Elizabeth McFalls (Libby) is a Professor of Art and the Department of Art’s Art Foundation Coordinator at Columbus State University. She received her MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art (MI) and earned her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design (OH). Libby’s love of storytelling began in childhood. Having been raised in East Tennessee, she attended the National Storytelling Festival on numerous occasions. She recalls summers spent developing a love and appreciation for oral storytelling; she and her sisters were fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time with extended family that spread five living generations. While her work does not make direct reference to her family history, she creates nonlinear visual narratives that examine issues of loss and family. Her work explores moments that blur the line between fact and fiction, life and death, humor and sorrow, moments that demonstrate the contradiction and complexity of life. At the moment she is busy, in the studio, completing a one-year Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARIM).
Her recent body of work began when she embarked on a one-year Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARIM). During the ARIM she honestly responded to her life, time limitations, successes, and failures in an intuitive nature. The hybrid prints and collages reflect her love of storytelling through the creation of nonlinear visual narratives that examine issues of loss and family. Her work explores moments that blur the line between fact and fiction, life and death, humor and sorrow, moments that demonstrate the contradiction and complexity of life.
Super mom or childless? It almost looks as if there were no such thing any longer as motherhood pure and simple, as if all that is left is the choice between perfectionism and resignation. Nevertheless, motherhood has many aspects: joy, an intense experience of life, love relationship, learning, exultation, on one hand, and, on the other, frustration, being weighed down by expectations and the fear of being inadequate to the task. Until the 19th century motherhood was never called into question even if in actual reality the rewards often fell woefully short of projected ideals. It was only the advent of career openings for women that created alternatives to motherhood as a fulfilled life. Pregnancy, birth, abortion, life with children, the decision against children, the struggle of children with their mothers – all these themes have their place in art. Nor did we have to wait for 1960s feminist art to produce realistic portrayals of the mother’s role but fi nd renderings of social reality and individual conflicts already as early as the beginning of the 20th century. The exhibition showcases not only shifts in the stereotypes of motherhood from 1900 to today but also the changes in the perspective from which children see their mothers. It calls into question the optimisation logic of today’s life designs and nurtures the hope of change: an ever greater number of women with children opt out of the complex, often stressful regime of everyday life, refusing to accept their life world between career, children and consumption as preordained or God-given.