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
Become a ‘Member’ at MoM; memberships start at $30 annually. Membership provides invitations to private events online and in-person at MoM, access to exclusive content, and if you join between May and July, we’ll mail you some MoM silicone friendship bracelets and stickers. [LINK]
ST. PETERSBURG — Inside a historic bungalow on 28th Street North, a dream is being nurtured.
It’s an incubator for a museum dedicated to motherhood and also the home of its founder: artist, activist and mother Martha Joy Rose.
Hailing from New York, Rose said she was born in Ithaca, worked in Manhattan and raised kids in Westchester. She previously taught mother studies and sociology of family at Manhattan College. Read Full Story
My name is Estelle Phillips and I wrote “Motherhoodlum”. I did a workshop at the MoM conference and was bowled over by the participation of fellow MoMers. Thank you for your inspirational response; there was beauty in your layered truth and I hope to create something perpetual which honours you.
I am thrilled to be in residence with MoM. This presents a wonderful opportunity to develop a play I have sketched, about equality for women. I am passionate about equality, especially within the family context, the complexity of which was highlighted by your workshop responses.
I am hoping to capture your beauty, and the complexity of m/otherhood in my play. Please would be so kind as to answer the following three questions?
1. What is your greatest joy of m/otherhood?
2. What is your toughest m/otherhood challenge?
3. What would you do to support you in your m/otherhood, if you were your partner? [Meaning, if your roles were reversed, so your partner did the m/othering that you now do. You are the same people; only what you do is different.]
Please feel free to answer by way of email reply, photo, voice note and/or video. Answer brilliantly or badly, whatever comes out, I will be delighted! Here is a BIG THANK YOU. All responses will be kept anonymous. I am on Instagram as @estelle_writer44 and twitter as @legalimportant
WE ARE PLEASE TO ANNOUNCE OUR MOTHERS’ DAY CONTEST WINNERS
ABOUT MY MOTHER
Poetry Winner – Giovanna Capone is a poet, fiction writer, playwright, editor, & filmmaker from an Italian neighborhood near the Bronx. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bedazzled Ink published her first book, In My Neighborhood: Poetry & Prose. Her play, Her Kiss, was performed for sold-out audiences in San Francisco by Luna Sea Women’s Performance Project. She has co-edited two anthologies: Hey Paesan! Writing by Lesbians & Gay Men of Italian Descent, and Dispatches from Lesbian America: 42 Short Stories & Memoir by Lesbian Writers. Giovanna is a public librarian. Her new documentary film is called: Finding the Italians: A Granddaughter’s Journey. Download Poem. www.giovannacapone.weebly.com
How I Became a Reader [Click title to read poem]
ByGiovanna Capone
Antoinette, my mother
and mother of five
housewife and part time world leader
ruling your Fulton Avenue crew
that diapered, mutinous lot
surrounding you on every front
Home alone with no car and no money
and no relief in sight,
till our father came home at night
exhausted and needing his dinner
Antoinette, how did you do it?
“She’s bothering me!”
“He took my stuff!”
“I’m thirsty.”
Two decades of raising kids
with rarely a vacation in sight.
A bowl of plastic fruit
sat on our dining room table for years
At different times yellow bananas, red apples,
and golden pears would fly through the air
Or the occasional pink slipper
would became airborne.
“Madonna! Give me one hour of peace. One hour!”
You’d shout at the ceiling, beseeching the Great Mother above.
Two filterless cigarettes burned
in two different ashtrays
One in the kitchen, and one in the living room
The smell of nicotine burned my nostrils.
One night you announced you weren’t cooking dinner
“That’s it! Chief cook and bottle washer is off duty,”
you declared from the living room chair
We stood in the kitchen
watching Daddy spread mayonnaise on sandwich bread
We had three choices:
roast beef on pumpernickel,
ham and provolone, or peanut butter and jelly.
“Mommy’s on strike,” he said, explaining the situation.
Antoinette you now have three girls and two boys,
grown and raised.
Five adults with jobs, careers, degrees, and homes,
the occasional husband,
and a few bank-worthy FICO scores.
When I think of you today
I remember your solid body planted in the living room chair
I remember you disappearing into a really good book.
And the solace it gave you to read
and the words you shared with us later
explaining the world beyond our lives
a world of presidents and wars
and politicians full of lies.
I remember the tower of books you stacked by your side
a fortress protecting you from us,
and our frequent trips to the library
everyone piled into the car
and Daddy driving us downtown.
