1
300
12
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/6a6b554ec75669dc42acd795d0d16fa1.jpg
d2b7410fc81cd372b0fe2dd9b55f8a44
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="https://www.annalouiserichardson.com/about.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.annalouiserichardson.com/about.html</a>
Topic
parenthood
rural
regional,
danger
anxiety
documentation of rural motherhood
farming
animals
Artist Residency in Motherhood
Medium
drawing
charcoal
installation
Artist Statement
Anna Louise Richardson is an artist and freelance curator investigating rural Australian identity and associated mythologies. Richardson works primarily in charcoal and graphite on cement fibreboard, using a realistic approach, flattened perspective, cut-out shapes and manipulated scale to amplify the subject matter. Her artistic practice reveals ideas of intergenerational exchange, parenthood and signifiers of identity based on her experiences of life in rural Australia living and working on a multi-generation family farm.
The complexities of human relationships with the natural world and the intergenerational qualities of these relationships are driving themes throughout her practice. Richardson's work depicts animals as a recurring motif to examine shared values on the role of animals in culture, commerce and ecology and how these are shaped through different histories, storytelling and imagination.
Richardson shares a studio on the farm with her husband Abdul-Rahman Abdullah– a Malay/Australian Muslim artist whose sculptural practice draws on the narrative capacity of animals to explore the intersection of politics, cultural identity and the natural world. Their two daughters, Aziza and Althea are the seventh generation to grow up on the property.
Richardson holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Curtin University of Technology, Perth and has been a practicing artist since 2014. Primarily a visual artist, since having her first child she has also contracted as a freelance curator working with Australian art institutions, festivals and organisations.
In 2019 Richardson completed Aziza’s Zodiac (2018-19), a 12-panel artwork featuring one animal for every month of a year after the birth of her first daughter. The work, a yearlong project created for an exhibition designed for child audiences reflected Aziza's life, told through the animals around her. This was the start of a new direction for Richardson's practice and serves as a record of her daughter’s personal history on the farm and responds to her own evolving narrative of motherhood in a rural setting.
Her most recent work examines what domestic and familiar objects may tell us about our own histories, presents and futures. She has been drawing objects that reflect household hazards such as rat poison, knives and power cords, highlighting the proximity of danger present in everyday life, particularly those that underline parental worry. These works speak directly to our common sense of anxiety about danger, our collective fear of death, and our innate need to protect the ones we love.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anna Louise Richardson
Title
A name given to the resource
Anna Louise Richardson
animals
anxiety
artist residency in motherhood
Danger
Documentation of Rural Motherhood
Farming
parenthood
Regional
Rural
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/1dc9f8eb8059a54e02838be696c57652.jpg
0b6c8400c32ec4ff5a04a944094f119e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.jenniferlong.ca" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.jenniferlong.ca</a>
Topic
memory
pregnancy
domesticity
girlhood
childhood
motherhood
mothering body
image
feminism
vulnerability
transformation
parenting
touch
intergenerational family
play
daily life
domestic labour
invisible labour
caretaking
mundane
Artist Residency in Motherhood
gesture
maternal body
mother/daughter relationship
Medium
photography
lens-based
Artist Statement
My practice is propelled by an interest in the varied experiences of girls and women, and the limited ways in which they are represented within image making. Through a Feminist lens, I work with constructed narratives that are inspired by the quiet moments in girls and women’s lives where seemingly nothing (and everything) occurs. I am especially interested in the complex emotions that underlie these mundane points in time. Themes of vulnerability, transformation, and discovery are explored in my image making through the use of touch, gesture, and the gaze as I observe conscious and unconscious modes of communication. Over the past decade, my art practice has focused on the early stages of motherhood and pregnancy as I navigated this new terrain in my personal life. My current series, ‘Caesura’, developed out of my observations of the struggle my daughters grapple with as they find a balance between their dependence on me and their growing independence. This series re-constructs and intertwines various remembrances, making visual the experience of seeing myself reflected in my daughters’ gestures and actions. At the forefront of this project is the need to make space for my ever-changing outlook of being a mother and an artist.
