Tag: Mothers are making art

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Art MAMA

Metamorphosis/ Close to the Heart

The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 10th edition of  this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic 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

Project Metamorphosis

ART: Beth Goobic –
Metamorphose is an ongoing conversation in clay about the journey of becoming a mother and being a mother. It takes place in this study of a common utilitarian household item, the mug. These mug forms are endowed with the presence of both vulnerability and strength. They celebrate the glorified transformation of the pregnant body, but they bring visibility and conversation to the continuing
transformation of the body and person after birth. That they are mugs points to the commonness of everyday lived experiences by wo/men in motherhood and motherwork.

Each mug is entirely different reflecting the fact that the experience of mothering is unique to each individual person, even though motherwork is quite often mistaken as a universal concept. These kinds of assumptions about the universality of mothering
actually makes the personal experiences of each person doing it invisible. Metamorphose is meant to resist that kind of assumption.
The mugs are a reflection of the pregnant body, the very beginning of the anatomical journey of the female body as it enters motherhood but the mugs also celebrate and acknowledge the transformation of the female body after pregnancy, post
birth, which in our society, is a less celebrated transformation, and a less visible journey. Post birthbodies deserve the patience, celebration and glorification that childbearing bodies receive. Post-birth bodies are spacious, healing and rehabilitating,
while still maintaining a new additional life. The mugs acknowledge, give presence, and beautify the body post birth.

These mug forms acknowledge the more subtle but continual anatomical journey our bodies endure during motherwork and also a person’s transformative and altering personal journey throughout motherwork. Pertaining to motherwork this conversation in
clay is not exclusive to birth mothers, but opens up this conversation to all caregivers that take on motherwork. A man, or a non -biological parent may not physically go through the birthing journey but that person can experience the altering and changing of
their own bodies and spirits throughout the journey of motherwork. The common daily motions endured during motherwork, and the effects and marks that motherwork experiences leave on our bodies are also portrayed here in these mugs. With the unknown journey and struggles that each child brings, caregivers are altered in person as they journey with that child through the highs and lows of each experience. This altering of person throughout the lifelong journey of motherhood, so private and personal, joyful and painful, messy and beautiful is celebrated and acknowledged in these basic everyday utilitarian objects.

Like motherwork, the mugs are individual, unique and beautifully imperfect.The forms are altered, and asymmetrical, with undulating rims and drippy glazes. I choose to alter the form as a way to represent and interpret how we are altered in person and body in motherwork. The mugs are fired in a salt and soda kiln resulting in much surface variation among the cups. Each of these mugs are a functional sculpture and an experience, inviting the viewer to apply their own experiences in motherhood and motherwork to the conversation. The vulnerable yet commanding forms salute the invisible labor of caregiving and everyday experiences of motherwork, which involves a metamorphosis of person and body. Metamorphose is an artistic attempt to make the invisibility of motherhood and motherwork visible in households and workspaces via an everyday utilitarian object. [LINK TO MORE ART]

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WORDS: Close to the Heart

by, Nancy Cook

I am planning the perfect tattoo.  Where to have it applied is not in question:  It is going to cover my entire chest. But beyond that, I have some decisions to make.

My relationship with my breasts has always been complicated. So much different than Joel’s relationship with his penis.  Joel’s penis has a name. The penis is named Max, basic and simple. Max has a personality, so Joel believes, a life of its own, completely separate from Joel’s. Well, not completely separate, of course. Our son Aaron views his little penis in much the same way. Aaron thinks his penis is his friend, although he hasn’t given it (him?) a name. Joel is convinced this is evidence of relational capacity. I say if you are in conversation with a body part, addressing it as Other, that’s distancing, not intimacy. But to be candid, I don’t care enough to get into a real discussion about it.

It’s strange to me because my breasts have always been part of the integrated whole that is my body.  This was true even before I had real breasts, when I was a kid pushing my flat chest up and out so I could look like my Mom or Charlie’s Angels or Madonna. I’d check out my reflection in a mirror or a sun-glared store window, and there they’d be, future boobs, more real than imaginary. It’s like my body always knew breasts would be part of the family, and now they’re participants in a full-fledged collaboration, right in there with my ears, my toes, my heart. My body parts communicate pretty well, the soles to the brain, the nostrils to the spine, the nipples on direct-dial to the vulva. My breasts are as essential as, and no more essential than, other parts, say, my tongue or my hands.