You dealt out library cards from a black leather purse
like a blackjack at a card table,
quick and sure
teaching us all the game.
Short Story Winner – Laura Bissell, The Ancient Parchment: Legacies of my Mother. Laura (she/her) is a writer, performance-researcher, educator and poet and her creative writing has been published in New Writing Scotland, Tip Tap Flat and From Glasgow to Saturn. Her first non-fiction book Bubbles: Reflections on Becoming Mother (Luath) was published in December 2021 and she is co-author/editor of Performance in a Pandemic (Routledge, 2021) and Making Routes: Journeys in Performance (Triarchy, 2021). She lives in Glasgow with her partner, daughter & twocats. Download Story.Laura’s website
The Ancient Parchment; Legacies of My Mother [Click title to read poem]
ByLaura Bissell
This story is about being a mother but also being mothered, being a daughter, and the ways in which new motherhood has brought my understanding of this into sharper focus. The legacy of my experience of being mothered impacts how I mother, a lineage passed down. My mother is a matter-of-fact Scottish woman who has been the single biggest female influence on my life. At the age of 30 she had just found out she was pregnant with me when her own mother died suddenly of a heart attack aged 56. My mother hadn’t told her yet that she was pregnant so my grandmother never knew about me, the life that was to come. My mother (now in her early 70s) has solemnly told me many times over the years that she walked around with a towel round her neck for a week after her mother died to catch her tears. As a child I felt the loss of my mother’s mother keenly, even though I had never known her. When I found out I was becoming a mother myself, I wanted to tell my mother immediately, should the same sudden loss inexplicably happen.
During pregnancy, I began to wear the pendant my mother had given to her own mother. It was round and silver, the size of a two pence piece with a ridge around the edge and the symbol of two fish intertwined in the middle. Pisces. We were all Pisces: my mother, her mother who I had never known, and me. On the back, word welts: With Love. Curving, looping, flowing letters scratched into the solid metal. I had treasured this pendant since I was young as a talisman of the women that had preceded me. Although my interest in astrology waned as I grew older, my affinity with water increased, and I would hold the silver pendant in my hands until the cold metal grew warm. I liked to feel the rough engraving under the pads of my fingertips. I had never seen my grandmother’s handwriting and I knew that this curving hand was not it, but the hand of whoever had engraved it over 40 years ago. Nevertheless, I felt that this was her hand, that I could recognise the trace of my own mother’s curving, left-handed loops in the shape of the cursive letters. My daughter breaks the chain of women in the family born under the sign of water but I will pass the necklace on to her nonetheless. I also pass on to her my surname as we gave her my family name (which I kept on getting married) rather than her father’s, traces of both the matriarchal and patriarchal lines being woven into her story.
When I became a mother, I often felt an oscillation between my roles and relationships. My daughter sees me as mother, but to my mother I am daughter. This feeling of being simultaneously adult and child occurs frequently when we are all together, all generations in the same room. I missed this so much when the lockdowns began. I look at pictures of my mum when she is my age. We look the same.
One of the traditions in my family has been my parents, sister and I (and more recently my daughter) making the Christmas cake every year. In late October or early November we would congregate in a kitchen, usually my mother’s, to put together the alchemy of ingredients that would result in our family Christmas cake. This would be a vast volume of mixed fruit, some rustically chopped glace cherries and walnuts, chopped almonds, dark brown sugar, flour, large globs of ginger (left in big chunks, my mum loves to get a big burst of taste of each of the ingredients) and a heady mixture of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and dried ginger too (for good measure). Thick black spoons of treacle would bind together the concoction (only ever used at Christmas, after which my sister and I would alternately take the rest of the red and gold tin home to languish in the cupboard till the next year when a new tin would be bought regardless) and then each of us would heave the wooden spoon around the hefty batter and give it a lucky stir where we would make a wish as we bound the ingredients together. Why so many months before Christmas? So that the near-black cake that would emerge after three or four hours in the oven could sit, wrapped in two layers of greaseproof paper and two layers of tinfoil, in a darkened cupboard being brought out every fortnight to get doused in whisky. In these weeks of steeping in the dark, the plentiful fruit would grow rich and boozy, ready for its appearance at the table for Christmas dinner. It would emerge a few days before and day by day be armored with: first a layer of apricot jam mixed with boiling water to form a seal for any wayward crumbs; then a thick layer of marzipan (my cousin’s favourite); then finally, on Christmas Eve, after an excruciating arm-juddering session of beating egg-whites, glycerin and icing sugar (with a dash of lemon) using my mother’s hand mixer (which is around 30 years old and looks it) the final layer of royal icing, manipulated into peaks with a flourish to resemble little mounds of snow.