Location
The location of the interview
Toronto
Canada
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jennifer Long
Title
A name given to the resource
Jennifer Long
artist residency in motherhood
caretaking
childhood
daily life
domestic labour
domesticity
feminism
gesture
girlhood
image
intergenerational family
invisible labour
lens-based
maternal body
memory
mother/daughter relationship
motherhood
mothering body
mundane
parenting
photography
play
pregnancy
touch
transformation
vulnerability
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/a16f5b2b980c42b728ed5fabdb89a6e5.jpg
651af13f4b95fc0f56440ee3804c16e4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.lucianarosado.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.lucianarosado.com</a>
Topic
memory
identity
failure
writing
list making
Artist Residency in Motherhood
artist/mother identity
Medium
painting
drawing
Artist Statement
In recent creative explorations I am examining my inner emotions not only in relation to a very specific moment of my personal life - becoming an artist-mother- but also establishing a link with the present moment of instability and uncertainty sensed in our contemporary society. What do we keep to ourselves and what do we share with others? I explore the concepts of memory, identity and place through visual expression. Most recently, I have been interested in exploring ideas of life expectations and failure. My work focuses in visually exploring hidden thoughts, feelings and memories and I get my inspiration from the natural element Water, music and the written word. I live and work in Cambridge since 2010. I hold a Degree in Painting-Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon and I have been exhibiting regularly since 2000.
Location
The location of the interview
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Luciana Rosado
artist residency in motherhood
Cambridge
drawing
identity
memory
mother artist
mother artist identity
painting
United Kingdom
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/b66339a64167fb1b2f3942d22e03919c.jpg
4ea3b7c9c57abfc3fac824b22aa60d50
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://carolinekelley.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://carolinekelley.com</a>
Topic
Artist Residency in Motherhood
autobiography
motherhood
home
building
making
nature
language
Medium
conceptual art
photography
drawing
installation
video
book art
research
writing
Artist Statement
Working across disciplines, I conduct research-based projects that take assorted forms, including installations, drawings, writing- and photography-based series. My academic work has been concerned with women's life-writing, literary theory and postcolonial literature. Since 2009, I've focused on projects that investigate the nature-culture dichotomy as well as stories of tourism, travel and exploration. I started an Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARiM) in October 2016, to document my experience of motherhood and explore the research process in this new (for me) context.
Location
The location of the interview
Paris
France
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Caroline Kelley
Title
A name given to the resource
Caroline Kelley
artist residency in motherhood
autobiography
book art
building
conceptual art
drawing
France
home
installation
language
making
motherhood
nature
Paris
photography
research
video
writing
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/15aad49e420ccd4485a575b44d3513e5.jpg
4875a6dfe078764cdd1ef67404c61393
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/01936cbd461da771a6351d92f90b0bfd.jpg
88f282060b38b177933c072306b5c20b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.sofiaroncero.com">www.sofiaroncero.com</a>
<a href="http://www.sofiaroncerostudio.tumblr.com">www.sofiaroncerostudio.tumblr.com</a>
Topic
intervention on maternity objects
Artist Residency in Motherhood
Medium
video
photography
photocopies
performance
Artist Statement
Multidisciplinary artist, focused on the search for the limits of identity.