At the same time, I’ve often felt as if these beauties were not mine alone. They’re so, you know, out there. Visible. Available for public notice. Something like marigolds in a house-front flower bed or news of winning even a minor prize. Joel would probably take issue with that. He likes that he has private viewings. He coos, he tastes. Sometimes he plays them, left side against the right. He might grasp tightly, squeeze hard, but never roughly. I understand Joel’s attraction to my breasts, if not his proprietariness. I like personal time with my breasts too. They are nice to touch and very responsive.  Especially when an effort is made.

Not that I’ve had much private time with my breasts in recent years. Aaron made his claim on them as a baby, then the girls, Emma and Josie, had their turns. And, most recently, the doctors. I suspect that Joel has not liked any of this, although he’s too nice a guy to complain.

But back to the big question: what is the perfect tattoo?  What will pay tribute to feminine beauty, strength, sensuality? Motherhood. Solidarity and survival. I could go with a Xena the Warrior, the whole Amazonish thing. I’ve considered an artful rendition of a dinner feast, grander than Thanksgiving, smoky and steamy meats, a colorful overabundance of shining fruits and bloated roots and huge leafy sprays, a mountain of fresh bread loaves, luscious pies and puddings and creamed pastry puffs. Or maybe a circle dance, women of every size and shade with hands joined. Then, with every twist of shoulders, the women’s bare feet would boogie, their heads would float musically.

One inspiration, an early morning rumination, involves whales. When I was pregnant with Aaron, Joel and I took a whale watching cruise. I’d been warned against it, the risk of nausea being so unacceptably high. But the threat of an emotional breakdown if I were denied this outing convinced both Joel and the cruise hosts that a little boat vomit was the lesser of two perils. It was a good decision. The ocean was my friend that day. I never did get nauseous and the whales surrounded our boat not once, but three times. Their glossy bodies parted the waves, rose skyward, dashed below, made showers of foam. It was early summer and young black calves by the dozen alternately clung to mothers’ hides and flashed fins above the sea’s swells in bold proclamations of self-reliance. With every orca sighting, unborn Aaron danced and applauded in the womb.

What I keep coming back to, though, is a profusion of roses. Roses, fragile and impermanent. Roses, red and amorous and daring, their thorny stems hidden but still there, close to the heart. Roses and roses and roses and roses, every single one’s complex delicate exacting lines traceable with a fingernail. Generous gardens of roses that will take a lifetime to explore. Wild spring and summer roses, wall-climbing roses, Molly Bloom yes I will yes roses. Roses spread all across my empty chest, a gift to be bestowed after the medical healing, after the chemo and radiation are done. A gift to myself. A gift that is myself.

Nancy Cook currently lives in St. Paul. For years she has been attempting to integrate various parts of herself: sole parent, community lawyer, teacher, and writer. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary and social policy journals, including the Chrysalis Reader, Adventum, Nebo, Westward Quarterly, Emory Law Journal, and Prime Mincer.

LINK TO NOVEMBER 15th EXHIBIT with RUCHIKA WASON SINGH is HERE.

 

 

Categories
Art

MOMENTS OF WEIGHTLESSNESS while WAITING FOR WORDS [Link]

Project: MOMENTS OF WEIGHTLESSNESS
Pianist, inventor and performer Sarah Nicolls developed her unique ‘Inside-Out Piano’ to explore the belly of the instrument and to coax out some of its hidden sounds. In this solo show, she explores the extraordinary unexpected characteristics of the instrument, moving it around the stage to gradually reveal her parallel journey into motherhood. See this monumental piano in surprising motion, hear the beautiful melodies and textures of Sarah’s piano-songs mixed with stories of creativity, and contemplate the moments of life where everything seems to stand still.