The recipe for the Christmas cake is a (now brown and stained) ripped-out page of a 1982 Women’s Own magazine. Referred to as ‘the ancient parchment’, for the last 15 years or so it has been kept in a plastic poly pocket to keep it from falling apart. My sister and I have taken photographs of it, should it completely disintegrate and (horror of horrors), the recipe be lost from our family. One year, my mother thought she had lost it and Christmas was very nearly ruined seven weeks before it happened. Luckily, it appeared squashed beneath the pages of the Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook, another of my mother’s classics, and the ritual of baking the Christmas cake was able to go ahead as planned. The recipe for the royal icing was from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management – a Victorian tome which lived on the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard. My sister and I used to mimic my mother by saying ‘Mrs Beeton says!’ while my mum would heave the book down to consult on some recipe or another when trying to prepare for a dinner party. The ritual of making the Christmas cake, from the buying of ingredients (always the same but still worthy of discussion every year), the day of combining ingredients and lining baking tins, in a kitchen full of the smell of spices and the warm house as it baked for hours on end, allowing the essence of Christmas to permeate the entire house, its regular dousing, then the days of various layering until it was ready to be adorned with the traditional decorations. These were: a Fimo angel my sister made when she was younger (the running joke in the family being that the end of a pencil my sister had used to indent her mouth has made the angel eternally look like a blow-up doll), a lopsided Santa made by me and, if we are with my aunt’s family (as we usually were), some ancient decorations from my uncle’s mother, devoid of all paint but apparently once a Santa and snowman. These various oddities on top of the beautifully peaked snow of the rock-hard royal icing perhaps made for a strange looking final offering, but everyone round the table always said it looked beautiful.
In the first year of my daughter’s life, only five weeks old, she was there in the kitchen, a little starfish in her Pavlik harness, held over the cake to do her (supported) good luck stir before falling asleep on her papa’s fleece for the remainder of the proceedings. The next year, at one year old, she was more animated, enjoying the stir, bopping about in my kitchen with my parents and my sister. My mum shrieked that she was going to get the mixture everywhere and we all laughed. I have it on video. I am holding her, she wears a red festive dress and I have on my Christmas jumper for the occasion. We are happy and laughing, we are together. You can’t tell from the video, but the kitchen smells enticing and we all retire to the living room for a glass of wine while the oven does its magic in turning the brown gloop speckled with a million raisins and orange bits into the magical cake we all love.
In the run up to Christmas 2020, we talk in somber tones about what will happen to the Christmas cake this year. My parents buy the ingredients alone and my mum says she will make it herself in her kitchen. I ask her to FaceTime us and think that maybe we will bake along, together but remote, continuing the ritual at a distance. On the Saturday she makes it herself, sending a blurry picture of my dad’s lucky stir. We are not together, we can’t be, and the ritual of decades is broken. The cake is baked. I don’t smell it and no-one apart from my parents had their lucky stirs. I am bereft. As Christmas together seems less and less likely, my mum sticks the cake in the freezer for a time when we can be together again. Once we contract COVID-19 in mid-December, the cake is joined by the turkey and the pigs in blankets, waiting patiently until the pandemic is over and we can defrost Christmas. We did it last year due to mum’s surgery and had Christmas 2019 in February 2020. Christmas 2020 finally happens in July 2021.
The ancient parchment sleeps in its poly pocket, tucked inside a recipe book to keep it flat. The traditions of our childhood will be passed on to our daughters, my sister and I now mothers to our own girls. Even if the paper finally disintegrates, the ritual will continue, the lineage of cooking together in a warm kitchen, the intoxicating smells of cinnamon and cloves filling the room and our hearts will persist, a legacy of my mother. (an earlier version of this story appears in Bubbles: Reflections on Becoming Mother, Luath, 2021).
Honorable Mention Poem by Kyleann Burtt: “Mother May I?” [Click title to read poem]
Mother may I
Mother may I find a way to understand who you are
Mother may I find a way to fill your every need
Mother may I not be hurt by your unresolved history
Mother may I see the gift that you are between the lines
Mother may I someday see you as a person not as a mother
Mother may I find a way to heal your heart by healing mine
Mother may I…..
