Participate: Artists Raising Kids Project

Here's a chance to exchange artist-parenting experience with artists from everywhere: Artists U, a free professional resource for artists working in any discipline, is working to compile a free PDF booklet of advice and parenting hacks by and for artists raising kids, and they want to hear from you. Click HERE to participate through their short, two-question survey.

For those of you in or near Philadelphia, PA, this survey will also be part of an upcoming workshop and conversation on Artists Raising Kids next week! Here's more information on the event:

Artists U will host a workshop/conversation
for artists raising kids AND artists thinking of having kids
. Come together with other artists for a look at challenges and possibilities raising kids as a working artist.This is not a gripe session. We will look realistically at the challenges facing artist parents, always with an eye toward possibility and solutions.

Artists Raising Kids Workshop
Monday, December 2, 5:00 pm-8:00pm
Christ Church Neighborhood House
N. American St and Filbert St, Philadelphia 19106
RSVP here (and let us know how many kids/what ages you will bring)
Artist Parent? Take our two question survey to help us gather information for the workshop
Childcare and Pizza will be provided!

UPDATE: you can now find a report from this event and a link to the free, downloadable booklet right HERE.

Interview: Lenka Clayton

Lenka attempts a portable "walking studio" with Otto

Lenka Clayton considers, exaggerates, and reorganizes the accepted rules of everyday life, extending the familiar into the realms of the poetic and absurd. In 2012, after the birth of her first child, Lenka founded An Artist Residency in Motherhood: a structured, fully-funded artist residency that takes place inside her own home and life as a mother of two young children. For the duration of the residency she has embraced the fragmented mental focus, exhaustion, nap-length studio time and countless distractions of parenthood as well as the absurd poetry of time spent with young children as her working materials and situation, rather than obstacles to be overcome. Lenka's work been shown internationally, including at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; FRAC Le Plateau, Paris; Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland and the Tehran International Documentary Festival, Iran. She was recently named Emerging Artist of the Year by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Lenka's work is smart, engaging, full of humor, and incredibly important. We're so very pleased to interview her here.

CR: Briefly describe your kids in your own words:

Lenka: Otto is two and a half. He is interested in order and with it creates chaos. His books are in piles (divided by read/not read yet, or by size, or type, or providence; “from Davey”, from the “toy shop”, etc). Downstairs, long lines of cars wind around the living room in traffic jams, each driven by a different animal or small object. He is crying now because he doesn’t want to nap.

Early is six months old. She is wide-eyed and wide-grinned. She needs only four hours of sleep a night and is woken by the faintest wing-flappings of birds outside. She recently sat in her car seat crammed in a New York City subway carriage in the rush hour with the quiet contemplation of the Dalai Lama. She is crying now also.

CR: How did you decide to undertake a “Residency in Motherhood?” Did it develop entirely out of the postpartum experience, or was it percolating before that?

Maternity Leave (installation view)

Lenka: An Artist Residency in Motherhood is the second project I’ve made that takes questions and conflicts I experienced around parenting and working as an artist and uses them as a structure to work within. The first, Maternity Leave, started before Otto was born and was carried out when he was between 2 and 5 months old. It consisted of a live audio feed from a microphone placed above his cot that was transmitted directly into the Carnegie Museum and broadcast in an empty gallery, via a white plastic baby-monitor. For the duration of the exhibition the museum publicly paid me the weekly equivalent of the government benefit the “Maternity Allowance” that freelance artist parents receive in England, where I’m from.

The idea for An Artist Residency in Motherhood developed out of this project. It started when Otto was one and I was pregnant with Early but didn’t know yet. It took a while for the idea to fully reveal itself, then a while longer to secure the funding (from The Pittsburgh Foundation and the Sustainable Art Foundation) that I needed both to buy myself the time and resources to carry it out as well as to “legitimize” the project as a real residency.

CR: You note in your artist’s statement something that resonates with most of us: “I find now that many aspects of the professional art world are closed to artists with families.” What changes or alternative structures would you most like to see in the art world?

Lenka: I would like that young women absolutely committed to developing their careers as artists who also want kids to not feel like they had to choose between being a serious, engaged artist and being a (serious, engaged!) parent. For that decision to not even occur to them, as it hasn’t for so many generations of young men. Whatever structures, role-models, and cultural shifts that it takes to make that occur.