About the artist: Sarah Nicolls is a UK-based experimental pianist, at the forefront of innovations in piano performance. She has worked extensively with interactive technologies and invented the ‘Inside-out Piano’, to enable ‘extended’ piano techniques. The second prototype was built in 2014 by Pierre Malbos, Paris.

In the rest of her concert career, Sarah is a frequent soloist, performing in events like the London Design Festival, a recent Wellcome Trust/BBC Radio 3 weekend, the PRSF New Music Biennial and Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos project. Sarah has given countless world premieres, is regularly broadcast and features on several CDs. She is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, is Artistic Director of the BEAM (Brunel Electronic and Analogue Music) Festival, and curates interactive music exhibitions with ACCORD. Sarah has two children: Stan, born 2012 and Sylvie, born 2013.

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WAITING FOR WORDS

By Cynthia Patton

From Mom Egg Vol. 11 “Mother Tongue”

I was in bed when Katie slipped past, heading for the stairs. My slender, caramel-haired daughter didn’t look at me or speak. She was a shadow, receding with the dawn.

I huddled beneath the down comforter, filled with foggy, nameless emotions. I knew I should go downstairs and engage her as the specialists instructed me. Make good use of our precious free time. With an autistic child there’s always something to work on: social skills, sign language, speech. Instead a prayer rose unbidden. Please give me words. I can do without hugs and kisses, but I need more words, need them like air.

Katie was five yet spoke like a two-year-old—when she spoke at all. A knot lodged between my shoulder blades. What if conversation never came?  Katie was smart enough, but speech remained a challenge. Her mind was a secret garden, the thoughts overflowing with nowhere to go. I wanted to hear her stories, her emotions, her feeble attempts at jokes. I wanted her to look at me, smile, and say Mommy.

I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My tears rained down as I prayed for the day the words broke free, flooding fallow fields.

Katie was nonverbal for two years, eight months. At three, after a year of intensive therapy, she had a spoken vocabulary of 50 words. By four she used two-word phrases. By five she assembled short sentences.

Special needs parenting is often a strange blend of gratitude, sorrow, pride, and guilt. I was excited and proud when Katie mastered a new sentence. Yet I was sad she had to work so hard and guilty I wanted more. Why couldn’t I simply be grateful? I was, but when I looked in her eyes I saw an IQ boiling, just out of reach, and wanted to smash something on her behalf.

It’s hard to watch your child struggle, especially when there’s nothing to do but wait.

At six Katie answered simple questions. By seven she used adjectives and worked to master possessive pronouns. I fought for additional speech therapy and finally the long, slow slog ended. Her speech gained momentum.

One night shortly after she turned eight, Katie asked for the blue dolphin as she climbed into bed. Her words were crystal clear, so I praised her as the therapists trained me.

She asked again, and I showed her the blue cat.

“No,” she said. “Want dolphin please.”

“We don’t have a dolphin.”

“Dolphins swim in the water.”

“You’re right,” I said. “They’re good swimmers.”

I reached into the basket that contained her stuffed animals. “Do you want the lobster?”

Katie smiled and reached for the toy. She played with the pinchers while I felt smug about discovering the glitch where her brain veered off course.

She looked up. “This is red. Red lobster.”

“I know, but it lives in the water.”

Her pained look said I was the one with the neurological problem. “I want blue dolphin.”

She clenched her teeth—the beginning of a tantrum. I thought fast. “Why don’t you pick the animal you want to sleep with?”

This wasn’t the routine. After a long pause she rolled out of bed, rooted in the basket, and yanked something out. I laughed when I saw Eeyore. “That’s not a dolphin. It’s a donkey.”

“Blue donkey,” she said, climbing into bed.

Katie knows the difference between a dolphin and a donkey. Sometimes her brain scrambles the words.

We recited Goodnight Moon while Katie stroked Eeyore’s ears. I said, “I love you” as my hand automatically made the sign.

She signed I love you as Max, our cat, entered the room. “Good night, sweetie. Max says good night too.”

“Goodnight, Mommy.”

I froze, unsure I’d heard correctly. Katie had never spontaneously greeted anyone. She could say the words, but I needed to coax them out.

Max meowed, and Katie giggled. “Good talking, Max.”

She’d done it, twice in one night. I wanted to cry and shout and jump on the bed.