OXYTOCIN – PROGRAM LONDON ENGLAND
May 13 Middlesex University, May 20 Science Gallery London
Oxytocin is an interdisciplinary live event about mothers and carers that uniquely combines a bold programme of performances and live art along with discussion panels and workshops.
It creates a platform for critical art practices, intersectional feminist theories and midwifery as well as showcasing the work of artists whose practices and personal experiences are often under-represented.
For its third edition starting Sat 13 of May at the Middlesex University, Oxytocin aims to create an arts, health & community-driven programme to evaluate the effectiveness of LGBTQIA+, Black and Brown and disabled patients’ care, and the cultural sensitivity of primary care providers, administrators and staff in maternity/health services.
Panellists Middlesex University 13 May: Amali Lokugamage, Anna Horn (chair), Krishna Istha,Lola Ornato, Meghan Luton, Natalie Whyte, Sahera Khan, Dr Hannah Barham-Brown (chair), Tracey Norton, Dr Amy Kavanah;
Performance artists across the 2 saturdays: Rubiane Maia, Laima Leyton, Mee Jay, Rebecca Weeks, Vanio Papadelli, Pia Jaime, SLQS, Poppy Jacksons, Portia Yuran Li, Guadalupe Aldrete, Dagmara Bilon
It is so easy to lose focus and lose the light, especially when the weight of responsibility, finances, health, and housing carry such inordinate heaviness. Everyday life is feels so complicated. We slog along with a mountain of problems. How can we feel joyous? How can a museum make a difference?
First the good news: Life on earth has always been a challenge. In fact, a LOT of the time LIFE IS HARD. But, each of us has a spark inside. A little bit of light channeled from the solar system of which we are a part. That illumination is what makes each of us incredibly special. Here at MoM, we focus on the light. In fact our motto is informing and inspiring lives. We do that even as we acknowledge all of the issues and challenges facing individuals thinking about becoming parents and as we attempt to reconcile past difficulties with a transformed present.
How do we do that? Every person who steps into our museum experience has an opportunity to discover something amazing about themselves. We sit at the intersection of an enormous energetic infrastructure that connects the past, present, and future of women, mothers, and families. We pride ourselves on a commitment to art, culture, science, history, and activism. We are absolutely devoted to a legacy project that includes all of us. M/otherhood never ends. We are all part of the great cycle. Please join us as we grow together!
We have THREE IMPORTANT INITIATIVES THIS MONTH!
Invite 300 new MoM Members to Join Us: $30 a year – we will mail you a welcome packet with our friendship bracelets and a code for events with special access to exclusive online content. [CLICK]
Join our MOM Directory to share your business, organization, or service with the world! [CLICK]
Help us finalize our purchase of the Mother Tree sculpture. We are so close! Only $4,000 dollars left to go, then we can add her to our forever collection. Donate now, please. [CLICK]
*Sign up in May for a special photography session locally in St. Pete from St.JeanCreative and they will donate 10% back to the MOM Art Annex 501c3 non-profit. [CLICK]
We will announce the winners of the ‘About My Mother’ writing contest in time for Mothers’ Day! Look for a special blog about that!
Spring has sprung! But first, ‘About My Mother:’ Submit your poem or short story about your mother by April 30th for a Mothers’ Day publication with MoM on our Blog, Newsletter and Social Media. Submit via word document, 1,000-2,000 words for the short story/essay. Poems of any length. First prize is $50 for the story. Poem is $25 and the runner up gets love and publication too. Share widely, just one week left! Send to: INFO@MOMmuseum.org
Thank You Authentic Florida for including us on your website as we approach May (Mothers’ Month). MoM is working hard to increase memberships – 300 in the next 3 months! See our special offer and JOIN OUR FLOCK! We are grateful to work with Melanie Lentz-Janney at Authentic Florida towards this mutual goal of sharing information and cool stuff to do in the Sunshine State. Authentic Florida.
