Rebecca Silberman and Rosalee Kelly

Rebecca Silberman“12 x 12” 2002-2013 (on-going)

Postcard image with one portrait from each year, 2002-2013

On roughly the same day each month for nearly 14 years, I have made a full body portrait of my daughter, Rosalee, on a black backdrop, spanning from newborn to, now, a young woman. The project, which was first exhibited in early 2014, a month after my daughter Rosalee turned 12, consisted of 144 8” x 10” tintype plates. While this started out as something I intended to pursue only during my daughter’s first year of life, it quickly developed into a compulsion of record-keeping, which also includes notebooks full of writing and drawings.

Many people are curious about my daughter’s cooperation in all of this. It was not until she asked a classmate when she was little when their “Portrait Day” was that she had any inkling that other children were not compelled to sit for monthly portraits as a matter of being alive. Both she and my husband are (sometimes reluctant) collaborators. My vision is to create a consistent and authentic record of a single individual’s passage not just from birth through adolescence, but over the course of a life time—for as long as it can be sustained. It is not so important that I make these, only that the project continues, perhaps even by (sometimes reluctant) grandchildren or other collaborators.

Rosalee, 3 months

This project is an archive of tintypes not for its own sake, but because in the now largely forgotten vernacular, bigger tintypes were often copies of smaller tintypes, intended to be framed and placed on view—often of someone who was deceased. So they are a sort of signifier of passing.  When these plates have been exhibited, I have also displayed alongside this personal archive a small sampling of large copy tintypes of babies that I have collected over the years. Many of these include clear indications that they are copies. It is not uncommon to be able to see nails around the periphery, holding the smaller plate in place. Sometimes they have been re-photographed in the original mat, which is evident. Often they are retouched with parts of the image background altered and details painted in. More than likely this made the portrait into more of a small painting to be put on permanent display.

-Rebecca Silberman

Rosalee, 37 months

Rosalee Kelly, On being photographed by her mother every month since she was born

How would I describe this project? My mother has taken a picture on me on or around my un-birthday (the 8^th of each month) since I was born. At almost 14 years old now, we have not missed a single month.

It didn’t seem that it would add up to be something as large as it did. What I mean by this is the fact that I used to go along with it without a thought to what it would turn out to be project wise. When I saw the 12×12 project (exhibited in early 2014, just after I turned 12), it was suddenly something big and important, like a long series of books. I mean these photos documented the years and months and days of my life. The best way to describe them would be a visual diary of my existence. Someday they might not have any context, so they won’t really be an emotional representation of my life, (save the fact I start to smile less as the years progress), but as of now, they show the extent of my physical growth and maturity and with help from my mom, they have some emotional context too.

Rosalee, 105 months

I have been asked before if I wanted to stop this project. I think we are a little bit too far down the rabbit hole for that now. We are way too far into this project to quit now, and eventually the focus of this project will be handed to my daughter from me and the cycle will start all over.  Now that I am older, I have started to help my mom with this monthly process. I help her with the set up and have even learned to do some of the old processes that my mom teaches and loves so much. I have learned to assist making a wet collodion tintype plate. My mom says that my ability to hold still for a long time in front of the camera borders on the supernatural.

Rosalee, 141 months

My favorite images are the probably the most recent ones because I now no longer look at all like a child. I like looking at all the older ones too because sometimes I don’t even remember them being taken, but they were and they are now a part of my life. I have a record of what I looked like at every stage.

-Rosalee Kelly

Visit Rebecca’s Website

This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

 

 

Lisa Solomon

On being a working artist mother

I could start by telling you how having a child is life altering an experience that is so personal that I scoff at the notion that I might be able to describe it in some universal way. I could repeat the clichés about the power and beauty and wonder of parenthood. I could be a hard ass and simply say that it’s harder than childless people could possibly imagine. Trying to juggle motherhood, teaching, an art practice and the stuff that we call LIFE is a daily challenge for which some days I feel more prepared than others.