So what if it happened a few years late? So what if it wouldn’t happen again for months?

These moments sustain me.

A few months later, I was reading yet another progress report. Katie was in the kitchen studying cookbook photos. “That’s soup. Soup is hot. I like soup. Soup is good. I can make it. I’m stirring soup. Let’s make chicken tortilla soup.”

She flipped the page and talked about pumpkin pie. I didn’t know she knew what pumpkin pie was. More pages flipped, followed by a long discourse on chocolate cake, then meat, then pasta, then salad with cranberries. It was as if she wanted to say every sentence she could that included the particular food item.

To say I was stunned would be an understatement.

It went on for 15 minutes, maybe longer.

I listened as the words poured out, barely breathing. Then it hit me. This was it, the moment I’d been waiting for. The words were breaking free, spilling into the kitchen and filling up the room.

They filled me up. Better than any meal.

Cynthia Patton is an award-winning author, speaker, advocate, and attorney, and  founder of Autism A to Z, a nonprofit organization.

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Art Featured MAMA

This is Where I Am and Mirror Mirror [Click]

 

 ‘This is where I am’ (2013) is part of the M.A.M.A. – Mothers Are Making Art initiative. Read More by Clicking Here.

‘This is where I am’ is based on ideas of Transactional Analysis (TA), a theory of behaviour that emphasiseshow our adult behavioural patterns originate in childhood.  The theory describes three ego states (Parent/Adult/Child);

Parent is a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents acted, or how they interpreted their parent’s actions.

Adult is a state of the ego in which we process information and make predictions absent of major emotions. While a person is in the Adult ego state, he/she is directed towards an objective appraisal of reality.

Child is a state in which people behave, feel and think similarly to how they did in childhood. The Child is the source of emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity and intimacy.

The aim of change under TA is to free ourselves from our childhood scripts and move toward constructive problem solving as opposed to avoidance or passivity.

Inspired by observations of my daughter learning to walk and reflections on my personal ego-states led to the performance ‘This is where I am’.  This was a durational performance working with two focal points: The Wall (a symbolic anchor for the Parent) and The Floor (a symbolic anchor for The Child). I am slowly walking between both for two hours, falling on the floor and picking myself up again, then trying to hug the wall. Using chalk (favourite childhood material) I carefully outline as much of my body as my position would allow me each time. The physical and emotional difficulty of this performance is unexpected.  

About the Artist: Nuša Pavko

Born in 1978 in former Yugoslavia, Nuša graduated in sculpture and ceramics at Famul Stuart school of Applied Arts in Ljubljana in 2005.  Also a qualified and practicing social worker, Nuša combined her twin interests in art and society in her Sociology MSc which considered the therapeutic value of postmodern ‘death art’ in 2010.

Primarily interested in performance art and installations, Nuša draws inspiration from a wide range of sources but regardless of the form, her artistic work could be considered as some type of ‘social commentary’ as it is often inspired by people and events in her vicinity.

Nuša has been living and working in London for nearly a decade and has a small ceramics studio in her home. Most recently, she has been producing artworks with her little assistant.

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Mirror Mirror by Sandra Ramos Obriant

Originally published in Mom Egg Vol. 10 The Body

My mother told me I was beautiful. She was always saying stuff like that, telling me what a gorgeous baby I was, and how I’d won a Beautiful Baby contest and had my picture printed in a calendar. January was my month. She compared me to movie stars, and in high school tried to draw me out of a nerdy adolescence by telling me that I had sex appeal, an important item in her lexicon of female virtues. She never explained how to use that gift, but encouraged me to date.

One night, we watched an old Ava Gardner movie together — The Barefoot Contessa. I sat on the end of her bed and brushed my long hair, my head tilted to the side. She must have been watching me. “Your neck is the same as Ava Gardner’s,” she said. I looked at Ava, seductive in a gypsy dance, and couldn’t get past the cleft in her chin and the valley between her breasts.

“No, it’s not,” I said, more harshly than I intended.

We watched Jane Fonda in Barbarella together. “You look like Jane Fonda,” she said. My hair was lighter then, and laden with curls, like Jane’s.

