Save the Dates: Motherhood + Art Panels Galore!

The intersection of motherhood and art seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days, and it's the subject of a whole slew of amazing (and all FREE) public panels exploring career, art practice, feminism, and motherhood taking place this February in Chicago. Christa Donner will discuss Cultural ReProducers on two separate panels, along with a lot of incredibly inspiring artists, curators, historians and critics. We hope to see some of you at these events, and look forward to future conversations online and in person.

Friday, February 14th, 10am - 5pm (MOTHERHOOD from 1-3pm)
TRACERS TAKES ON FEMINISM: LGBTQ, MOTHERHOOD, AND RACE
ThreeWalls / 119 N. Peoria / 2C / Chicago, IL

This Valentine's Day, grab your sweeheart and take the day to take in three panels on three topics hosted by the feminist book club TRACERS at ThreeWalls (As an added bonus, you can check out the amazing Faith Wilding retrospective while you're there).

MOTHERHOOD Panelists include Lorelei Stewart (moderator), Christa Donner
, Brittany Southworth Laflamme
, Judy Ledgerwood
, Laura Letinsky
, Romi Crawford
, Julie Rodrigues Widholm
, and Christine Tarkowski.

for information on the full day of events, visit the headline link above!

Saturday, February 15th, 9am - 5pm
THE 'M' WORD:  THE FEMINIST ART PROJECT DAY OF PANELS AT THE CAA

Columbia College Chicago / Stage Two / 618 S. Michigan Ave / 2nd floor, Chicago, IL

This year, The Feminist Art Project presents an entire DAY of panels at the annual College Art Association (CAA) Conference, exploring the representation of the maternal in art and visual culture. Topics of discussion include art historical readings of maternity, the maternal body, exhibitions that address maternity/motherhood, collaboration with children, and what it means to be a mother and an artist today in relationship to the issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G on artists/mothers! Cultural ReProducers will participate in the panel on Exhibitionary / Curatorial practice.

Below is a brief rundown of the day's events. For panelists and more detailed information, check out the TCAF Day of Panels site. Note: The following panels are free and open to the public. You do NOT have to be a member of the CAA or registered for the conference to attend.

9:10-10:30am
Historical Perspectives on Representing the Maternal
Building upon burgeoning scholarship such as Rachel Epp Buller's anthology Reconciling Art and Motherhood, Myrel Chernick's and Jennie Klein's The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, and the work of the MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics) network, this panel presents historical perspectives on maternal subject positions and the depiction of maternal imagery.

10:40 am-12pm
Motherhood and the Exhibitionary Platform: Considering the Implications of Maternity Through the Curatorial Lens
This session will address exhibitions that have been premised upon the idea of motherhood and the maternal, within the broader context of feminism and the history and theory of exhibition making. In addition to considering the curatorial role itself through a "curator as maternalist" paradigm, presentations will reflect various curatorial methodologies from traditional museum scale exhibitions to hybrid or itinerant curatorial projects that engage various forms of social space, including the home. By bringing together various critical feminist positions alongside divergent curatorial strategies the goal of this session is to chart an evolution of practice via exemplary models for thinking and doing.

12:40-2pm
From Sentiment to Sexuality: Revisiting the Maternal Body as Threat
This panel revisits the "threat" of the maternal body, both in practice and theory. Amongst other topics, papers will address the historical rejection of sentimentality by feminist artist mothers, the sexuality of the mother-child relationship, non-reproductive and non-heteronormative maternal bodies, and the changing perspectives on essentialism and the female/maternal body today.

2:10-3:30pm
Mothers / Artists / Children
What are the implications when an artist brings her children into her work? Where is the line between collaboration and exploitation? When can children give consent, or even be considered artists in their own right? This panel addresses twentieth-century and contemporary incarnations of the often-controversial mother / artist / child triangle.

3:40-5pm
Revisiting M/E/A/N/I/N/G #12
In 1992, Susan Bee and Mira Schor, editors of the art journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G, published FORUM: ON MOTHERHOOD, ART, AND APPLE PIE. They invited a group of artist/mothers to respond to a series of questions about their artistic careers and lives as mothers. Although none of the women regretted becoming mothers, most of them talked about their difficult choices, and how they maintained a strict separation between family and studio practice. Twenty years later, we believe we are seeing many more women who are interested in integrating their familial and artistic lives. After a short statement from Susan Bee, five artists respond to the M/E/A/N/I/N/G issue in relationship to their lives and work now.

..........................................................................................

