Tracey Kershaw's "tell me about your mother…"
This project aims to both celebrate and expose this most powerful, yet often problematic, relationship between mothers and their children, and is nurtured by an on-going dialogue between artist and contributors.
Mother Artist forum with Lilly Blue of BIG Kids Magazine, listen to the conversation at Museum of Contemporary Art in NSW Australia.
- We had a great conversation with Lilly Blue of BIG Kids Magazine this morning and learned about their exciting event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in NSW Australia. Lilly and Jo will be collaborating with us on "Side by Side" a week long workshop hosted at the Dallas Museum of Art this summer. Exciting things to come!
We have had the opportunity to speak with Mary Trunk, the director of a great documentary called Lost in Living. As usual, I wish that I had recorded the conversation - she is very candid, open and engaging on the topic on mothers/art/career/life.
Cultural ReProducers are an evolving group of active cultural workers who are also parents. This site is for anyone interested in making the art world a more inclusive and interesting place by supporting arts professionals raising kids.
Shira Richter, from Israel, has co-authored an essay with Hadara Scheflan Katzay,titled "If Mothers Counted: Status Symbols for the Invisible Art of Mothering"
- It will be a part of the book Counting on Marilyn Waring which continues to examine the work of working on the feminine economy. We are also collaborating with Shira for our exhibition in September at the Dallas Museum of Art at C3.
Artist Parents Pacific Northwest - Facebook Page: A place to share stuff related to artisting and parenting.
Please invite others to join!
Kt Shores Art and children are both messy, time consuming, expensive, require support networks and sacrifices, and you can't really control or be sure of how either of them are going to turn out. They both express and allay our fears around life and death and identification with the inconsistent while consistently illuminating our strengths and weaknesses with precious little regard for proper timing or setting, readiness or trepidation.
One of our contributing artists, Rebekah Tyler, just published her memoir, Full Tilt. Here is a link to her site where you can read an excerpt and purchase a copy! If the book is anything like her personality, she will have us laughing hysterically within a few minutes!
No Need for Words In the absence of language, a poet realizes the fullness of maternal love. - Shin Yu Pai
The Parent Trap: What are the economics involved when artists have children?
- To be or not to be a parent? It’s a question many people ask themselves at some point in their lives. Whatever the answer, artists seem to treat the decision as a private matter, best left out of their art works.
We ran across this project, The Worry Box Project, while researching Shira Richter's work. Here is a link to the interactive website - here - we just started browsing and was intrigued to start learning more about the curator and the work. Enjoy!
Yet another very open article on the relationship of motherhood to art making. Check out this interview with Judith Braun.
"I would not be the same, maybe never would have focused on my work so completely, if I had no children. It is also the relationship that gives meaning to my life when other things are discouraging — especially as an artist, it is never that reliable. But I don’t ever want to make my daughter the center of my entire life, that’s not fair to anyone. So I am grateful to have her, to be a mom — but I am equally grateful that I have my art to be devoted to. AND she is too."
This is a great interview with Michelle Grabner. She is an artist, curator, and non-profit gallery owner. She will be judging the upcoming Whitney Biennial and her own work is gorgeous. I appreciate her referencing her daughter in several of her pieces. Very inspiring!
Painter Elizabeth Murray discusses her work and her family on ART21 series on Humor.
"Having my kids has made me part of the world...it's really made me deal with life in a way that I absolutely wouldn't have, it's made me have a life and take my mind off my self."
There is a great exchange between her and her grown daughters as they look at her newest work.
Mother Load artist Sarah Maxwell English posted a great blog about her participation in the project - we just needed to give a link here.
Through her artwork, photographer Bea Nettles has created a vibrant career. She has written 2 books that focus on the relationship of art to motherhood, Life’s Lessons: A Mother's Journal and Complexities.
The movie Who Does She Think She Is, explores intersections between creativity, work, and motherhood.
Australian artists Jo Pollitt (dance) and Lilly Blue (visual arts) have launched an incredible collaboration called BIG Kids Magazine. It is a beautiful, visual exploration connecting kids to artists. We are excited that they are contributing to The Mother Load!
Bree Hafen is a dancer and choreographer who openly shares her highs and lows on her website and blog. She talks about the dual roles and how they build on on another.
We had a great opportunity to talk about The Mother Load with Brett Adlington, Director at Lismore Gallery in Australia. He shared a link to Rachel Power, who interviewed women in the arts for her book, Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood.
This is a great TED Talk by Janet Echelman, in it she references working on a large commission while, in the process, having 2 children.
Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, By Anne-Marie SlaughterThis article published in The Atlantic, brought the conversation of career and motherhood to an open forum, igniting a debate from both sides.
"[I]ndividual women and men … tell me privately that they appreciated the essay I wrote for the Atlantic," Slaughter writes, but "[m]y decision to talk in such specific gender terms is still deeply uncomfortable for many. Foreign policy is a very male world. The women who have made it are a small and close club, all committed to advancing the careers of younger women and worried that even engaging in this conversation could make it harder to break those glass ceilings."
Featured on The Huffington Post by blogger Alison Tate.
"What I have realized and acknowledged since writing the post "The Mom Stays in the Picture" and reach so many of you is that our family pictures do tell our stories. They are the stories we plan to pass to our children, to help recount to them and help them remember from where and whom they came. But even more than that, keeping ourselves out of these pictures -- out of these stories -- can symbolize something greater about how we see and treat ourselves as both mothers and human beings, and our children are watching. I am hoping that we might accept ourselves, perceived warts and all, as valuable, integral, essential parts of our own stories. I'm hoping we can value ourselves in our everyday forms as mothers, women, caretakers, warriors and, most importantly, individuals."