Location
The location of the interview
Madrid
Spain
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sofía Roncero
Title
A name given to the resource
Sofia Roncero
artist residency in motherhood
maternity objects
objects
photocopies
photography
video
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/fb1cb8733f591b97106655b6aa2bf781.jpg
75c046eee600ee0eab87218dc1f726a6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://estherswhite.net" target="_blank">http://estherswhite.net</a>
Topic
mothering
time
mother/artist identity
Artist Residency in Motherhood
Medium
conceptual art
printmaking
textiles
Location
The location of the interview
Northampton
Massachusetts
Artist Statement
<strong>Unbound Artist Statement:</strong> <br />Since becoming a parent, the boundaries of my studio practice and my personal life have become permeable. To continue making work, I have to be flexible. I have to practice dropping one thing in order to quickly transition to something utterly different. Most of all, I must surrender to circumstance. Initially, my adoption of textiles was a pragmatic choice: I needed to move my practice home. I quickly found that the historical and material concerns of textile art support the central questions of my work. I use printmaking and craft methods to explore themes of memory, time, and my dual identity as an Artist-Mother/Mother-Artist. Starting with blank yardage, I print and dye fabric that I cut and sew into vivid and densely patterned quilts, wall hangings, and installations. I experiment with the limits of representation, making work that incorporates found objects, drawing, and abstraction. I am interested in pushing the expressive capacity of pattern by exploring how repetition and irregularity create space for emotional interpretations of color, texture, and form. My inspiration comes from the rhythms of childcare, labor, and family life. I borrow imagery from the familiar and everyday, teasing out the powerful associations and feelings they hold. By printing, flattening, cutting, reshaping, and recombining I remake my inner world with dye, ink, and thread. <br /><br /><strong>Exercises for the Childbearing Years Statement:<br /></strong><br />“Exercises for the Childbearing Years,” is a hybrid of printmaking and textile art that I have used to explore chronic pain as a feminine problem, my dual identity as an artist/mother, and the divide between craft and art. In my studio practice, the materials, technique, and content are intertwined, providing tension and direction to build my work around.<br /><br /><p>I dye and print textiles for improvisational quilts and wall hangings. I layer experimental print and dye techniques one on top of another to create richly textured, complex surfaces. I sometimes combine printed fabric with family textiles and clothing to make collaged art quilts that reference the body, domesticity, and memory. I often start with an abstract idea or emotional state. I print and dye then cut, piece, and re-cut my materials until I find a combination that elicits the emotional state or idea I am interested in exploring. I do not have a sense of the finished design before I begin, but instead know what techniques I want to use or the constraints I will apply. I am most interested in techniques that borrow from multiple disciplines, dancing on the edge of printmaking/surface design, silkscreen/monotype, quilting/embroidery, artistic voice/chance, etc.</p>
<p>The title for this project comes from an old book I bought while I was pregnant. The book is filled with illustrations of women doing stretches and exercises, with ergonomic suggestions for housework and childcare. I found it a little bit helpful, mostly irrelevant. It didn’t do much to alleviate the chronic pelvic pain that started in my second trimester or the “new mother’s tendonitis” I developed when my son was five months old and almost 20lbs. The biggest impact the book has had was to help articulate the new chapter I find myself in, the “Childbearing Years.” As a culture, we focus on pregnancy as a time of change, but it is only the beginning.</p>
<p>Since becoming a parent, the boundaries of my studio practice and life have become evermore fluid. To continue making work, I have to be flexible. I have to practice dropping one thing in order to quickly transition to something utterly different, and most of all I must surrender to circumstance.</p>
<strong><br /></strong>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Esthe rS White
Title
A name given to the resource
Esther S White
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/46f3b28fb6005892eca17a67d071ad43.png
e50a463d379dd001ecd6a8bc33b10a36
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.projectbeta.be/?portfolio=it-wasnt-a-dream" target="_blank">http://www.projectbeta.be/?portfolio=it-wasnt-a-dream</a>
Topic
daily life
children
living with children
documenting
Artist Residency in Motherhood
Medium
photography
Artist Statement
How are memories built in one’s mind? Which images of my daily life will stick? The series ‘It wasn’t a dream’ is a cinematic family study made in my own family, combined with shots of families in the township of Kliptown, South Africa. I didn’t only explore how things are now, but also how they could have been, a journey of longing and nostalgia. In this way I find beauty in everyday life. I’m touched by the way people are trying to make the best of their situation, without disregarding their dreams. The families in South Africa were strangers to me, though I managed to build up ties with them, even if they didn’t always speak a common language. What we always did have in common was motherhood, the basis on which the confidence was built. By focussing on intimate scenes of my own family life I invite you in. Nothing is set up, a lot of details the environment offers are used, but ‘It wasn’t a dream’ is not a documentary. Likewise, the pictures from Kliptown are fragments of daily life there and only partly reveal its reality. This way I create a trailer to reflect a certain atmosphere, the viewer is left the liberty to imagine the fascinating story behind it.