Early in the studio

CR: Who have been your role models for artist-parenting / parent-artisting?

Lenka: I think the lack of role models that I found while I was pregnant and home with young kids (still) is what created An Artist Residency in Motherhood, and especially projects within it such as Mother’s Days. That project, a collection of one hundred accounts of everyday life by one hundred mothers around the world, came from a real sense of isolation I was feeling, and a realization that the things I wanted to talk about or hear about weren’t what I was hearing other people talking about. I am interested in the tiny details, the routines, the furious love and surprising rage, the poetry of time with people learning to talk, and the monologues that adults alone with kids narrate to themselves all day long. One of the women who took part in Mother’s Days describes googling “Husband doesn’t share nighttime baby." Another googled “benefits of working moms vs. stay at home moms." It is beautiful to me to know this. I am interested in the questions, confusion and poetry around parenting and working as an artist. I found lots of answers to things but relate to the uncertainty more and didn’t come across role models for that.

CR: One of the goals of your residency is to publish the experience as sort of a blueprint for other artist-parents. How has this document evolved, particularly once child number two arrived on the scene? 

studio window

Lenka: The website is the blueprint. It records the foundations of the residency, my process, studio practice, funders and manifesto as well as the responses of others to it. It is slowly evolving. Since Early was born, even more so (slowly). I’m still doing the same amount of thinking, it just takes me longer and longer to find a pen.

My goal now at the end of the residency in May 2014 is to pass it on to two other parents who are dealing with parenting and trying to maintain and develop their practice. The residency will take the form of a small grant and website space. At the end of both their tenures, they will pass the residency on to two further artist/parents each, and so on and so on, forever.

CR: Any strategies or advice you’d pass on to new parents struggling to maintain a creative practice while raising a family?

from the series "Dangerous Objects Made Safer"

Lenka: There is so much advice, that is one of the problems. How you choose to or are able to navigate babyland and keep a studio practice going has so much to do with personal circumstances. Our current situation is that my husband Seth (also a ceramic artist) works as a freelance carpenter and also currently teaches in the week, and I look after the kids and do occasional paid gigs. At the weekend we try to take one day each as a studio day. The conflicts I personally feel about my roles are both an essential part of my experience and a limitation that I love and also complain about often. I’m much happier having this situation be my material to work with though, rather than something that stops me working.

Otto looking at madonna and child

Some of my tricks are – to try to have a feeling of things going on in the world when I’m unable to be in the studio. In my studio time on a Sunday I order materials, or write up an idea, or post new work online, or apply for an opportunity. Over the week when I’m with the kids I daydream about these things going on behind the scenes. I meet one dear artist friend every week to check in about our art progress which helps me focus on the things I’ve done, and not all the millions of things I haven’t. I try to write a little every few days to capture thoughts that are otherwise lost in a sleep-deprived haze. I let a lot of things be unfinished, or uncertain. I have a lot of projects in my "to do one day" file.

In moments of despair and having no time at all, when I can’t remember what I’m doing or why, I like to think of the millions of other mothers covered in sick all around the world at the exact same moment too. Read Mother’s Days! That helps, I promise. And of course, remember Kurt Vonnegut’s famous phrase “and this too shall pass”. I had a rubber stamp made with that written on, for those kind of moments.

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An Artist Residency in Motherhood is funded by the Robert C. Smith Fund and the Betsy R. Clark Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation & The Sustainable Art Foundation. It is also supported in kind by Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse.




The distance I can be from my son - Back Alley by Lenka Clayton

Residency Report: Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium

Cultural ReProducers introduces Residency Report: an ongoing series of posts from artists who've undertaken creative residencies with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience. 

Artist Laura Berman kicks off this series with her report from the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium:

In the fall of 2011, my husband and our 19-month-old son accompanied me for a three-week artist residency at Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. We arrived in late August, thankfully missing the summer crowds. FMC was about half-full during our stay, with resident artists traveling from France, Italy, Canada, Brussels and Antwerp.

Frans Masereel was an influential Flemish graphic artist who published woodcut books and illustrations throughout his life, and Frans Masereel Centrum honors the spirit of his work to support contemporary graphic arts. Resident artists at FMC often have printmaking backgrounds and specific projects to execute in print media. Working in a media-specific setting gives the artists uninterrupted studio time and FMC does a great job staggering their artists’ schedules so that only 1-2 artists are using studio areas concurrently and everyone has plenty of room.

