 7-8:30PM EST. JOIN US IF YOU CAN!
Intern, Rithik Promod begins delivering his Fertility Goddess exhibit this week. We are LOOKING FORWARD!
We hosted 4 onsite Residencies this summer at the MoM Art Annex ranging from fine arts, to print making, to writing. SHOUT OUT TO: Jessica Caldez, Tara Blackwell, Gloria Munoz, and Rachael Grad.
Elena Rodz – Website Manager, has been so impactful, helping to redesign, upgrade, and empower our website infrastructure. Her work with us is ongoing, her expertise is in the museum and non-profit marketplace, and we are all better for her involvement! THANK YOU ELENA!
Deborah Gelch – Strategic Advisor and I continue to iron out technical details of our new infrastructure modalities including Salesforce, Constant Contact, and Quickbooks integration. We are poised for memberships and tweaking the design elements. On October 21, we collaboratively host our first community cocktail event on behalf of MoM in St. Petersburg. YAY DEBORAH!
Nicole Mussleman- JourMS Editor, has been hard at work on the editorial aspects of the Journal of Mother Studies. We have more submissions than ever before and are still planning on our September 1 online publication date. Nicole also won the very prestigious award at the Hemingway Society Conference 2022. YAY NICOLE!
I will be submitting recommendations to Tracy Sidesinger, Residency Coordinator; and Zabrina Shkurti, Living Board President this week, looking at ways we might maximize MoM’s mission with existing programs. Kasia Nowaski and I will be re-connecting in September over online course development.
We are excited to announce our newest Guest Artist in Residence, Gloria Muñoz! During her residency, Gloria hopes to focus on developing her novel which is set in 1940s Colombia during the period known as La Violencia. With elements of fabulism, historical fiction, and eco-poetics, the story of two sisters who are displaced by violence and left to fend for themselves is a testament to how we can experience wonder, and even magic, after loss.
Continue reading to find out more about Gloria.
Gloria Muñoz is a Colombian-American writer, literary translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy and writing. She was awarded the Academy of American Poets 2019 Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. She has also been honored by the Highlights Foundation’s 2022 Diverse Verse Fellowship, the Macondo Workshop, Lumina’s Multilingual Nonfiction Writing Award, a Las Musas Mentorship for Latine and nonbinary authors, a New York State Summer Writers Institute Fellowship, a St. Petersburg Arts Alliance Muse Award, a Creative Pinellas Grant, the Estelle J. Zbar Poetry Prize, the Bettye Newman Poetry Award, a Gen Yes Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award, a Think Small to Think Big Artist Grant, and a St. Petersburg Arts Alliance’s Jim Rolston Professional Development Grant. Gloria was part of the inaugural Tin House YA workshop and has presented her writing, research, and advocacy work at conferences, colleges, public schools, and book festivals across the United States and Latin America. Her writing has appeared in Puerto del Sol, VIDA Review, Acentos Review, Lumina, the Rumpus, Yes Poetry, Juke Joint, Best New Poets, Sweet, Burrow Press, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, Wildness, Cagibi, and elsewhere. Muñoz is also the author of the chapbook Your Biome Has Found You. She holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the University of South Florida. A proponent of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Gloria has worked alongside botanists, musicians, dancers, historians, classicists, visual artists, conservationists, and neuroscientists. She is a co-founder of Pitch Her Productions and she is one-half of the songwriting team Moonlit Musíca. Most days she writes, teaches, and works with environmental nonprofits.
Also, Announcing This Week:
MoM is also pleased to announce, a conversation about the film, Adventures in Miscarriage with director Cheryl Furjanic, who presented her film trailer at the MoM Conference in 2022 – in person in St. Petersburg in March!
It will be up until July 31st. Then, on Wednesday, July 27th at 6:30pm ET, she will be hosting a conversation about the film and the current state of miscarriage care. Here’s the link for that: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1xNcM1coSLmlMZAJCKXDlA
We are excited to support and view this important film which offers a perspective into this generally underreported experience!
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.”
We are excited to announce our newest Guest Artist, Tara Blackwell. Tara is a mixed media pop artist leveraging the tension between fun and social commentary in her artwork.
Continue reading to find out more about Tara and her journey.
I am a mixed media pop artist living and working in Connecticut. In my work, I play with bold colors, layers, and texture, often incorporating nostalgic pop culture to explore contemporary social issues. At a glance, my paintings depict a childlike innocence, but there is usually underlying social commentary. While I have fun exploring imagery from my childhood, at the same time, I am delving into insecurities that go way back to being an awkward girl in middle school – that “picked last in gym class” feeling. My “Saturday Morning” series is all about resiliency and perseverance. Remember digging in the cereal box as a kid to find that prize? These little characters are symbolically shown in positions of independence, strength, and success. The process of creating this work has personally helped me to conjure up my own inner strength and to envision my “prize” within my reach.