These are all undeniably true statements – but feel hollow and don’t even begin to describe the complexity of what it is that makes up my existence. I’ve realized, particularly as I’ve encountered younger [especially women, but really any] artists that they often turn to me wide eyed and ask – how is your life possible? How do you maintain a studio life and a life life? How do you balance? How do you do everything that you do? And often I just stare back and say: I don’t balance. It’s incredibly hard. My husband might have a sharp word or two about all the things I manage to neglect in our household [a good wifey I do not make]. I just move forward. I make lists, I put out fires as they ignite, and I’m committed. This actually might be the biggest thing. I need my practice. I must make art. I’m simultaneously dedicated to my daughter/family/friends, and teaching. There isn’t balance, there are choices, desires, longings and decisions that get made – sometime on impulse, sometimes with hours of agonizing planning and forethought.

I have no use for catch phrases – you CAN or CAN’T have it all – because they are just that, a catch. No life philosophy/approach can be summed up in 5 words. And honestly I don’t even want to attempt to have it all. I don’t know what “all” is. Your “all” is surely very different from my “all”. I want what I want in my life. A full life. One where sacrifices are necessary and made as needed, but also not chosen as the path of least resistance.

When Sarah asked me to write for the [Pro]create Anthology I thought hallelujah. Here is a space to write about the topic being a working artist and mother.  A place to collect and read and discover varying viewpoints and perspectives about mothering/parenting/art making. Perhaps something here will fit your bill and somehow you can cobble together bits and pieces that resonate with you. This excites me as a maker/educator because this is how it works in the studio/classroom. There are moments when you recognize yourself in what is presented and then your brain lights up. In an inquisitive, excited state something is born.

I was never sure I was going to have a child. I was not someone who was born with an urgent need or desire to have a baby of my own. Sometimes I felt completely comforted by Agnes Martin who proclaimed that artists shouldn’t have children. She was a bit extreme as she also thought we should eschew pets, but still… I got what she was saying.

But then one day my husband suggested it. And then about a year later we had a baby. [It all happened a bit too quickly for my liking, but if there is one thing you learn as a parent it’s how to surrender and understand that so much is out of your control]. I did not revel in being pregnant – I felt like a science experiment. I was very worried that I was going to loose my identity. I didn’t know how I was going to find time to make my work. I also silently feared that I might want to give up my work, or that I wouldn’t be able to do all the things I wanted to at the level that I wanted. Luckily I had a few amazing examples of artist mothers who just by living their life were showing me that it was indeed possible to make art and be a mom. Luckily, too, I was at a place in my career and practice where I felt like I wasn’t going to loose momentum completely.

My daughter was a preemie, born 6 weeks early, but for the most part pretty darn healthy. There was this incredible, intense, primal and completely biological thing that happened the second she looked into my eyes. I wasn’t expecting that. I also wasn’t expecting how draining this new way of living was going to be. I was used to being alone – with myself, in the studio, with my thoughts. I was rarely, if ever, lonely. But this, all day, all night, all consuming care brought on a sense of loss, of fear and loneliness. Not because I actually felt alone – I had a lot of support, but because sometimes at 2 in the morning when all you want to do is sleep and instead you are feeding your child in the dark you feel like there is no one else in the world. This can be both poignant and sweet and also alienating.

And these were things that were not discussed. I talk about these things now – with my mom friends, or with moms to be that won’t be frightened off by what I have to say. But these are things that feel buried. Sometimes I think women feel shame when they don’t love every single minute of being a mother.

My daughter made me look at the world in a new way. A more patient, a slower, a more detailed way. After the newborn stage we walked around the neighborhood A LOT. I was fascinated with what she looked at and why. Her interest in things was steady and intense [if she liked them]. Determined to make things I strapped her to me and gocco printed. I made lists of things I wanted to do, and researched online for my projects while she slept in the ergo [I wonder if she dreamed of things tap tap tapping along with my keyboard]. In the very beginning I had a nanny for 4 hours a week on Fridays and made almost a whole body of work in 3-4 months of those Fridays. I no longer wasted time. 4 hours to the mom me was like a whole week to the old me. I remember one artist mom said to me that you learn to compartmentalize making your work with a child. She worked out a system of boxes to hold work in various states of doneness. And one for supplies. When her child napped she pulled them out and worked on something. When he woke, she put it all away. Genius. I finally understood why she did that, and how helpful that could indeed be. It is amazing to look back and see how I dawdled my way through life prior.