“No, I don’t,” I said, and walked out of the room.

Many years later, my son was two years old and I still looked pregnant. “I’m too fat,” I told my mother.

“You’re beautiful,” she said with conviction, and looked at me with appraising eyes from my top to my round bottom. “You look like Jacqueline Bisset, only she’s too skinny.”

“I do?” I said, and studied my profile in the mirror.

My son’s in college now, and I still look pregnant. But I carry an image of myself that defies logic. I pass a mirror in my house, and out of the corner of my eye see a stranger. Who’s that matronly woman, shoulders slouched and with a crease between her eyebrows? I stop to examine my reflection, and a slow morph occurs. Straighten the shoulders, suck in my gut, and smile, and yes, there she is. Yes, tilt my head — yes, I still have it — Ava Gardner’s neck. The same.

About the Author: Sandra Ramos O’Briant’s work has appeared in Café Irreal, Flashquake, riverbabble, In Posse, LiteraryMama, Whistling Shade, La Herencia, latinola.com, and The Copperfield Review. In addition, her short stories have been anthologized in Best Lesbian Love Stories of 2004, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest (University of Texas Press, Spring 2007), Latinos in Lotus Land: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, (Bilingual Press, 2008), Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery (Arte Publico (2009), and The Mom Egg (Half Shell Press, 2010). Read her work at http://www.thesandovalsisters.com and http://www.bloodmother.com.

 

 

Categories
Art MAMA

M.A.M.A. – Mothers Are Making Art [CLICK]

ART: Sabrina Mahfouz
Sabrina is currently the Poet in Residence for Cape Farewell, an organization that provides a cultural response to climate change. She is an Associate Artist alumni at the Bush Theatre in London; a Writer at Liberty for the UK civil rights charity LIBERTY and the Creative Director of poetry production company P.O.P.

She is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper on the executive board of the London hub. Sabrina studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, receiving her MA in International Politics and Diplomacy and at King’s College, University of London, receiving her BA (Hons) in Classics and English Literature.

Her creative work has been recognized with a number of awards.  Most recently, these include receiving a 2014 Fringe First Award; the 2013 Sky Arts Futures Fund Award; an Old Vic New Voices Underbelly Edinburgh Award; a UK Young Artists Award; The Stage Award for Best Solo Performance 2011 nomination; an Old Vic New Voices TS Eliot Award and a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights. Her first book, The Clean Collection, is available from Bloomsbury.
Read more at ProCreate Project/ Link is HERE.MAMA ISSUE 6

TEXT: Autumn Stephens

Originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 13 – History of a Girl

A blue cloud aureoles her hair, making her a madonna or hinting at the moment a smidge past perfection when petals begin their downward drift.

Labor Day

Without the children, she is left with too much fruit. Three platters on the drainboard, their chips and cracks mitigated by heaps of peaches, nectarines, plums. The sweet stones she dreamed of all winter, like Demeter, like her own mother, mourning loss of fragrance, sipping boiling water for comfort, reaching back toward a hotter life.

Spoiler

In the movie the children die. She should have chosen a different show, some summer trifle where the men are sex fools and the women are goddesses, sassy but forgiving. Read More….

MAMA_Logo_2015

Categories
Art Featured MAMA

M.A.M.A. – Mothers ARE Making Art – New Installation(s)

WHAT: The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are partnering for bi-monthly on-line presentations featuring M.A.M.A. – Mothers are Making Art.
WHEN: The 1st and the 15th of each month words and images will highlight the joy and the challenges of being both a mother and an artist.
WHERE: Online is the place! We will host works of art about mothers and mothers-to-be; featuring academic and creative writing in order to promote women internationally and generate cultural exchanges and opportunities.

WHY: We are determined to explore the extraordinary experiences of mothers and how, by means of channeling these new and powerful energies a person can cultivate both motherhood and art. However, support is needed and awareness must be raised to facilitate this process and to finally empower it.

We strive to give voice to all women, make acceptable room for “feelings,” sensations, and interpretations without judgment; we want to make space for mothers in the arts to display their work and move a conversation about “the art of motherhood” forward. DOWNLOAD THE PRESS RELEASE.

