The Center for Parenting Artists is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to encouraging and sharing resources for artists with children. Our members represent all of the arts- painters, opera singers, actors, activists, theorists, and more. It is of vital importance to the arts community, and substantive thinking within our fields, that artists have longevity in their creative practice and represent varied life experiences.
To that end, the Center for Parenting Artists promotes the improved visibility of artists with children, as well as child and partner-friendly:
– grants and opportunities
– artist residencies
– legislation on children and families
– childcare policy
– education policy and access
– cooperative strategies
– arts organizations
– arts policy
– business practice and ethical compensation practices
– residential and studio access stability
Ad Nauseam Lyceum is pleased to present Domestic Skin, an exhibition of photographs by Morgan Levy and Anna Ogier-Bloomer, two New York based artists whose portrayal of family is central to their work. Ad Nauseam Lyceum’s first exhibition devoted solely to photography, Domestic Skin addresses the tension between destiny and growth, presented through the lens of two distinct female photographers. Morgan Levy’s portrayal of pre-adolescent girls in paper costumes and placed against a backdrop of her landscape photographs serve as a metaphor for the psychological complexities her subjects face. Anna Ogier-Bloomer’s documentation of her middle class family in Ohio captured over a five-year period illustrates the stark reality and familiarity of loved ones in transition. Together these artists present a story of growing up female, stepping out of what’s comfortable, and whether by idealistic choice or bare necessity, putting on a new persona.
Ad Nauseam Lyceum is an artist run organization committed to showcasing multi-disciplinary work by emerging artists in New York . The group aims to give young artists an opportunity to collaborate, present work, and have a creative dialogue outside the traditional art market. Founded in 2006 by Ryan Frank, Deena Selenow, and Rory Sheridan, the group has hosted previous events at Emphemeroptera Art Space, chashama, EXPLOSIVO! and Studio 717, and has collectively shown the work of over 50 visual and performing artists. Dedicated to blurring the lines between various artistic genres, Ad Nauseam Lyceum is a platform for a new generation of artists working in performance, visual art, and new media.
chashama is a non-profit New York City arts organization with a nine-year history of supporting artists of all genres and experience levels by offering them access to space and major support resources. chashama provides opportunities for artists by transforming vacant real estate into multi-arts complexes and animating them with innovative and challenging art. Through low and no-cost admissions, chashama provides more opportunities for audiences as well as artists.
Myrel Chernick grew up in Metuchen, New Jersey, traveling to Paris for a year with her family at age nine. There she discovered culture, history, literature, art, food, beauty. This formative experience fueled her determination to leave the suburbs and live a different life.
Chernick’s fascination with language began with her experience of learning French with the facility of childhood, understanding that it was very different from the language she knew, and that language was connected to culture. She studied art, receiving her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago after having moved to New York to participate in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Influenced by the conceptual art she saw around her, she sought to combine her love of literature and writing with light-filled installations. She began adding short phrases to her installations in 1977, influenced by Marguerite Duras, her austere but sensuous language, and her focus on the spaces between the words.
Living in New York, Chernick has continued to work with projections and multimedia installations, single channel video and photography, while taking a detour to raise twins, curate two exhibitions on motherhood, edit The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, and to expand her writing to include longer text/image works. She spends as much time in Paris as she possibly can, and is currently writing and illustrating a hybrid novel that takes place in her favorite city.
WHAT:
The Birth Justice Podcast NYC takes a close, comprehensive and creative look at how folks in New York City experience and navigate reproductive oppression and create resilience strategies for their health and their families. Through storytelling and conversations, BJP NYC provides a space for dialogue and debate addressing one of New York City’s most pressing public health and racial justice issues: birth. Hosted by Taja Lindley, podcast episodes feature one-on-one long form interviews and conversations with advocates, organizers, historians, scholars, healers, birth workers, pregnant and parenting people, and folks of reproductive age.
The first episode dropped Wednesday July 8th and featureds an interview between the host, Taja Lindley, and her mother, Adrianne Robinson, where they discussed Robinson’s experience giving birth to Lindley in 1985. This was a special occasion because the release date is also Lindley’s birthday.
WHY:
In the United States, Black women are three to four times more likely to die due to pregnancy related causes than white women. But in New York City, Black women are eight times more likely to die than white women. This is twice the national average. And during this pandemic moment, matters of public health are brought into focus, including long standing health inequities like maternal health. For example,when COVID first hit, NYC hospitals barred visitors during childbirth, leaving many people to labor alone. In response, Governor Cuomo issued an executive order allowing laboring people to have one support person during their childbirth. A few weeks after it was issued, however, Amber Rose Isaac - a 26-year-old pregnant Black woman - died after giving birth in a Bronx hospital.
Pandemic Letter #1 May 28, 2020
This video was created at what we considered to be the beginning of the pandemic as we were trying to figure out how to cope with our new existence under lockdown and how to communicate this new reality to our child. My partner and collaborator Angela Beallor helped record the video, shooting on a DSLR with a macro lens. Our kid turned three right before I wrote this. Now, they are four. So far, we have survived this pandemic with little personal loss but not without the stresses that come along with constantly being on for work, for our family, and for our community. We continue to struggle as a queer family in a predominately heteronormative parent community and we continue to work, as a white family, for racial justice in our town.
Elizabeth Press (EP/They/Them) is a media-maker and educator based in Troy, NY. Press is interested in socially engaged practices and experimental documentary which sometimes crosses over with topics of caregiving.
Press is a lecturer in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute teaching classes in digital filmmaking and studio production. Press has also taught classes at New York University, The New School and several after-school and community media centers.
Press cut their teeth in journalism as a producer for the independent TV/Radio program, Democracy Now!. As a videographer, producer and editor, Press worked with BRIC Arts Media, The International Institute for Sustainable Development covering the UN climate negotiations, StreetFilms, GritTV with Laura Flanders and PBS.
Press’ work has been screened in international festivals across Europe and featured here in the New York Times, Democracy Now!, Rooftop Films, Exit Art, and EMPAC.
EP is on the board for the Sanctuary for Independent Media and helped bottom-line the launch of the low power FM station and the daily local news show, The Hudson Mohawk Magazine in 2017 that still runs today.
Press is a Fulbright Scholar, has an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a BA in Anthropology from Ithaca College.