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https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/92a49a04b2b270a25ff35ca15ec82d71.jpg
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Person
An individual.
Website
The Artist's website
<a href="https://www.tracymarietaylor.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.tracymarietaylor.com</a>
Location
The location of the interview
Chicago
USA
Artist Statement
Cried Milk (2018 - present)
Cried Milk uses data collected from a smartphone app to visualize what it looks like to exclusively breast pump for twelve months. Each visualization represents one month of data. The blue rings represent one hour, the change in value tracks the hours of sunlight and darkness, while the change in saturation indicates broad weather patterns (sunny versus cloudy). The straight lines each represent one day and the yellow circular bursts represent each 30-minute pumping session. The size of each circle correlates to the quantity of milk collected. This project connect to broader cultural conversations about motherhood. As infertility rates continue to skyrocket, many women experience motherhood through a similar, clinical lens. My hope is that this project gives voice to the millions of women who have struggled to become mothers and honor the under-valued labor of motherhood.
The Shape of Your Sounds (2017 - present)
Using audio surveillance technologies provided by a commercial baby monitor, I capture my baby’s cries and translate that data into visual shapes. The sound waves loop back on themselves in a 360-degree rotation. The result is vaguely reminiscent of the shape of a flower; each burst of sound looks like a petal. The initial purpose for this project was to try to find visual patterns that could be more easily interpreted. However, I quickly realized this was a fool’s game; the visual patterns are as indiscernible as his sounds. Therefore, what remains is a visual record of a moment in time; a beautiful reminder of those sleepless nights when the world was comprised of just my son and myself.
Sleep Regression (2016 – 2017)
“Sleep Regression” is a series of intimate works that were painted in the space of nap times and record the moments I watched my son while working in my home studio. The paintings’ small size and blue palette reproduce the video format and color, mimicking the tension between the close, private space of sleep and the distance created by the act of surveillance. The effects are eerie and disturbing images of rest. Lingering in the unconscious state of sleep the baby’s body looks lifeless. Are these representations of a sleeping child or a fetus? These works are thus unusual documents of baby’s first year of life–odd surrogates for the family photo album.
The gray-scale paintings, on the other hand, reinforce the reference to the sonogram, creating layers of distance. The painting series thus portrays an interesting paradox: the increasing stylistic abstraction chronicles my catharsis after years of fertility struggles as I move further away from my past sorrows, yet the works also reflect a turn inward and becomes more specific to my body (womb) and more private. The delineated forms in black, white, and grey look like the thermal imaging of a birth–drapery resembles the uterine wall, a dark ground morphs into a vaginal opening.
Topic
abstraction
aesthetics
art
artist mother
baby
baby food
bodily transformation
breast milk
breast pump
breastfeeding
breastfeeding advocacy
breastmilk
care
care taking
care work
caregiving
caretaking
communication
conceptual art
contemporary art
creative practice
creative practice and family life
cyborg
daily life
daily routine
daily tasks
data
data tracking
data visualization
documentation
domestic life
domesticity
early motherhood
everyday activities
exhaustion
family and career
feeding
female body
female experience
feminism
feminist
feminist art
food
food systems
gender equality
gender roles
good mother
grief
growth
guilt
healthcare
human body
infant care
invisible labor
isolation
lactation
let down reflex
loss
maternal experience
maternal healthcare
maternal time
medical care
milk
milk jug
money
mother and child
mother artist
mother guilt
mother work
mother/child relationship
motherhood
motherhood and economic context
motherhood as art practice
mothering
motherwork
mundane details
nature vs. technology
nursing
nursing mothers
parental leave
personal
personal boundaries
personal experience
personal space
pumping
record keeping
remembering
repetition
repetitive tasks
representations of motherhood
research and art
sleep deprivation
social norms
son
technology
time
unpaid labor
visualizations
women's health
women's identity
audio waves
archive
care labor
crying
data visualization
documentation
emotional space
infants and sleep
language
language development
sleep training
Exhibitions
Exhibitions in the Index that an artist has participated in. The two entries will be linked.