Location
The location of the interview
Belgium
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Inge Driesen
Title
A name given to the resource
Inge Driesen
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/d21ef38b40990e18f7c8c2e2b002e10f.jpg
14045843ed81f156bc5b7a58194e6856
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.sallylewry.com" target="_blank">http://www.sallylewry.com</a>
Topic
artistic practice
mother/artist identity
identity
shocks of motherhood
shifting identity
Artist Residency in Motherhood
Medium
performance art
visual art
mixed media
Artist Statement
Based in Melbourne Australia, I am an independent artist and writer working within various mediums including performance and visual arts. My work engages with a deep sense of socio-political content examining the human condition. I value long, intuitive processes in which I interrogate shifting identities and personal politic; the starting point of a work often arising from lived experience. My current enquiry investigates themes of motherhood and grief. Valuing highly-skilled craft, my practice engages in somatic research, movement, imagery, language, light, sound and a range of mixed media within solo and collaborative contexts, collaborating with a range of artists from various disciplines. My current enquiry explores forms and processes within a visual arts context while my lineage in performance making continues to inform the work I make. I seek to create moving and challenging relationships in which an audience can be active and present. I invest in on-going training and research, in various forms and value shared dialogue within a community of artists in order to facilitate a rigorous and pertinent practice. Engaged in exploring the possibilities of various forms I am invested in creating a body of work which speaks to the time in which it is created.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Lewry
Title
A name given to the resource
Sally Lewry
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/839818a54f7a89a6f443ec5d1d604f11.jpg
683d3c9ac29394475b4eebf91843632c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.gudrunfilipska.com/" target="_blank">http://www.gudrunfilipska.com/</a>
<a href="https://theshelfgallery.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">https://theshelfgallery.wordpress.com/</a>
Medium
film
photography
printmaking
Artist Statement
<strong>The Shelf Gallery:</strong><br /><p>The Shelf Gallery is a small gallery space on a shelf in our house in Fordham, Cambridgeshire. The gallery is situated above our record collection and below our book shelves and is run by me, <a href="http://www.gudrunfilipska.com/">Gudrun Filipska</a> and my daughter Sigi. We specialise in showing diminutive and site specific works and curate a running programme of tiny exhibitions. The shelf gallery was started as part of my <a href="https://www.facebook.com/residencyinmotherhood/">Artists residency in motherhood</a> in 2016.</p>
<p>The concept of the Shelf Gallery makes a statement about the difficulty in obtaining and affording a ‘traditional gallery space’ as well as raising issues around the tensions between domestic and ‘professional’ spaces and the implicit assumption within the industry that these spheres remain separate.</p>
<p>It addresses the difficulties in conducting an artistic or curatorial practice within a domestic space and the challenge artists/gallery owners who are parents also face.</p>
<p>We believe we are the smallest open by appointment gallery in the world.</p>
<p>The Shelf Gallery will open in time for the first world wide <a href="http://www.wasbiennale.com/about/" target="_blank">Apartments and Studios Biennial</a>. Nov 2016 with an exhibition of photographic work by the <a href="https://gudrun-filipska.squarespace.com/config/pages/57aef3bd1b631b641dfdbe7e" target="_blank">fmr group.</a></p>
<br /><br /><strong>Artist Statement:</strong><br />My practice is interdisciplinary in nature, I work across mediums including drawing, print and video and also consider writing to be part of my practice. My work has at its root a concern with transience, particularly walking, and I make visual and auditory works primarily responding to industrial landscape and the territories which surround my home in East Anglia.