FMC has excellent printmaking facilities with multiple and extensive areas for resident artists, technicians available for questions about the studio or equipment, and a gallery on-site. Production and focus came easy to me at FMC, and I was supported, comfortable and creative during my entire time there.

The center is located on the outskirts of  Kasterlee, a picturesque town in the Northeastern corner of Belgium. Each artist receives an A-frame house on the premises of FMC, as well as dedicated use of a bicycle during their stay. There are ten houses for artists and each is simple and straightforward with two bedrooms, two studio/drawing areas, a lounge area, outside porch, full kitchen and bath. Laundry facilities are on-site in the silkscreen studio and there is a large courtyard deck between all of the houses for potluck dinners and other meetings. Because the houses each have two bedrooms (and 4 beds total), artists can bring their family, collaborator, or even a grandparent.

Every day I worked in the studio from 9am-12pm while my husband and son shared adventures in and around FMC. We spent lunch together as a family, and I got our son’s nap underway before returning to studio for the afternoon. At 4pm I relaxed and played with our son for a couple of hours while my husband took a daily bike ride to Kasterlee to grocery shop and have time to himself. We shared evening duties, taking turns cooking, playing, and visiting with other artists. Because FMC is a federal program, the studios close precisely at 8pm each night, with lights and power turning off automatically. We enjoyed this structured schedule because it benefitted our toddler, and also because the residents work and play on similar schedules, so socializing after hours was inevitable and easy.

Much of our time at FMC was spent outdoors. Our son explored every porch, bush, tree, rock and pine needle on the premises. He met and enjoyed everyone who was there, artists and staff alike. Behind our house at FMC was a pasture with a horse, across the street was a cornfield growing high, and behind the screenprinting studio was a path that led to  “Kabouterberg,” a nearby-forested park we visited often – sometimes even twice a day. This park was a world onto itself, containing sand dunes, enormous trees with aerial roots that kids could climb on and into, ice cream trucks at every cross path, open areas for resting and playing, and small statues of gnome-like goblins peppered throughout. Kasterlee is a self-declared “ideal destination for children”, and in my family’s experience this was certainly true.

Our time at Frans Masereel Centrum was simultaneously productive, relaxing and bonding, and inspired us to create a small and private artist’s retreat of our own this year in Matfield Green, Kansas, named Matfield Outpost. We are renovating the 8-acre property this winter, and plan to open for artists/visitors and their families in the spring of 2014. The town of Matfield Green (pop. 46) is nestled in an art-friendly community in the geographically distinctive Flint Hills region of Kansas. In and around the region are countless flowers, grasses, rocks, clouds and stars for people big and small to explore through creativity and connection.

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Laura Berman's color-saturated works investigate the relationships and recombination of forms tied to her nomadic history of endless relocation and travel. She has exhibited her work at numerous galleries and museums around the country and internationally, and is an Associate Professor of Printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute. To see more of her work, visit www.laurabermanprojects.com

Guy Ben-Ner at the MCA and beyond

stills from Guy Ben-Ner's video, "Stealing Beauty" (2007)

The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition Homebodies closes on October 13th, and with it a chance to see curator Naomi Beckwith’s multifaceted and thoroughly engaging look at the concept of “home” through the work of more than 30 artists from six continents. If you haven't seen it yet, go.

The show features some important early feminist works addressing domesticity (including Martha Rosler’s deadpan “Semiotics of the Kitchen” and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ “Washing/Tracks/Maintenance”), but given its thematic focus you'll find it surprisingly hard to find any work in Homebodies that references child-rearing. The void of parenthood exists even here, in part a reminder that while the tension between women’s domestic roles and art careers may have diffused some since the 1970s, it still impacts the kinds of work we make.

The two works in the show that do address parenting by the artists themselves are both by dads: a group of playful interactive installations by Alberto Aguilar (interviewed for Cultural ReProducers here), and Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner’s video, 'Stealing Beauty,' which I’d been wanting to see for a long time.