The huge uphill challenge of the beginning – finding a new way to work, finding time to work, being present in the work seems like something that is fading in my memory. Now that she is in school, my concerns have shifted. There is more breathing room. More room for things that are narcissistic. I wonder if I moved more toward repetitive work [which I’ve always done, but the intensity definitely increased] because I wanted to focus my brain. Child care is focus. Art making is a different kind of focus. Perhaps it was also a way for me to mimic the kind of tasks that are required of parenting. There is no way to count how many diapers I’ve changed, baths I’ve supervised, loads of laundry I’ve done.

Now my daughter wants to make things too. She wants to make stuffies for her friends. Bookmarks. Pillows, Strange skirts with suspenders and scalloped edges. In school she learned about Van Gough and so when we were in the National Gallery we made sure to see the real Van Goughs. She likes mashing up crazy patterns [what mama?! – they are ALL polka dots – shirt, pants, socks, jacket – so they go together. It matters not that the size, color and texture of all said dots are not similar in the least]. She still makes me notice things that I might not if she weren’t around. I know she’s watching me. I want her to be interested in looking, seeing, drawing things that interest HER, and so I try to show her what I see and what interests me. I used to wonder if she would want to do any of this. I didn’t want to push her ever. And I don’t. Sometimes I feel lazy and don’t want to pull out paints and let her go for it. But sometimes I do. I’m positive that making is in her DNA, as it is in mine.

Visit Lisa’s Website.

This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Irene Pérez

The work of caring and caring for your work

Before having a child I never really gave a thought about the amount of work involved in caring for someone. Even though this kind of work finds its roots in love – indeed it is a labor of love, I find myself despising it because of the time and energy it takes away from the work I care to do, the one that usually takes place in my studio. Nonetheless, both care work and the work I care to do are now sharing the time and space(s) I inhabit. Inseparable, they surround me; they occupy my mind and take over my body trying to push each other aside.

                                               Improvised summer studio 1: The bedroom.

Sometimes finding balance involves making concessions and improvising. I am not good at either. Yet, there is no way out and the time and the space have to be shared and the work I make and care for intrudes and is intruded by the work I do in caring for others.

Irene Pérez

Spain, 2015

PS: The first draft for this text was thought as I was lying by my daughter’s side, in her bed, waiting for her to fall asleep.

                                Improvised summer studio 2: The public swimming pool.

                                             Improvised summer studio 3: The hospital.

                                  Improvised summer studio 4: The dinning room/kitchen.

Visit Irene’s Website

This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Maria Porges

Maria Porges

It is very different to be an artist mom of little kids than it is to have teenagers.  While this might seem obvious, until it happens to you, you won’t really understand it. I had my fraternal (sororal?) twin daughters very late, and now, as they turn the corner between 13 and 14, I am 61. I have an acute sense of time passing. Some days, as I walk from my car to school—I teach full time in San Francisco—I can hardly understand how it happened that I am in my sixties with kids just about to enter high school. I don’t feel old. I most distinctly don’t feel like I am as old as my own mother seemed to be when she was the age I am now. But part of that is having these two girls in my life.

It is hard to say what kind of career I would have had if they had not come along. In the late 90s I was having one or two solo shows a year, making work and selling it, getting pretty good traction critically. But the difference between then and now has as much to do with other factors as it does with motherhood. There was the Great Recession; choices I made in changing my work; the extent to which I committed time to my writing practice, and to teaching. I have gone through three separate bodies of work as the girls have grown up. None, so far, have been what I would describe as commercially viable. I also decided to see what it would be like to teach full time, something I always thought I would eventually do (when I ‘grew up’!). But teaching is like being a parent, in some regards. It is absorbing, both in terms of the time you spend doing it and the mental/ emotional impact it has on your life. Engaging in all of this at once, in my fifties, took a lot of my bandwidth. Working in the studio has taken a backseat, more of the time than I would have ever imagined it would.