Welcome New MoM Facilitator Sierra Clark
Welcome Sierra Clark our new Empowerment Facilitator at MoM. Her workshop designs- based on her chapter “From Sweet Nothings to Sweet Everything” in Repair Of The Black Family as part of the edited collection by Nayyirah Muhammad- are transformational. We are all better for her leadership and strong voice! More about Sierra at www.sierraclark.life
INTERNS
April has us bustling with a new group of amazing interns from around the world. Please welcome these amazing international collaborators (from left to right):
Audrey Paquet-Frey: My name is Audrey Paquet-Frey, I’m a 32-year-old Master’s degree student from the TEMA+ program 2021-2023, an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree program. I am currently in Paris at the EHESS completing my degree. Prior to this program, I did a bachelor’s degree at the Université Laval in Canada, Québec in historical sciences and heritage studies in museology, ethnology, and archeology. During my studies, I worked at the Canadian museum of history from 2015 until 2020, where I worked in the photographic archives divisions and the documentation of artefacts divisions. So why am I doing an internship at the Mom Museum? Simply because in the last years I’ve developed an interest in museum communities and especially now with the new museum definition from ICOM (International Councils of Museums) redirecting their attention to communities and the public, I felt it was time to explore that avenue. After this Master’s, I hope to be able to create an online museum directed at and for different communities of women to empower them through their immaterial heritage and their collective memory. I would like to give a voice to different communities of women through online exhibits. I hope to learn a lot from this internship and to be able to apply it to my future projects.
Megan Hsu: I will be assisting MoM with identfying, researching, and applying for local or national grants in order to assist with fundraising efforts that can further assist MoM in being able to achieve its goals and create deeper connections with the local community. A native of Tampa, FL, Megan (she/her) is in her final year at the University of Florida, where she is pursuing a double major in International Studies and Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics along with a minor in European Union studies. A lifelong student, she believes that education never ends and is always eager to learn more about the world around her. She has worked with non-profit organizations in the past and is excited to devote her skills to MoM and its mission of educating and celebrating women and mothers of all reproductive identities.
Clea Dobrish: I am Clea Dobrish, a junior at Eckerd College studying Sociology and Women and Gender Studies. Especially with the political climate, it is more important than ever to join together and educate ourselves and others about feminism and gender studies, this is my main goal through this internship. Working with the EC Feminist club on campus has ignited a passion in me to further my education on the matter as well as helped me find my calling in helping people desexualize and accept how amazing their bodies are through the events done on campus. I hope to bridge the gap between Eckerd and MoM by helping others get internships here and collaborating with the feminist club. I also hope to learn about and assist with grant writing for MoM.
REMOTE RESIDENCY AT MoM
Yes, it is possible to do a Remote Residency at MoM. It’s also possible to have a remote internship at MoM as well! Apply through our website on the appropriate page, work with your institution, and make progress on your project through interactions with the Museum of Motherhood and Director, Martha Joy Rose.
Christina Doonan PhD: is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Gender Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Her research interests include the politics of health, human rights, the right to health, and motherhood and parenting in the context of chronic illness.
My current project, “Mothering Through Cancer,” explores how breast cancer affects motherhood for mothers of young children, and how mothering young children affects the experience of cancer. Taking my own experience as a starting point, I am interested in how idealized versions of motherhood work in both directions, influencing what mothers expect of themselves as they experience cancer and what others expect of mothers—and how this translates into the types of supports that mothers receive (or not).I first presented a portion of this work at the M.O.M. Conference in 2022: “Creativity for a Cause.”I felt invigorated by the supportive feedback I received from the M.O.M. community.Staying in touch with the project has been difficult given the dual demands of work and reproductive labour.My residency with M.O.M. this week allows me to reconnect with and refocus on this project and give it the time that it deserves. Thank you to Joy and Tracy for arranging the details and for welcoming me so warmly. I’m grateful and delighted to be here as part of this vital community! (Christina is pictured about with her husband Lincoln and MoM Director, Martha Joy Rose).
For a limited time only, OPEN CALL : SUBMISSIONS for a special online publication at MoM for our Mother’s Day May Blog. But first, about the photo here at the top of the page. We inherited an ugly cement wall. What did we do? Make it beautiful! Thank you Batya for your gorgeous residency and ongoing mural work, now viewable in the annex gardens. Read more at the bottom of the blog!
Submit a story about your mother. 1,500-2,000 words or poem (any length).
Our team will review all entries and we will select one special story, one runner up, and one poem for publication online for our May Mother’s Month Blog, social media and Newsletter issue.
The prize is $50 first place only / Poem is a separate award $25
We know you are ALL winners and we are excited to hear your creativity and legacy productions.
Submit by April 30th midnight via email by midnight.Include Title and Bio with Submission in word document: INFO@MOMmuseum.org
THE MONTH OF MARCH RECAP
Community is where it’s at – even as technology rises, we must remember our humanity, our earth bodies, and our mother planet.HAPPY EARTH DAY IN APRIL!