Location
The location of the interview
Fordham, Cambridgeshire
Topic
Artist Residency in Motherhood
home exhibition space
mother daughter collaboration
Apartments and Studios Bieniall
domestic space
curatorial practice
walking
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Gudrun Filipska
Title
A name given to the resource
Gudrun Filipska
artist residency in motherhood
collaboration
curatorial practice
domestic exhibition space
home exhibition space
mother/daughter collaboration
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/6085fdda13af7dc04fbe513a0bbf33f9.jpg
4c8de06dc3806a36752e38d90a85c2f8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.pillarsofhome.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.pillarsofhome.com</a>
Medium
photography
installation
Artist Statement
‘Pillars of home’ are 30 minutes long, balancing sculptures by Csilla Klenyánszki The floor-to-ceiling constructions relay on their own inner stability while being framed only by the floor and the ceiling. The in situ installations are being made during my son’s naps, when our home becomes a studio for no more than a half an hour. The colorful hand-built pillars vary in size and complexity, depending on their territory. As the objects are being piled up, they become a coherent entity, but their delicate arrangement and balancing structure makes them vulnerable as they can be destroyed at any moment. Not only the existence of the images is in danger if the installation collapses, but the noise of the fallen objects might awaken the sleeping baby, which ends the studio session.
Topic
artist residency in motherhood
naptime
infants and sleep
motherhood
Publications
A catalog or monograph published by the artist
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/357">Pillars of Home</a>
Location
The location of the interview
Amsterdam
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Csilla Klenyanszki
artist residence in motherhood
infants and sleep
installation
motherhood
naptime
photography
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/e575810d53cff883fcfc893f9f4a28fa.jpg
727957a8a37e50bb7e9552c2990475b1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://meganwynne.net/work/motherhood/photography" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://meganwynne.net/work/motherhood/photography</a>
Medium
photography
Topics
The topics addressed within the Artist's work.
bed sharing
breastfeeding
motherhood
parenthood
domestic space
personal boundaries
Location
The location of the interview
Norfolk
Virginia
Artist Statement
My recent work focuses on the subject of myself and my daughters to speak about the intensity, intimacy, and interdependence of motherhood. Playing with the persona of the mother and the mother-as-artist, the work brings up uncomfortable questions about identity, autonomy, and childrearing.
The images are at once familiar and unfamiliar, inviting and repelling. The work often straddles the line between referencing the family snapshot and cold clinical documentation. There is also ambiguity in how the individuals in the scene are emotionally and physically relating to each other. This uncertainty helps to create a sense of surreality in the work, and dark humor and melodrama within the narrative further push this aspect of the imagery. I use these devices to reflect on the deeply mysterious, contradictory, and often unknowable psychological undercurrent beneath everyday experiences of interconnection.
The mother-child relationship is the most primary and foundational relationship in one's life. In addition, there is a deep transgenerational legacy of the mother-child dynamic, in which beliefs, behaviors, and past traumas haunt one generation to the next. In my work I explore my maternal inheritance, as I address the intensity and profound complexity of the bond I have with my children. These depictions of the maternal experience challenge dominant reductive and over-sentimentalized representations of motherhood, as well as idealized and over-simplified perspectives on childhood.
Topic
motherhood
bedsharing
domestic space
breastfeeding
personal boundaries
Artist Residency in Motherhood
birth
childbirth
Exhibitions
Exhibitions in the Index that an artist has participated in. The two entries will be linked.