@ProcreateProj  @MOMmuseum @TheMomEgg #JoinMAMA

slide5This month features Lynn Lu (Pictured on homepage and above here) and Beck Tipper, whose writing is highlighted on the M.A.M.A. page here.

Paradoxes for the Virtual collaborative Skype performance with Birgitta Hosea on YouTube [LINK].
Lab451LONDON; Camden Image Gallery; London, UK. 2015
In a game of Exquisite Corpse, Lynn Lu (live) and Birgitta Hosea (projected from SKYPE) explore intimacy and the generation of interpersonal closeness across a virtual divide through a scored series of shared confidences.

-PREGNANCY AND AFTER MOTHERHOOD INSPIRED SEVERAL OF THE LYNN LU PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS-

Lynn Lu received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University with a major in Sculpture and a minor in Graphic Design in 1999. In 1998, she studied with Christian Boltanski at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and at the École Marchutz in Aix-en-Provence. She earned her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002, and completed a PhD program (ABD) at Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 2008, on a full scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2010 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Since 1997, Lynn has exhibited and performed extensively in the United States, Singapore, Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Turkey, Greece, Argentina, and Canada.

See more about Lynn at ProcreateProject.com

Categories
Art

Maternal Nest

August 2015; MAMA, ProcreateProject features the art of Kerry Stammers
August 2015; MAMA, ProcreateProject features the art of Kerry Stammers

Kerry Stammers- ‘Maternal Nest’ painting
As part of our ongoing series with Procreate Project, MAMA: mothers are making art announces new works and texts.

According to Kerry, the painting “represents the nesting instinct in pregnancy and the rediscovery of creative ‘playtime’. The background foliage of the nest which is painted are the flowers from my mothers garden where I grew up. Laid on top are the fresh flowers from my own garden as I strive to provide a protective, inspiring enviroment for my son. Hidden amongst the foliage is an old tea set, it is like a prop from my childhood where stories and games were created.”

See also, Barefootbabysteps – ‘Painting with nature’
essentially a childhood pastime, a little hobby to while away the hours in my parents beautiful garden in the Suffolk countryside, It would start with an outdoor adventure,foraging little treasures along the way. At any given moment the shape of a flower or leaf or twig even, would remind me of an animal or character or story. I would stop in my tracks and let a picture organically form on the ground/ tree stump below. There was always something sad yet magical about leaving a little creation behind to get blown away by the wind, or snuffled by a passing hedgehog or squirrel, photography allows me to capture that moment when everything is fresh and newly formed before its componants get whisked back into the circle of life.

Kerry hope the pictures, (along with her recent creations), inspire children and adults alike to look at the world around them with new eyes: explore the outdoors, forage for earthy treasures and unleash their imagination to create new stories and adventures.

More about Kerry and her creations here [LINK]

See new video from Procreate Project’s founder:

Read the accompanying essay this month by Jenny N. “Reflections on Maternal Thinking” here [LINK]. Excerpt below:

In her book, Maternal Thinking, Sara Ruddick defines what she understands to be the concept by this same name. It should be noted that this definition has a social, historical, and cultural context. The vision of maternal thinking, as she perceives it, has come out of our notions of what type of person mothers should be and what role they play in our society. Ruddick states: “The agents of maternal practice, acting in response to the demands of their children, acquire a conceptual scheme – a vocabulary and logic of connections – through which they order and express the values of their practice” (Ruddick 1989). Maternal thinking, she goes on to say, is guided by a mother’s interest in their child’s preservation, growth, and acceptability. Preservation begins whenever the mother reasonably believes her child to be a viable being and continues on through their first years of life. The mother is consumed with protecting her baby during these vulnerable years. Growth occurs following these first few years, when the mother is still entrusted with the child’s protection, but now wishes to see the child grow physically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. Acceptability refers to a mother’s desire to mold her child into the type of person that is socially accepted. A reflection no doubt of what we value in our society, I once heard a mother remark on the playground, “Why would they not want their kid to be smart and athletic?” More.