March was busy with gatherings focused on food health, motherhood, sisterhood, meditation, poetry, and outdoor mural making. Thanks to Jeff Herman, Leslie Culbertson, and Yusuke Ouchie from Creative Grape, and gratitude to Localtopia, Winter in the Woods, AEHK Studio Tour, Tombolo Books, YesChefVillage, Gloria Muñoz, our Conference Attendees, Mothers’ Group and MoM Facilitators: Its been a GREAT season for MoM.
Over the course of the past year, we have joined in events with direct engagement opportunities equalling 40,000 + people.
We have partnered with groups from ages 1-80 yrs old that include people in recovery, local high school students, housing insecure individuals, and those seeking education on the subject of healthy food to feminist studies. Those smaller groups, have totaled in the hundreds.
What Next?
Where are the women’s stories and spaces? We are only 10 % of school text books and 13% of museum exhibits.
Our lives are an inspiration. They are a miracle. They are each and everyone great. How can we illuminate the vacuum, fill the voice, reverberate with intention?
Help us honor these stories. Help us keep going. Help us be Visible,Solvent, and Celebrated. We Thank you! We are you! We need you to thrive! Together we are strong, together we rise, together we love. Help us continue our work by becoming a legacy donor.
REPRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPES– The conference saw participants from England, Australia, South Africa, Canada, USA, Poland, South America, Israel, Spain, and Ireland. Videos and papers to come. Find out more by accessing the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS) and upcoming announcements about these scholarly works. The CFP for the Journal of Mother Studies is open through April 30th.SUBMIT.
Here are a few concepts to mull over (from my notes):
Can we mother a ghost? Rebecca Marcelina Gimeno
Not every pregnancy results in the birth of a child – Laura Bissell
Human care is anchored in communal activities – Sara Sudhoff
Mothering is invisible – Kate Golding
Batya Weinbaum, b. 1952, is a Jewish American visual artist and award-winning writer from Cleveland Heights, OH and Floyd, VA, and artist-in- residence at MOM Dec 3 2022-Mar 31, 2023. Her first mosaic art project was a feminist installation of fertility and warrior goddesses, Feminina Sube, Isla Mujeres, 2013-2020. A film about this magical shrine to the goddess can be seen on YouTube by typing in Dr. Batya Weinbaum. She got her doctorate at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, founded the journal Femspec, and has spoken frequently at Radical Feminist Perspectives of Women’s Declaration International. More of her art can be seen at goddessvibe.org.
Special Shout Out to Brittany DeNucci & All Our Fab Volunteers!
Special shout out to Brittany DeNucci who stepped in to run tech for us a MoM during the conference. She’s also been hard at work editing the conference videos. We are so grateful for all Brittany’s contributions. THANK YOU to all our incredible interns, volunteers & team members!
The Annual Academic MoM Conference takes place this weekend, March 24-26 on Zoom and in person in St. Petersburg, FL. This annual event has been ongoing since 2005 with participants around the globe spearheading research, art, and autoethnography on women, mothers, families (and men), since its inception.
Some of this pioneering work has been featured in the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS). All of this work has been highlighted within academic institutions. This year, however, the privately-funded conference is taking place in a modified-hybrid setting. As the ramifications of the pandemic take its toll, as women push back on hard contractions of basic human rights, and as mother’s struggle to survive and thrive, MoM is not without its struggles.
Specifically, the ongoing work of development of the museum initiative regularly encounters seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Like every non-profit, we struggle with funding for our ongoing needs and growth. We implement plans for progress and experience push-back from unseen sources, or suffer from public attitudes that wish to ignore the history of women, the stories of mothers, and the invisible labor of caregivers. Yet, still we persist.
We are not without successes, even in the midst of challenges. The Mother Tree fundraiser is exceedingly close to being finalized. Only $4,000 to go! Together we can reach that goal! Additionally, our infrastructure is growing with team Salesforce facilitating new levels of internal organization here at the non-profit MOM Art Annex. We have over a dozen volunteers from around the world working on a variety of museum initiatives and exhibitions (Pictured below). And, last, but not least, forty presenters sharing their research and expertise at this year’s Reproductive Landscapes MoM Conference this weekend representing work from Israel, the US, South Africa, England and more. We look forward with excitement to hearing their voices, seeing their work, and celebrating their achievements. MoM is about making women’s work visible!