Guy Ben-Ner became a father while he was still an art student, an event that profoundly

still from House Hold (2001)

impacted his life and his art practice. In an unpublished interview with artist Boaz Arad, he said “I had to choose between being a bad father away from home a lot, and being a good father, staying at home and making concessions. To work at home is a type of compromise.”  His feelings about these compromises are clearly mixed, as evidenced by work like 'House Hold' (2001), in which Ben-Ner films himself trapped under a crib by his kids. Nonetheless his family has become an integral part of his work, their presence adding complexity and humor to his explorations of exile, property, and private versus public space.

In 'Stealing Beauty' (2007), currently on view as part of the Homebodies exhibition, the artist and his family take over the display rooms of an IKEA store as the stage set for their own awkward anarchist sitcom. Filmed with hidden cameras and without permission, the fictionalized family in Stealing Beauty argues issues of ownership, inheritance and authority around stylish dining room tables and living room couches with the price tags dangling and shoppers browsing around them. After a series of scenes in which Ben-Ner’s capitalist patriarch is challenged by his family, the son and daughter deliver an earnest manifesto, urging viewers to steal both public and private property.

It’s hard to imagine a similar project being undertaken with anyone but the artist’s own family. For one thing, how would you negotiate such a project with anyone else’s kids? The presence of children here adds charm and also an edge of discomfort. What do the children make of all this? How do they feel about participating in such a public spectacle? It's worth noting that a woman artist making similar work would probably be criticized for being a delinquent mother.

Ben-Ner is now divorced (a process also documented in his work) and has a third child with his current partner. His recent video 'Soundtrack,' which recently screened at Chicago’s Aspect Ratio, features his toddler gleefully responding to fire, broken dishware, and other domestic disasters created in tandem with the opening soundtrack of the film "the War of the Roses." The work also includes great performances by his older two kids, now both in their teens. They all seem to be having an awful lot of fun. In a complicated sort of way, Guy Ben-Ner’s work demonstrates that while there are plenty of risks and challenges, making art while parenting can be a satisfying and fruitful endeavor.

excerpts from Guy Ben-Ner's "Stealing Beauty"

Cultural ReProducers Event Series

It's official -- Cultural ReProducers has been awarded a grant from the Propeller Fund to support a series of four exciting art events at art spaces throughout Chicago in 2014!

 

Raising children who value and engage with the arts is an act that fosters creative thinking, shapes public dialogue, and has long term impacts on culture as a whole. Despite this, both young children and parents are usually left out of the discourse of the art world because of how its institutions structure the possibility of participation.

Challenges include the hours of typical art openings and lectures, which typically fall during the hours that disrupt the evening dinner/bedtime ritual for many families, and often requires coordinating paid childcare. For those who choose to bring young children along, it can be challenging to truly converse or participate (kids are understandably fussy in a room full of loud adults and things they can't touch).

The Cultural ReProducers Event Series is a simple project that allows parents with small children participate more actively in the art community at large. We will host events at four different art venues throughout the city on Saturday mornings, during hours that make it possible for most families with small children to attend. 

We're working with each venue to program a compelling lecture, performance, or other event in conjunction with exhibitions on view.

Unlike the average art event, free on-site childcare will be provided  in a nearby room throughout the program, with creative activities linked to the event their parents are attending. There will be a limit of 18 children in the childcare area at each venue (you can pre-register to ensure your spot) but parents are also free to keep their kids with them. And of course non-parents are also welcome. Each event is followed by an informal all-ages reception with light refreshments, allowing for the possibility of dialogue, connection, and tasty snacks.

Our goal is twofold: to give parents and their kids the chance to participate as critical members of the arts community, and also to inspire cultural institutions to better serve artists and audiences, providing positive models for future programming.  

 If you have ideas about venues or events you'd like to see us partner with in the future, please be in touch! You can follow posts about upcoming and past events in the series HERE and if you're an institution working to make events more accessible to artist-parents, download the Cultural ReProducers Event Guidelines.

Playground Party and the Terrain Biennial

Last weekend Cultural ReProducers held its first two public events, so here's a quick recap for those who couldn't make it:

Saturday was our informal Playground Party at Chicago’s Winnemac Park, on what turned out to be one of the most sunny and beautiful days of the year. About 20 parents showed up for this cultural worker playdate, with kids ranging in age from seven weeks to 6 years old. It was lovely to relax, play, and talk with many interesting people in one place, including curators, gallerists, radio and podcasters, and artists of all kinds. Matt Baron from the indie children’s band Future Hits even stopped by to talk with potential collaborators and hand out flyers for upcoming shows. We look forward to more events like this in the coming months. Let us know if you'd like to help organize one in your area!