I was very lucky to have had a whole life as an artist and critic before my daughters were born. If I had not, I might be more resentful of the extent to which being a parent takes over everything else, particularly for women (yes, this is still very unbalanced in our society, and I am not convinced that men will ever do 50% of the work in child rearing, as there is little incentive culturally for doing so). As it is, I’ve mostly viewed the events unfolding around me—the shrinking of the middle class; the transformation of commerce in the art world into a series of frenetic fairs; the increasing unaffordability of the beautiful place I live—with a mixture of alarm and exhaustion.  But we go on, every day, doing the best we can.

Like some of the other moms and dads who have written posts for this site, I dragged my kids to openings and museums as they grew, though there was a period during which I pretty much gave up on it as they were SO resistant to it. They go with me to some events now, and one of them is very interested in photography—probably the only art form I have never thought about doing. She makes music videos with her friends, the sophistication of which astonishes me. My kids have never known a world without internet connections, cell phones, constant connection. I do my best to get them to unplug but I feel as though their understanding of life will truly be different from mine.

I would like to live at least another thirty years (as unrealistic as that might be), as I now want not only to make a lot more art and write books, but I also want to see my daughters grow up and maybe even have children of their own. This is my only regret—not having had them sooner, so that I would see them into middle age.

That seems very far off right now. Just surviving their teen years will be a big accomplishment—both for them, and for me. It is so hard to say what kind of art world there will be in another decade. It feels crazy sometimes to be going through this kind of change on a professional as well as a personal level. But this, I understand, is part of what keeps me young. Or, well, feeling that way.

Maria Porges

Visit Maria’s Website.

This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Nikki Brugnoli

A brief statement on boundaries: Drawing Invisible Lines

February 13, 2015

Childbirth is the most empowering experience I have ever had the privilege to know. It is a profound, as well as excruciating and beautiful rite of passage. I stumbled, as all Mothers do, into discovering the absolute power, unpredictability and deep responsibility of Motherhood, especially as a young feminist, artist and academic giving birth to a son. All my life of “dreaming” of Motherhood, I felt I was destined to have and raise a strong daughter, and to my utter surprise the universe gifted me instead, with an engaging, curious, creative, “doesn’t-miss-a-beat”, determined, stubborn, eternally active, insatiable, and tactile son. Finnegan will soon be four and with each phase of development and understanding comes with it the evolving challenge of developing and maintaining boundaries. This process is both ritualistic and sacred, demanding every ounce of patience and thoughtfulness I possess to successfully negotiate and navigate perimeters for a determined and focused studio practice. This practice is vital for creating balance and fulfillment in my life.

I am an artist, and have an expertise as a painter, classically trained using the figure and possessing a full and embodied understanding of color theory. I also live to draw. The interpretation of a single line on a surface or extended into space is a phenomenon that seduces me perpetually. It exists without judgment or requirement for regarding or holding specific form and seeks only to be. I entered graduate school when I was 22 with a portfolio of abstract and non-objective drawings and paintings that evolved naturally in my curiosity to deconstruct what I knew.  I have always held the desire to reference both landscape and body in my workings. Graduate school was my first full flavored taste of interdisciplinary studies and it provided total freedom to explore, engage, interpret and to give form to the deepest understandings of “work” I had ever [never] known.  The freedom and fear, driven by questions, led me away from painting and into the lush and terrifying arena of performance. It was a brief time in my life to foster and enhance my understanding of what having a studio practice really means, how to sustain and maintain it, and how, when necessary to extend the walls of any space into the world in which I inhabit to become a studio, (whether it be a kitchen table, a bread bowl, a cup of coffee, freshly turned earth and a few packs of seeds, a bottle of bubbles, making your child’s baby food, or gutting an old house). The studio is an idea. It is malleable, movable, transportable, and imaginable. The idea and total understanding of sustainability has been the key and recurring factor to my survival as a young artist and Mother. It laid the foundation for creating an equal balance of art/work/family, especially because my studio has always occupied intimate spaces in my home.