In the Summer of 2020, like many of us, my daughter (Lila) and I spent a lot of time together indoors due to the pandemic. Lila was 12 and in her first year of middle school at a new school and navigating the typical challenges that I remember all too well from that age. But the isolation and fear of getting sick was an unexpected turn. Then—we saw the horrific murder of George Floyd; Another brutal killing (at the hands of the police) of a human being who looks like us. Black Lives Matter protests erupted stronger and louder than ever and living downtown in a major city, we could just step outside and be part of the movement. Together, Lila and I began to pour our feelings into our art.
I was still working on my Saturday Morning series when Lila suggested the use of Powerpuff Girls, a cartoon linked to her generation, not mine. I had been focusing on my own childhood memories in this work, but when I started exploring Lila’s suggested reference, my focus shifted to her experience at that moment. As a mother, I not only thought about how I could protect her but how could I help her to discover her own voice and inner strength. My Saturday Morning series shifted direction and I tapped into my fierceness as a mother– as a Black mother of a Black girl. The Powerpuff Girl painting became the piece titled “Justice Now.” I consider that piece to be the beginning of a powerful collaboration between me and Lila.
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.”
MOM is thrilled to announce the opening of our new online store! In addition to our awesome new branded product line we will be featuring a new guest artist quarterly throughout the year. In every case, the artist feature will be something that is in-line with MOM’s values of multicultural inclusivity and will pull from multiple mediums. To that end, we are pleased to include Luci Westphal (2/22-5/2022) along with a few special items from her diverse portfolio. The link to the store is here and please read on to learn more about Luci and her creations.
Luci is a documentary filmmaker, artist, and photographer originally from Hamburg, Germany, who came to Florida to study film. After 20 years of traveling, working, and making art in Brooklyn, Berlin, and Colorado, she has returned to the south to join the Artist Enclave of Historic Kenwood (AEHK) in St. Petersburg, Florida. Now, with wonder and delight, she is able to explore and capture the lovely Florida landscapes, fauna, and flora with fresh eyes while continuing work on the third post-production edit of her film t All’s Well and Fair.
Documentary Filmmaker and Photographer Luci Westphal
Luci is devoted to making the world a happier place. To that end, her social media and business support that missive. She has been photographing nature wherever she has lived or traveled. She is also at work on the third installment of a documentary that follows three punk moms through their trials, tribulations, and evolutions.
Here are some more specifics about Luci and her endeavors.
LUCI WESTPHAL IN HER WORDS:
From 2010 until 2017, I published the weekly video series Moving Postcard, which gives you a glimpse every week of a special location, event or person. Always free to watch and share.
In 1996, I began filming the on-going documentary project All’s Well and Fair. Every ten years (1996, 2006, 2016) I interview Florida punk rock moms Tina, Margaret, and Rachel, plus their children (!) and then release a new version of the film. The third version is currently in post-production. See Luci’sPatreon pagehere to view a trailer of the film and support her work.
In 2017, I launchedHappier Placewhere I publish most of my photo essays and writing and sometimes videos that are a continuation of theMoving Postcardweb series.
And all along the way, I photograph anything I find appealing: nature, animals, street art, cityscapes…
We have asked Luci to join us as a featured artist in our online storefront because she represents the best in all of us: a willingness to work hard and play nicely with others, she is a woman who has demonstrated awesome filmmaking, art, and business skills, and she is a key member of the MOM community in St. Pete.
It has been our distinct pleasure to welcome Luci to MOM as our first featured artist at the MOM Storefront online. and also a person of fortitude and resilience, who happens to be as devoted to trees as we are.
About Our New Featured Artist Platform:
Our Invitation: You are invited to participate in our ‘Featured Artist’ segment at the Museum of Motherhood online. Our intention is to highlight the work of a broad community of individuals as we collect, preserve, and disseminate articles, books, artifacts, ephemera, images, and research on all aspects of the art, science, and history of women, m/others and families, including reproductive identities, Mother Earth, and spirituality.
Our storefront actively promotes members within our community for the purposes of starting great conversations, creating thought-provoking exhibits, and sharing information, education, and works from a diverse, inclusive, and multicultural perspective.
It is our desire that these works, for sale, need not be exclusive to our site, but rather support the creator of the works as well as MOM through their sales through our storefront. Artist is responsible for shipping and shipping cost as well as returns. All processing happens through MOM with the bulk of all monies going back to the artist.
Write us if you are interested in participating and make sure to include a sample of your work: INFO@MOMmuseum.org
For any additional questions regarding who we are and what we do here at MOM, along with other programs we offer, be sure to browse our website or email us at Info@MOMmuseum.org. We are excited to start this new program with our community of artists at MOM to support their talents and causes for the community at large. Be sure check re to check out our storefront after browsing to support these fantastic individuals.