The very next day, we hit the opening block party of the Terrain Biennial, where we were invited to host an hour-long Optimistic Architecture workshop as a part of fellow Cultural ReProducer Alberto Aguilar’s Minivan BOOTH project. The weather was undeniably lousy: cold rain poured down from morning til late afternoon. But that didn’t stop a good crowd of enthusiastic biennial-goers from coming out anyway. Everyone mingled over popcorn and potluck inside the home of artist and organizer Sabina Ott, and chatted around Robert Gero’s porch-specific installation out front. Claire Ashley’s gigantic inflated sculpture made the gray street outside more colorful even if the rain thwarted its planned performances. Given the weather, we weren’t expecting much of a turnout at our BOOTH, but the sight of homemade playdough and drawing materials drew a steady stream of participants -– parents, non-parents, and lots of kids -- all crowded under a tarp and various propped umbrellas to stay dry. The speculative architecture premise was quickly lost in the excitement of making pretend food and animals and then squishing them, but the conversation was great, and we got one excellent proposal for a structure featuring art about the Avengers, designed by the young son of a museum curator.

Want to join us next time? Want to help plan or host an event near you? Get in touch and ask to join our mailing list: culturalreproducers @ gmail.com

A Suburban Peculiarity For a Teen

There always seems to be some amount of angst out there that the passionate pursuit of artistic interests will somehow damage one's kids. In reading up on The Suburban, the legendary independent artspace run by artists Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam in their suburban back yard, I came across this lovely short essay written by their oldest son, Peter, about growing up surrounded by art and artists. It seemed an appropriate thing to share here:

One of the first things my Advanced Placement European History teacher, who I have grown to thoroughly respect, said to us, came in a class discussion about about the children of historical figures. "I want each of you to go home and thank your parents for not being artists," she said. "The children of artists are the ones who lose their minds, fall into madness or commit suicide, and I wouldn't want any of you to turn out that way."

Her commentary was obviously striking: I am not only the child of two artists, but I am constantly surrounded by art and its supplementary activities (its viewing, selling, and making). The nucleus of this part of my life lies in the tiny yellow building formerly attached to my garage. My parents call it The Suburban.

photo by Zachary Johnson from his  Suburban review and interview

The Suburban is a social peculiarity that I have not yet learned to cope with. Since its conception in my preteens, The Suburban has created a varying array of effects on my life, the majority being positive. I have dissected my entire record collection with a British artist named Simon, I have shared fruity non-alcoholic drinks with my friend Sam at a fully functional tiki-bar-cum-art-installation, and developed to some degree, an understanding of what constitutes contemporary art.

However, life within intimate proximity to an art gallery is not entirely beneficial for a self-conscious teenager and his ten-year old brother. While awkwardness does arise when sharing a house with half-a-dozen large, unshaven Scandinavians, the major difficulty of living with The Suburban is explaining the idea and function of it to the more traditionally "suburban" mothers of my friends.
"Were your parents throwing a party at your house on Saturday?"
Yes, it was an art opening."
At this point I try to convince her that The Suburban is a serious pursuit of my parents, and that is has a "real" significance in the art-world. What this significance is I do not know.
Among my peers, The Suburban has brought me neither recognizable fame, (I can't imagine "My garage is also an art gallery" would serve as a successful pick-up line) nor overwhelming scorn. My general rule is to discuss the gallery and its work only with close friends or those who question what "The Suburban" means on our household's telephone answering machine prompt. My reasoning for this is simple; debates about the artistic merit of a fictional Swedish Citizen Recruitment Center are not something I enjoy taking part in, let alone fully understanding.

Because of The Suburban and my parents' choice of career and life style, I have seen and learned to appreciate art on levels unknown to my peers. From Marfa, Texas, to Budapest, I have traveled the world to see it. I have eaten bratwurst in my yard with those who make it. I have traded my bedroom away for weeks to Englishmen for duty-free tubes of Toblerone chocolate. For this uncommon exposure, it should have been the request of my history teacher to come home and thank my parents for becoming artists.

- Peter Ribic