Since Finnegan’s birth, I have built my practice and specific bodies of work around recognizing and honoring the perimeters I make inside of. These perimeters are much more than physical manifestations. They also embody emotional, psychological and intellectual investigations. These perimeters set and create rules as well as play, within which I construct my world and process. They are active and alive inside of every mark, and every question I bring to my practice. Inside of the recognition of the perimeter is of course a longing. And so my practice as Mother, partner, artist, and academic is brought to life and sustained by my limitations and deepest longings. Only in paying unwavering attention and homage to these constitutions can I direct my questions, which in turn fuel my investigations.

Being Finnegan’s mother is the highest honor in my world.  He has given me life, unknowingly and enthusiastically renews it daily, and inside of his heightened vision, has taught me to see.

Nikki Brugnoli

This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Simone Endress

Simone Endress

My life isn’t that different from a normal kid’s, honestly. But there are a few things, like the fact that on all my weekends, I’m at a studio or art gallery with my dad going through the “Art Critique Process”, and lying that we will be leaving in 10 minutes. Also, sometimes I’ll call my dad and he’ll just be too stressed to talk because he’s working on a show or something like that. By “babysitter” he means the person nearest to us that he works with. My dad also is constantly pointing out examples of how he can “see the world differently” as an artist. One time, he predicted a restaurant was Greek just by the “style” of  the sign (F.Y.I. If it says it on the sign, it doesn’t count.) However, he has been able to tell something from a sign without cheating before. Being the daughter of an artist also means a lot of unwanted judgement. I have also helped my dad on a few projects, I’ve made a sculpture, painted a chair, ect. I like to involved and his work, though, and I’m grateful for all of this (except for the judgement.) So overall, having an artist for a dad is pretty neat.

-Simone, Age 11

Daughter of Edgar Endress

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This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Edgar Endress

There is an aspect of being a father as a familiar figure, it is natural to the process but peripheral for some.  Simone was born in the same set of circumstances that have dictated our parenting life–in distance. Lori gave birth in Virginia and I was teaching in New Jersey. I made it on time to be part of the birth experience as much as I could be part, to observe and document. Giving birth changed everything for us because  distance was always a factor, 7 hours commute didn’t make it easy. Under those circumstances the European attitude of having the father also on parental leave makes sense. But in fact, Lori didn’t even get paid parental leave. For me my studio is where I am, I work with what I have, so I never felt limited by lack of access to the studio. Lori and I never stopped doing what we planned to do, Simone was three weeks old when we presented our work at a conference in Atlanta and the organizer was rocking Simone while we talked. But what really helped us was a residency in Germany. Lori, Simone, and I were in Germany almost a full year in a castle in Stuttgart. Simone learned to walk there and we traveled together in Europe.  There was always an inclination to make the kids (now two, Ian  was born in 2006) part of our academic, research life. Both of them have been exposed to lectures in migration and anthropology, as we didn’t have babysitters or they were sick and we happened to be in different places. They confess they don’t particularly like that, but they got used it. A year ago, Simone presented my work at an opening  because I was was away doing an lecture. Being part of our family means being part of every aspect of our lives.

-Edgar Endress

Simone and Lori

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This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Cameron Schmitz

Since becoming a mother to our daughter, now 11 months old, I was both pleasantly surprised and shocked that I was able to get back into the studio only 3 months after her birth. I wore her in the Ergo baby carrier or in a back pack, and as a result, my work has taken a totally different and exciting shift.

She’s inspired a new use of color and freer way of working, and that has felt incredibly liberating. She’s helped me become a better problem solver, because I don’t have as many long, extended hours staring at a painting in the studio like I once had. When I had her on my back painting, I had to keep leaving the studio to give her new things to look at, and as a result I was able to see my work with fresh perspectives more often because I kept having to put my brushes sown and leave the work, to later come back and see formal problems that I would probably not have recognized as early as I did. Progress happened much faster. My biggest self-criticism in the past was overworking and over-refining my paintings. And all of a sudden, that was no longer occurring. I had a new sense of restraint because I had to be really specific with that I was doing with my time while in the studio.

