1
300
4
-
https://artistparentindex.com/files/original/92a49a04b2b270a25ff35ca15ec82d71.jpg
d50c9721f689f278f82d6fde43d38909
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
-
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/3705b3d39946d31facd53d0ef0e87c83.png
596b0391ab442d4df7afcf07d37fdf6d
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://selinatrepp.info/section/384377-nap-animation.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://selinatrepp.info/section/384377-nap-animation.html</a>
Medium
mixed media
animation
installation
performance
Location
The location of the interview
Chicago
Illinois
Artist Statement
<span>Rather than documenting or representing the real world, I reflect on it by moving sideways from it, constructing a parallel reality, a reality that mixes the familiar with the uncanny, real and unreal at once. The making of my work is based on experimental situations. My process is chance based. I write instructions, which lead to scenarios, open-ended structures, for performances that result in artworks. While past works have featured others performing for me, my new work puts me into the frame. Pointing the lens on myself is decidedly uncomfortable for me; I feel safer behind the camera. The decision to cast myself both as subject and object comes out of the realization that I need to work with the discomfort and tension that this action creates in me. If I am embarrassed by my work, then it is worth pursuing.</span>
Topic
napping
motherhood
infants and sleep
sleep
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/452">http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/452</a>Extended Self: Transformations and Connections
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
Selina Trepp
animation
Chicago
conceptual art
Illinois
infants and sleep
installation
mixed media
motherhood
napping
performance
sleep
-
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