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/404" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The M Word, One Paved Court Gallery, 1 – 12 May 2019</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Megan Wynne
bedsharing
birth
breastfeeding
childbirth
domestic space
lactation
motherhood
photograph
photography and motherhood
pregnancy
United States
Virginia
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/49ed2d09c8f7d03c18a5a48f4845163d.jpg
455a2d6a5c744c18099bc4e5f0bcac11
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Artist Parent Index
Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="http://www.sarahirvinart.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.sarahirvinart.com</a>
Biographical Text
When I started my graduate program in 2013, I was confident that becoming a mother was not compatible with my studio practice. In the middle of my first semester, I began to question this assumption. As an experiment, I assumed the opposite was true, that there was work that I could only make if I was a mother. I was suddenly able to envision not only the work, but also myself in the role of “mother” for the first time. Three months later I was pregnant and I got to work. Creating in this way allows me to form myself in a role of “mother” and in turn motherhood continually redefines my practice. The work opens up dialogues about circumstances that are publicly debated, but only privately experienced.
I measured my stomach with a piece of yarn at navel height the day I found out I was pregnant. I tied the yarn off in a loop. I repeated this every day until the day I went into labor. Every week of the second trimester, I lifted 26 pounds, one pound over the recommended amount a pregnant woman should lift, using a block and tackle pulley system and created a transfer drawing with the impact when it was dropped from nine feet.
I established mechanisms to capture the physical actions of parenting as a mark on a page, beginning while I was in labor. For instance, the area rug in the nursery created transfer drawings as we walked across the room, the glider rocker created drawings as we rocked, and the stroller created drawings as we strolled. These works were enabled by the activities of our daily lives and captured the kinetic energy and labor involved in the care and nurturing of an infant.
During the second and third months of my daughter’s life, I created a series of watercolors exclusively while she slept, with each set considered complete when she awoke, allowing my circumstances to dictate aspects of my creative output. While breastfeeding, I made drawings on paper I created from my bed sheets with looping marks corresponding to individual suck and swallow motions of nursing providing a real-time read out of this experience. I commissioned a reproduction of the plastic measuring scoop that comes in a container of Similac infant formula to be cast from silver baby spoons.
Other iterations of this series include my daughter’s nursery as camera obscura; cyanotypes created with her blankets, toys and clothing; early stages of her own mark-making captured through fingerprint dust; silverpoint drawings tracing her early movements made with jewelry from my grandmother; and paintings made with a baby bottle and formula. As a whole, this project-based work is a personal narrative taking form as poetic visual data.
The works are exhibited as sets and series. An entire year’s action of rocking a baby is a set of 59 drawings made with our rocking chair. One year of walking across a nursery rug is a row of 12 large transfer drawings. Fifty feet of watercolors represent a tiny sampling of the available time during early parenthood when the baby slept. The work visualizes how care taking has shaped me as an individual and how it has transformed my mark making.
I view everything related to the experience of parenthood as a valid subject matter and/or mark making tool and this has opened up new methods of creating. The pieces are derived from the everyday. The interface of specific materials and processes with the everyday provides an entry point into broader topics of gender, production, reproduction, care, biological processes and cultural systems.
Medium
painting
drawing
papermaking
video art
photography
installation
Topics
The topics addressed within the Artist's work.
motherhood
parenthood
breastfeeding
infants and sleep
pregnancy
Location
The location of the interview
Richmond
Virginia
Topic
breastfeeding
motherhood
infants and sleep
pregnancy
baby formula
caretaking
gender and caretaking
domestic labor
maternal ambivalence
Artist Residency in Motherhood
gender equality
home
domestic space
care work
Exhibitions
Exhibitions in the Index that an artist has participated in. The two entries will be linked.
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/274" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Labors</a>
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/392">The End & The Beginning</a>
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/452">Extended Self: Transformations and Connections</a>
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/495">Painting at Night, Fort Houston Gallery, Nashville, TN</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Sarah Irvin
ambivalence
body
breastfeeding
care work
domestic labor
domestic space
drawing
gender
gender equality
home
infant care
labor
maternal abivalence
maternal body
maternal time
motherhood
mothering
painting
paper
papermaking
repetition
repetitive tasks
ritual
tracking
video