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.
In my artwork I tell stories about what I see, what I learn and what I think. There is no lack of inspiration being a mother. My son shows me the world anew and I constantly notice my own limited adult views. In our American culture, mothers and children are marginalized, even though we represent a large consumer market. Our leadership work as mothers is undervalued and unpaid. In our society artists are treated similarly. We have held onto our visions as children do, insist on speaking our minds and do the work we love. Our work is also undervalued and underpaid in comparison to other commercial markets of similar size and scope.
Female art students are often told in art school "if you want to be considered as a serious artist, don't have children." In the traditional model of being an artist, one's life must be consumed by art-making. Raising children is also all consuming. It has changed my life as an artist dramatically. I am more focused, organized, energized, inspired and determined to tell my story of being a professional artist and a "good mom."
I chose diapers as my canvas because of their cultural symbolism. We often speak of raising children as being an endless job of changing diaper after diaper. This care-giving role is a natural part of the life cycle. Using diapers as a primary art material serves to honor our parents and caregivers who changed all our diapers. I paint, draw and write quick sketches of my personal experiences and feelings of being a mother. The artistic style is not as labored as my previous work since so many things are happening quickly and this is an immediate way to document them. This project was made possible by grants from the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation and the Peninsula Community Foundation.
Gestation: As the name suggests it was inspired by my pregnancies. Responding to my experience of motherhood, my work is involved with the repetitive nature of parenting and how that can been reflected in art and the practice of mindfulness. Other concerns within the work are family, the process of birthing and its counterpart, loss. Although these issues have been personal concerns, they are ones which have been shared by woman throughout history.
Danila Rumold’s current series dissolves things seemingly in opposition. Deconstructing conventional notions of painting in her work, Rumold crosses over from painting into large-scale collage and installation. Employing household tools, such as stove-top burners and washing machines in the materials’ preparation, she blurs the commonly separated roles of care-taking and art-making. Sleeping, cooking and eating on top of paper results in spontaneous mark-making, which Rumold explores as formal abstractions while referencing the body. Using semi-translucent Mulberry paper stained with earthy colors made from regional plant and food dyes, Danila brings the components together with readymade art materials. Inviting everyday experiences and chance to catalyze the work, Rumold integrates the unconscious and conscious; art and life.