If you are interested in joining us online or in person for any portion of the conference, we ask three things:
These pieces attempt to make visible a feminist narrative of infertility as a challenge to traditional modes of reproduction and patriarchal conventions of a “natural” maternal subject. During fertility treatment you are situated within biological and cultural ideas of gestation, but embody a seemingly empty, craving, sub-maternal form, in an ongoing process of becoming. Reminiscent of the visualising technologies to which we have become so accustomed throughout the reproductive period, these images do not show a uterine projection, but the outside of the abdomen. There is an impenetrable surface, marked with the umbilicus (belly button) as a symbol of the originary maternal connection, now striving to mother another. With a body full of hormones and a mind exhausted by constant thoughts of an unattainable state of pregnancy, the innocent platitudes you endure over this time remain monotonous and hollow in their own embodied emptiness.
Today is V-Day. It’s a time for lovers, a time for mothers, and a time for social change. Valentine’s Day, the holiday, is an age-old tradition. According to historians, Valentine’s Day originated in ancient Rome, stemming from a Pagan celebration called the feast of Lupercalia, a festival of fertility and purification. NPR states:
“The Roman romantics “were drunk and naked.” According to Noel Lenski, a religious studies professor at Yale University, “Young women would line up for the men to hit them.” They believed this would make them fertile. The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be coupled up for the duration of the festival — or longer, if the match was right.”
The festival was made more civilized through subsequent interpretations. Ultimately, the pagan influences were reduced, Christianity took over, and the story of the martyred St. Valentine preaching in Rome was added. The holiday took on new meaning; Less debauched, still fertility, or love-based, and romanticized by people like Shakespeare, it ultimately became the cultural and commercial event we recognized today.
For those romantics who might be focused on learning to love themselves, there are other lessons to be had. For example, coupledom is no longer top priority for some Gen Z and millennials. According to The Knot, post-pandemic trends are leaning towards prioritizing health and wellness over serial dating. In fact, according to statistics 75% of Gen Z are single as opposed to 44% of millennials who are married (source). Additionally, focusing on social movements like BLM and green-sustainability rank high on the list of priorities.
“Through the pandemic, a lot of people have prioritized wellness, particularly in terms of their physical fitness, and their mental fitness, and their consumption habits.”
I guess we have come a long way from the debauched Roman holiday of old. In fact, now we even have pushback with organizations like Eve Ensler’s V-Day, One Billion Rising, an organization begun with “a mass action to end violence against women in human history.” The movement addresses the “staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women will be beaten or raped during her lifetime.”
Today, MoM rises, along with One Billion Rising to honor 10 years of One Billion Rising and 25 years of V-Day. We join in the campaign today in 2023, which has been declared a year of INSPIRATION and ASPIRATION.
According to V-Day, this will be “A year of storytelling, building communities, strengthening solidarity, sharing dreams, planting trees, creating art, honoring women and the earth, and of dancing.”
It is the year MoM will continue “to ENVISION and CREATE new ways of being, seeing, living, loving and connecting. Of raising consciousness and deepening understanding. So that our freedom, our future, is rooted in truth, love, community, earth and body.” (Source: One Billion Rising).
To that end, join our collaboration with YesChefVillage, bringing free, healthy food to communities seeking access to dining resources and connection. This Friday, Feb. 17th, 6-7:30PM will be our second dinner with Chef Omaka and his team. You can write us INFO@MOMmuseum.org to attend, fill out the RSVP formon our website, or just show up!
Then, Saturday, Feb. 18th, come see us at Localtopia in St. Petersburg, FL, a celebration of all things local. Our booth will be in area #7, The Family Village, and we will be sharing more love, more connections, and more information and education about our mission locally. Today, LOVE EVERYBODY! Love, MoM!
February is the month of Black History, V-Day Love, and Susan B. Anthony Day. How do all these things intersect? Let’s try to connect the dots.
Black History month was codified into law in 1986. Championed by Carter G. Woodson, the ‘father of Black history’ with an agenda to promote Black studies, history, and culture, “Woodson’s goal from the very beginning was to make the celebration of Black history in the field of history a ‘serious area of study.” (Source). He spent his whole life working towards this goal.
As it turns out, the Carter G. Woodson African American Museum is 2.7 miles from the MOM Art Annex in the city of St. Petersburg. This is just one more reason St. Pete is an awesome place to develop our mission here in Pinellas County Florida. We sure do appreciate our neighbors. Next time you stop in to visit us, make sure to schedule a visit at the Woodson Museum too!
And now, with the month of love upon us, let’s give a big shout out for February 14th. Might we propose a renewed focus on brotherly and sisterly love this Valentines Day? Might we push back on violence in this wildly radicalized world. This secular event is celebrated worldwide as a day of affection and romance, yet humans have so much more to improve upon.
