I’ve been a working artist, curator, community activist and teacher for more than 25 years, creating and producing intimate solo performances, large-scale public happenings, socially engaged interventions and performance art workshops and lectures. My practice extends across black boxes and white cubes, art fairs and subway stations, international festivals, and single bathroom stalls. I’ve operated an artist-run newsstand in a vacant subway station kiosk, a soup kitchen for artists, a breast milk tasting bar, and a performance festival hub for kids. I’m forever inspired by the rebel queers, renegade witches, and other dyke moms I run with, and bound to many brilliant artists, activists, spell-casters and healers. For many years I made performances that drew from my own experiences of trauma and transformation, intimacy and motherhood. More recently, I’ve experienced a shift in my practice, where my attention has turned to wider theoretical questions about the nature of performance itself to ask questions about when, where, how we perform - in theatres and galleries, on social media, and in our everyday lives.
The Mother Load is a global network of women who have connected through the simple act of passing a name from one person to another, creating an elaborate community of women who are both artists and mothers.
In 2012, US based artists Lesli Robertson and Natalie Macellaio established The Mother Load, in an effort to encourage dialogue and connection between women who balance artistic careers and motherhood. This project is about recording these connections and finding ways to share, collaborate and support each other and our work.
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