When wearing her, I had to keep moving and bouncing, which immediately triggered a more active, lyrical approach to painting, and thus, for me, inspired a totally new body of abstract work which I am continuing to invest my time developing. This change has opened up new challengesthat are extremely exciting to me. I have fallen back in love with painting again. I get butterflies about my paintings in progress, which hasn’t happened in years.

Becoming a mother has changed me. I now see the world differently. I have never witnessed change and growth occur so fast as I have as watching my daughter develop each and every day. The birth of my daughter has heightened my senses and desire to express inner joy, wonder, unknowing, and the search for color in my life to mirror the heightened states of enjoyment that I experience from the simplest of moments in life.

As a young student artist I had zero female professors who were also mothers. Whereas 99% of my of my male professors were fathers with families. This was startling and disconcerting. All my life I have struggled with the notion of how I was going to be a practicing artist who also could raise a family and be a really great parent to my children. I admit that I still have those concerns, as my husband and I would one day like to have a second child and I wonder if that second, wondrous being might be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”, so to speak. I don’t know.

No matter what, I think there needs to be a larger voice for artist professionals who are mothers not only “making it work”, but also being inspired by giving birth and raising a children. Being a mother is truly a gift, and my daughter has most definitely been a gift to my experience as an artist that I am forever grateful for.

-Cameron Schmitz

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This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Maria Karametou

Even as a very young child I remember hiding under the long maroon cover of our dining room table to draw. But my father was intent on my becoming something “serious” and “respectable” when I grew up – and to him that meant nothing even remotely close to an artist. Early in high school I secretly apprenticed myself to a master painter paid for by my great conspirator: my grandmother. Later on, I left our country, home and family, and came to America to follow my life’s passion and become an artist. I never had any maternal instincts.   My decision to have a child was directly related to three things: the ticking clock, my husband’s desire to have one, and my cultural background that somehow assumes (at least back then) that there is something wrong with married couples that remain childless. My brother used to say that I “fell into baby land with a parachute”. I knew nothing about children and was never interested in them. I had rarely held a baby in my arms before.   I was preparing for the opening of a solo show, when the director of the gallery saw I was pregnant (I could no longer hide it), and said: “there goes your career”. I was horrified by this callous assumption. Yet I knew that my teacher, a well known artist, had given up a son for adoption, and I remembered how she used to talk about it when we all met in that dark, stinky tavern where the smell of liquor permeated the seats and our clothes. So in defiance to the remarks of the director, I decided to learn the sex of my child on the day of the opening reception, and phoned my gynecologist brother in law to whom I had the test results sent. That’s how I found out that the life kicking inside me was a girl, and I was happy to carry her with me to the reception sporting the only pregnancy outfit I ever bought that boldly showed off my protruding belly.   Strangely enough those nine months were one of the most tranquil periods of my life. I remained unfazed as if encased in a protective bubble even when a huge slide screen fell inches from my head while I was lecturing at the university where I was teaching at the time. Every day I went down to the studio just as I had always done, worked for hours, and the only thing I changed was to stop working with toxic materials like xylone and Rhoplex. Increasingly though, I was isolated from friends and was desperate for the company of family. But my mother had suddenly died back home at age 63, two years before my daughter was born, and I was thousands of miles away from Greece. There was no one around except my husband and he was at work all day.   When Melissa Eleni was born, I was incredulous. I would look at her and wonder about the miracle of creating a life. I felt that no matter what I did, no matter how many visual works I created, no matter how far I went in my chosen path, my small claim to immortality would come through this little creature whose tiny, trusting fingers wrapped around mine. I became painfully aware of her fragility and did everything I could to make sure she was always all right at all times. I grew up with extended family around (aunts, uncles, grandparents and lots of family friends), and here I was, standing between my daughter and my mother, thinking of how the one would never get a chance to meet, love and teach the other, and often comparing the sheltered life my mother led (who never left our country for long), and that which this child, already a part of two different cultures, would have. I stood in the middle, reexamining my cultural identity and at times agonizing about who I really was, where I really belonged, and even how much of my rich heritage I would be able to pass on to my daughter.   Oddly enough, after she was born, instead of feeling exhausted I exploded with creativity and new ideas. I went about realizing them and took her down to the studio from day one even after my husband suggested that I needed to take some time off. I never told her “no” when she wanted to play with my materials. I said: “just touch”; and she learned to lightly put her hand on top of the thing that had excited her curiosity, feel its shape gently, and then let go of it. I raised her by instinct. In a way we raised each other. I led her through childhood and she showed me the road to maturity.   When she was only a couple of years old, Melissa Eleni laid down still enough for me to take a cast of her body, which I then incorporated in the piece pictured here. It is a mixed media relief that includes images from my own childhood and which I feel ties all of the above together.