Categories
Art Birth Featured

The Art of Motherhood

Since immersing myself in the motherworld in 1989 I have observed the rise in the visibility of humans engaged in the practice of birth and caregiving. This visibility has translated into music, scholarship, literature, theater, and most recently a rise in fine artists lending their passion to making video, photography, paintings, and performance. I am thrilled by this because making the labor, love, and struggles of motherhood visible lends itself to introspection, observation, and contemplation of mother-work, mother-identity, and the ties that bind. Indeed, I feel blessed to have been born exactly at this time and to have been an active participant in this process. As Alana Ruben Free said to me the other day after an especially tedious and frustrating week, “at least we changed the world.” Martha Joy Rose

Please enjoy the beautiful work of Ana Alvarez-Errecalde here [CLICK}

“Birth of My Daughter”

Ana Alvarez-Errecalde
Ana Alvarez-Errecalde
Categories
Art Feminism

M.A.M.A. – Mothers ARE Making Art – New Installation(s)

WHAT: The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are partnering for bi-monthly on-line presentations featuring M.A.M.A. – Mothers are Making Art.
WHEN: The 1st and the 15th of each month words and images will highlight the joy and the challenges of being both a mother and an artist.
WHERE: Online is the place! We will host works of art about mothers and mothers-to-be; featuring academic and creative writing in order to promote women internationally and generate cultural exchanges and opportunities.

WHY: We are determined to explore the extraordinary experiences of mothers and how, by means of channeling these new and powerful energies a person can cultivate both motherhood and art. However, support is needed and awareness must be raised to facilitate this process and to finally empower it.

We strive to give voice to all women, make acceptable room for “feelings,” sensations, and interpretations without judgment; we want to make space for mothers in the arts to display their work and move a conversation about “the art of motherhood” forward. DOWNLOAD THE PRESS RELEASE.

@ProcreateProj  @MOMmuseum @TheMomEgg #JoinMAMA

slide5This month features Lynn Lu (Pictured on homepage and above here) and Beck Tipper, whose writing is highlighted on the M.A.M.A. page here.

Paradoxes for the Virtual collaborative Skype performance with Birgitta Hosea on YouTube [LINK].
Lab451LONDON; Camden Image Gallery; London, UK. 2015
In a game of Exquisite Corpse, Lynn Lu (live) and Birgitta Hosea (projected from SKYPE) explore intimacy and the generation of interpersonal closeness across a virtual divide through a scored series of shared confidences.

-PREGNANCY AND AFTER MOTHERHOOD INSPIRED SEVERAL OF THE LYNN LU PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS-

Lynn Lu received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University with a major in Sculpture and a minor in Graphic Design in 1999. In 1998, she studied with Christian Boltanski at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and at the École Marchutz in Aix-en-Provence. She earned her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002, and completed a PhD program (ABD) at Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 2008, on a full scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2010 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Since 1997, Lynn has exhibited and performed extensively in the United States, Singapore, Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Turkey, Greece, Argentina, and Canada.

See more about Lynn at ProcreateProject.com

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To read Andrea O’Reilly’s piece on Feminist Motherhood go to our link here, and read her piece also live online at ProCreate Project.

Art and Performance by Nicola Canavan
Art and Performance by Nicola Canavan: Raising the Skirt

Raising the Skirt: ‘La mar es posa bona si veu el cony d’una dona’, is a Catalan belief in the vagina, translated as ‘the sea calms down if it sees a woman’s cunt’. (Images by Dawn Felicia Knox)
The gesture of lifting the skirt has been translated across the world. It is known as Anasyrma or Ana-Suromai (Ancient Greek), Anlu (Kom Communities) and many others. A flash of the cunt has been known to calm other forces of nature too, in Madras (India) women were known to subdue storms by exposing themselves. In other folklore Women could drive away the devils, evil spirits and warriors as seen in Fontaine’s ‘Nouveaux Contes’, all through the power and beauty of their cunts. ‘Raising the Skirt’ has influenced my practice for many years (www.nicolacanavan.com); by questioning notions of beauty and the status of women socially and culturally across many religions, and how this affects how the female body is translated across mass media; I feel it would be an important step back to go forward, to reclaiming the cunt as a powerful tool in assertion.