Here at MoM: We push back on war. We push back on aggression and lies. We push back on book banning, oppression, and hate speech. We acknowledge the lives lost to violence, the misguided ‘othering’ of individuals, and the patriarchal constructs that continue to dominate our world culture. This year on the 14th, we celebrate the V-Day Movement, One Billion Rising, an activist organization that emerged out of the Vagina Monologues by Even Ensler on Feb. 14, 1998 to stop violence of all kinds around the planet.
Then, rising up on February 15th is Susan B. Anthony‘s birthday. We honor her on this remembrance day for her commitment to suffrage during the first wave feminist movement in the United States. Her work with Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass and others, as both an abolitionist and then working on behalf of women for the right to vote, are seminal. Though these partnerships were complicated, Anthony a ‘woman’ and Douglas a ‘Black man’ are both significant figures in the early emancipation movements. Remarkably, Anthony’s birthday is a state holiday in Florida. I am proud to say that I still hold the Susan B. Anthony award by NOW-NYC, which proudly hangs in my office at the Annex. See more about the feminist waves below in our Flash Feminism slide show!
Flash Feminism One
Flash Feminism Two
Flash Feminism Three
Flash Feminism Four
Flash Feminism Five
What’s next? A lot, it turns out. This Friday, we will be hosting a dinner with YesChefVillage onsite here at MoM. Sunday, February 5th is a sold-out Feminist Pizza Party in our garden to benefit the public arts initiative in Kenwood. I look forward to continuing my work with the St. Pete High School Feminist Club with several projects including this simple booklet introducing the four waves of feminism to students of all ages (See slide show above). I also have the privilege of overseeing detailed projects with interns conducting advanced scholarship in the area of mother studies from around the world! Finally, MoM will be participating in Localtopia 2023 with our own table and information about launching our capital building campaign, while hopefully finalizing the acquisition of the Mother Tree statue. These are just a few of our offerings this month at MoM. Looking forward to the intersections that connect us. See some of our recent tour participants here 🙂 Please donate to our success if you can!
With Love Always, All the Time; Martha JOY Rose, Founder/Director MoM
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.
MoM is pleased to welcome three new remote interns from around the country, three local high school students, and one high school student from Russia to our projects in 2023.
Two of our local high school students are from the St. Pete Feminist Club. They are working on re-organizing the library and then onto a group project to bring back to the school in March for Women’s History Month. We are also pleased to be working with a third student on graphics to enhance MoM’s ability to create merchandise relevant to our messaging. Our fourth student, working remotely from Russia, will be facilitating data collection on some of the other student’s projects. This is all super fun and exciting.
Next up, Gia and Abbey. (FYI, our feature on Laura (and Maria) ran in November. She’ll be following up on the work of Maria to help create a simplified version of our online coursework this Spring).
Hello everyone! My name is Gia and I am an undergraduate student at Rollins College majoring in art history and minoring in history. I plan to graduate next year and look forward to working in an art/history museum. I chose to start my internship journey at the Museum of Motherhood because of my interest in women and gender studies in the art world. I look forward to all the new ideas I will learn during my time here!
During the spring semester, I aim to create a timeline from the 1960s to the present that connects some of the ever-changing ideas of feminists, mothers, and artists. There will be an inclusion of artworks that I deem to perfectly express the feeling and stigma of motherhood during each decade. I am hoping to map this digitally and set it up as a digital project that others can contribute to as well.
My name is Abbey Wrobel. I’m a current senior at the University of Utah studying history. I am especially interested in women’s history. I plan on attending grad school after I graduate to continue my history education. My dream is to one day be a history professor who specializes in teaching women’s history.
During my time with MoM, I will be working with an editorial team to co-create the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS), 2023 issue. I have already begun to collate the submissions to the spring MoM Conference and the journal. Now Joy is looking for a lead editor for the project who can spearhead the process. I am looking forward to learning from them over the summer as we work to make the journal happen and get it published.
Two Event Reminders
If you’ve been in touch at all with us in the new year, then you’ve probably talked with Connie, our new Membership Director. While we are still ironing out our system-wide forms, we are getting there! If you are having trouble RSVPing to something or need help with any of our online forms, then please contact Connie@MOMmuseum.org
-Join us for a Feminist Consciousness Raising Sunday, Jan 8th in person or on Zoom
RSVP to attend one of our Mothers’ Club meetups
-Register & Pay the Earlybird special for the MoM Conference 2023 (thru Jan 15th)