I am a mixed media artist. I draw from my personal experience and history of migration, mobility and displacement, to create work that relates to the impact of place and time upon identity, memory, and our own personal journey for self-discovery. What interests me is to uncover the poetry of repurposed, commonplace materials and transform them in order to speak about what I know, who I am, what my relationship as a woman is to the world and, ultimately, about the human experience.   Melissa Eleni is now grown and I am still a working artist. Guess that gallery director was wrong.

-Maria Karametou

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This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.

Helen Frederick

In India every woman is a Mother Devi with a potential for actual motherhood. I discovered this in my late twenties after part-time mothering four offspring of an older man. The desire to be a mother was deep inside of me as a performa for finding a nest, a common ground with my species who came before me, who met me with swollen bellies in the streets, and even in my own RISD print studio where the faculty of men seemed so attracted to a pregnant woman. This fascinated me even though secretly I knew I would never bear a child.

The love of my own dear Mother came in fits and starts. Sometimes I felt she was my truly my Mother and at other times I was sure that I had landed in the wrong household by some mistake and not in the place divined for me. I was not beautiful and dainty like her. What powers brought me to her womb that was cut open to deliver me safely? The girl with curly light brown hair she wanted so desperately to grow up with her son? How could I ever have a child that would fulfill the grand scheme of things as she imagined it? I had no imagination for it at all. My toys were crayoning books and pots and pans I used to cook meals while my Mother worked longer hours. I spoke to those pans more than any well-clothed doll as they fascinated me with their utilitarian capabilities. The doll never spoke back to me, just stared with vacant eyes. I adored my kittens more –maybe I was a cat woman who had fallen away from the forest?

So what to do with an itch that you do not have, but most of your girlfriends and female population seem to have? I’ve learned that birthing comes in many forms, perhaps none of theme as excruciatingly as painful as natal childbirth, but painful enough; that taking joy in developing a seedling into a fuller grown entity, and feeling its challenges and resistances, that watching something grow and leave you is as powerfully purifying and fulfilling as the path of traditional motherhood.

I love the concept of potential motherhood. It serves to unite women from their basic roots; its charge brings light, beauty, imagination and profound care as it structures history, legacy and the future. Some carry a seed in the womb directly. I have chosen to carry the water that feeds the womb, to walk along side, for every sister needs a helping hand, and what more could I ask than to be a lending hand?

How my studio practice informs my work from this potential leads me to the ongoing question: how do we comprise our own history from our ancestors within us? This is one of the most valuable and challenging explorations and questions of our lifetimes, since we all bear that core question. As an artist and educator I am rooted in my belief that every person has a creative life and my responsibility is to recognize and foster these creative lives both in myself, the individual, and in communities. This belief led me to create and direct a non-profit art center, Pyramid Atlantic, that grew from being a center for the making of prints, papermaking and artist books to an international center for cultural exchange where artists from all over the world have come to work and exchange ideas through formal dialogue and informal conversation. I believe that print studios offer a democratic voice and are committed to diversity, collaboration and entrepreneurship. I also accept the notion that conceptual art empowers printed media, and that prints and artist books have always been linked with validating ideas.