2018- “Fits and Starts,” Roman Susan Gallery, Chicago, IL
2018- “The Shape of Your Sounds” (solo), Sonnenschein Gallery, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/471">2019 - "While I Was Away" (solo), Roman Susan Gallery, 1224 W. Loyola Ave. Chicago, IL</a>
<a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/495">Painting at Night, Fort Houston Gallery, Nashville, TN</a>
Medium
acylic
flashe
sculpture
digital
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
Tracy Marie Taylor
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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.margarettimbrell.com" target="_blank">www.margarettimbrell.com</a>
Topic
parenthood
data tracking
calendar
everyday life
mundane details
early parenthood
sleep deprivation
needlework
embroidery
data
data visualization
crying
Medium
fiber
Artist Statement
The Redwork Series documents sometimes mundane details of my life as a parent. Combined with crying children, lack of sleep, relationship changes, and other external stressors, early parenthood becomes a sort of flawed madness which I work capture in this series. Each piece incorporates traditional stitching techniques, invented needlework techniques, and data drawn from my daily life as a parent. The materials and embroidery styles directly represent details of my experience in parenthood. This series is made in a style called redwork. Redwork embroidery is quite literally red work; all the floss is red. It is a traditional European style of embroidery generally used for very domestic needlework (hand towels, aprons, tablecloths). It is stitched with red floss on white or natural colored fabric. Historically embroidery was a hobby of the upper classes and royalty. The cost of the silk floss and materials was very high until a color fast red dye developed. This allowed the middle classes to take up embroidery as a hobby. I stitch in redwork because it is recognized as a domestic and middle class style of needlework which reflects my life as a parent. In addition to working the series in redwork, I stitch each piece both front-wards and backwards. Generally the skill of a stitcher is judged by examining the back of their work. This means that both the front and backside of embroidery pieces must be well stitched to be acknowledged as a well made work. This feels very similar to parenthood. Thru social media and mommy bloggers, Martha Stewart culture and playground politics, our culture builds an impossible standard for parenthood much like making work that is as well executed on the back as it is on the front. By stitching the work in both manners, I aim to reveal my flaws as a stitcher and parent. This work is an effort to reveal my true self. For Looks Like You’ve Got Your Hands Full I’ve tracked each time someone has commented “looks like you’ve got your hands full” to me over the course of 2017. It won’t be completed until the year ends. I then stitched each date onto the respective months of my vintage stamped for embroidery tablecloth. I noticed that people repeat this specific phrase to me while I’m walking with my kids, or carrying them at the supermarket. Even at restaurants and the car wash. It’s interesting that the phrase is so consistently the same and seems to come from the same place within each person. It seems like a desire to engage and acknowledge my parenthood and the challenges of parenting young children, yet the conversation rarely progresses beyond this comment. It also seems that it occurs during a very specific period of time in parenthood. I doubt I will hear this comment as frequently when my children are teenagers. In a way this phrase is similar to a popular song that you hear all the time for a few months and then years later it reminds you of that specific Summer. As for 5 Days My One Year Olds Cried documents five specific days where I was learning and growing as a parent. Over the period of five days I tracked each time my then one year old twins cried. The piece is flawed and incomplete. One skein of red floss bled and stained the table cloth evoking a sense of interruption and imperfection. 5 Days works to capture that overwhelming emotion of being at a loss as to what to do while navigating unfamiliar terrain. It is a sort of snapshot of sitting at the table, with the nth cup of coffee at hand, hearing a child cry, struggling with uncertainty and the feeling of failing. The Redwork series is a very intimate glimpse of my experience as a parent, which is both highly universal and very specific to me and my life in the past two years. It aims to reflect the manner in which I navigate the world differently in my newish role as Mommy, and how the lens of interpersonal engagement shifted in the environment around me in response to this.
Location
The location of the interview
San Francisco
California
USA
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
Margaret Timbrell
Title
A name given to the resource
Margaret Timbrell
California
crying
data
data tracking
data visualization
early parenthood
embroidery
everyday activities
everyday life
fiber
mundane details
needlework
San Francisco
sleep deprivation