I am a Portuguese interdisciplinary artist living and working in Southern California. My lived experience and my interest in activism are the driving forces in my creative process. I use my artwork as a tool for activism, drawing on social issues that have affected me on a personal level, such as my experience of motherhood, the politics of childbirth or sexual violence. My artwork explores universal issues of gender and collective identity, culture, memory and loss, while it is imbued with the feeling of saudade, a typically Portuguese trait roughly translated as a nostalgic longing or yearning of someone or something of the past.
I have used a wide range of media - including painting, installation, social practice, video and sound - but drawing and photography remain at the core of my practice. Influenced by Vija Celmins's drawings, Andrea Bowers use of text and activism and Suzanne Lacy’s commitment to social justice, my work examines inequality and is borne out of a desire to call attention to the often invisible and overlooked issues that affect primarily women.
@celiarochastudio
My artwork is a visual diary about my obsessive thoughts and humorous take on habit, identity and time. Juggling three part-time jobs in addition to being an artist, spouse and mother feels like I live six different lives simultaneously. I constantly try to make sense of the nonsensical through installations, sculptures and performances. As a pathway to self-inquiry, I meticulously craft ridiculous objects and performances to visually embody the absurdities of my daily experiences. The processes are both a struggle and cathartic — just like parenting.
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.
I am a contemporary painter living and working in rural New Hampshire, where I live with my husband and two sons. As a child and an adult, I have lived on all three coasts and in between, and traveled extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Now I live in a small New England town. Much of the reason that I live where I live, see what I see, and think about what I think about, is because I am a parent. Being a parent has influenced my work by influencing the choices I have made about where and how to live. These choices, in turn, present different roads for my artwork and for my professional career as an artist than would be the case if I did not have children. Many of my artist colleagues are also artist-mothers whose situations are similar to my own. We are finding ways to work together to create opportunities for ourselves well outside of the usual “art world” venues.
Painting is an essential part of who I am, and I have continued to develop my work, exhibit, and sell whenever possible. I began painting in oils in college and continued until my first pregnancy, when I switched to acrylics. This was the first example of the many times that parenthood and art needed to find new ways to coexist in my life!
As a parent, I am always doing more than one thing at a time, and as an artist, I see no reason to limit myself to only one style or way of working. Most of my work is not explicitly on the subject of parenthood or reproduction. But it shows up again and again in different ways and in different series. Sometimes it’s visceral—like Lupa, a wolf with two babies. The painting is on loose canvas, nailed to the wall, with slashes from her claws. Sometimes it’s joyous and chaotic—like Strong Nuclear Force, a dancing woman with four legs and a baby under each arm. Some are mysterious—like Inside, Mothers Are Dancing, which hints at the nature of mothers together. Some are more remote—even elegiac, like The Minivan Series.
It’s always been important to me as a parent to set an example for my boys of what women really are—separate individuals with their own lives, their own work, their own dreams, their own futures—not just the mothers who take care of them. At the same time, raising my children is all-consuming and wonderful. As my boys grow up, what they need from me grows and changes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that reflected in my work.