As an artist my deep interest lies in the intention to unite highly personal images with a measure of social commentary so that is where the core question about comprising our own history from our ancestors fits in. In working I trust that somehow I can create a record of personal dimensions that demonstrates the relation of shared, borrowed, and processed cultural experience within the codes of visual and verbal form.

As a community activist I truly believe in developing the understanding, particularly of women’s lives and history, by the means of a folklorist approach rather than external fact finding and research only, which means drawing out the underlying experiential life of the individual. In our lifetime what seems to tie us all together is both our relationship to the arts and our experience in crossing borders. My own creative work is dedicated to re-examining perceptions and interpretations of art and culture by searching narratives in art, myth, ritual and gender struggles of others and seeking ways to create experiences for enhanced understanding. It is my belief that we all cross borders and we are all immigrants.

This all follows me in the studio as I begin the/my artistic practice. I always seem to work out of personal chaos and some irreversible reverence for my process. I am concerned with materials, not only the way they look, but the way they are. Possibly this comes from recognizing that the endurance of hand papermaking, my major initial media substrate for my work, is also a hybrid of so many complex parts—which dedicated communities have worked to sustain its legacy and usefulness into many parts of the world— and that provides valuable insights (and challenges) to me as a contemporary hand paper artist dealing with current social issues. Most days I wish I had a whole village to work with!

That said, I begin beating fiber, preparing plates or ink or shuffling sheets of images on paper around in sequences until I get started. From there I will go to my Mac and pull out images from my camera (my drawing tool) or create text blocks and initiate several images. I always remember artist John Wood telling me how his studio featured many images in process under glass and that he would go back and forth to his images, never satisfied with working on just one. That idea of the image being held down until it is fully born, parallels my putting sheets of paper under felts while wet, blotters as they are drying, drying rack when printing, or under binding boards for pages of a book. The process of these steps in making, developing and hiding away until a reality comes together satisfies some of my tremendous creative anxiety as I work. I sense this period of development does not fall far from many of the emotional steps in pregnancy.

Another confession is that I am a movie and media consumer. Probably I watch a movie as many nights as possible and never miss 3 international news stations, with two cats purring on top of my lap, to achieve a recognition that I am part of society and not working in isolation.

The gristle of my work does come from readings, conversations, discouragements, fears, and mortality, as well as enthusiasm. So much of my work lies on the floor, literally, or is not completed, since I cannot work myself into a state to gather the amount of resources that I might want for bigger projects. That type of creative energy goes into my curatorial work and teaching. I’m sure this is every artist’s dilemma, in various dimensions, as we all re-invest whatever resources we have back into our work (our children).

I am struck by Ellen Dissanayake’s premise “My paleeoanthropsychobiologocal view is that in order to include human history, human cultures, and human psychology, art must be viewed as an inherent universal (or biological) trait of the human species as normal and natural as language, sex, sociability, aggression, or any of the other characteristics of human nature.” So what does that provide me as the maker—my frustrations, joys, anger, uncertainties, dreams and constructed images/ realities? I think the artistic practice cannot be left out of my life, whether I am imploding the images in a solitary way or in collaboration, even if the end result may be appreciated by a limited audience, Because it seems as normal to me as making my bed in the morning, equally demanding in discipline, care, structure and image application/finality, so I can sleep well at night and pull the trigger again the next day.

So I do not respond to those who point a finger and say, “she does not have a personal life, she always puts her work before anything.“ Secretly I knew as a child sitting on a stump in the country side that motherhood takes the form of dreams, dreams manifested in images, performed also with the hands of other energetic and devoted women, with the hearts and minds of the potential Devis all over the world and I knew I would hold hard and fast to that. The potential Devi calls me every day. It calls me into the studio to struggle with birthing images, to accept transformation, to honor failure, to surrender to reconstruction and vulnerability, and yes to set free my self-determined children who demand full attention when I am with them and who settle into place in secret quietude or other’s hands when released.

-Helen Frederick

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This post is part of the (Pro)Create Anthology, a collection of narratives about the intersection of professional studio practice and parenting.