For those of you not in Chicago this February, we'll post any video/audio online as soon as we can get our hands on it. In the meantime, you can read/watch/listen to these great panels on the topic:

Colloquy: Parenthood in the Art World (MOCA Los Angeles, 2013)
Taking Custody: The Double Life of the Artist Mother (Pratt, NYC, 2012)
Forum: On Motherhood, Art, and Apple Pie M/E/A/N/I/N/G #12 (1992)

Interview: Selina Trepp

still from Thinking About Inheritance, November 11, 2011

Selina Trepp  is a Swiss-American artist whose work explores economy and improvisation. Finding a balance between the intuitive and conceptual is a goal, living a life of adventure is a way, embarrassment is often the result. Growing up in a commune in a conservative small town in Switzerland taught her that there is strength in the position of the outsider. “If in doubt, be radical” is the best advice she ever got.

Selina's artistic output comes in a multitude of media: installation, video, drawing, painting, photography and sculpture. She has also developed a practice combining singing with real-time improvised video projections and performs as half of the duo Spectralina, an audiovisual collaboration with her husband Dan Bitney. Her work is widely exhibited internationally and has received numerous awards and honors including the Swiss Art Award and the Illinois Arts council Fellowship. As the mother of a toddler, Selina also manages to tackle both artmaking and parenting with a creative drive that's nothing short of incredible. We're honored to share her take on both here:

CR:  Tell us a little bit about your child in your own words.

Selina: Maxine is 2.5 years old. She is an intense but sweet spirit who likes to look and to take things in in depth. She is very focused and determined. She has the sweetest smile.

Nap Animation, from a series created
only during the unpredictable spaces 
of naptime, using Maxine's markers.

CR: Your studio practice has undergone some major changes in the past few years. How would you say parenthood has affected your work?

Selina: The other day I realized that I went from having a social practice to having an antisocial practice.

What I need my work to do for me has shifted greatly since becoming a mother. Pre-Maxine I mostly made video installations, for which I collaborated closely with other artists and which needed to be installed site specifically. My art mostly took place outside the studio and had a strong relational component. Now that I am constantly social in my home life, I want to go to the studio to be alone; I have no desire to collaborate. The studio is my place to play with materials and ideas, to tell stories and to experiment. It is also the place in which I get complete respite from being a mother. When I am there I focus on practice, on being fluid. Making images for me has become a performance, an improvisation.

My method of dealing with the obvious drawbacks of parenthood -- less time and less money -- have been to turn them into assets. Less time has resulted in more focus, thus more productivity. The effect of less money has brought me to the main conceptual restraint that I am currently working with: I work with what I have. I do not bring anything into my studio, instead I use and reuse all that has accumulated in there over the years. It is a slowly depleting system. I began this experiment in October 2012.

Sinks, archival inkjet print of studio photograph

 

 

I am now at an interesting point with this project: base materials are becoming sparse, things have run out. This constraint necessarily begins to affect the form of the work. Now when I make, the challenge is to see the potential of things. My work is changing with the circumstances. What remains is that the camera brings all parts together, flattened into a single reality.

I also see this mode of production in itself as a political position. While I do not care about making the message of my work an overtly political one, I use my actions, my production choices of non-consumption and recycling, to express my stance.

CR: How has having a child affected your relationship with the art world? What alternative structures might make that world more inclusive for artists with families?

Selina: I don’t go out as often and feel a bit disconnected to the scene. On the other hand, not going out has made me better about asking people to come to me, either in the studio or for conversation at my house. For the most part people are respectful and supportive of the fact that Dan and I are trying to raise a child while still having a full creative life. We have had amazing experiences with people who put on shows and hosted us with Maxine, who helped make things possible. I am more productive than ever, more motivated and more focused.

Rainbow, archival inkjet print, 2011

That being said, I have had my share of bad “art experiences” directly related to my status as mother. The most jarring happened right before I had Maxine. The gallery I worked with in Switzerland dumped me on some vague pretenses via email when I was 8 months pregnant. Later I learned that one of the two owners has a stated policy of not working with women who have small children. He talks about this policy in seminars for professional practices for artists. His argument for this is “that he cannot work with artists who take a break, who are not 100% dedicated to their art.” Yikes. 

Within the art community in general I would like for there to be more structural support for families to participate. Free childcare during lectures so parents can attend without needing to spend a lot of money, tours for people with kids, gallery openings beginning at 5pm, free entry to cultural and educational institutions for parents with kids would all be great. Artist residencies that provide childcare, artist residencies that allow the residents to bring their families, artist grants that fund childcare, travel grants for entire families. All these are much-needed, not just for the families, but because the contact with children enriches the entire arts community.

My method of dealing with the obvious drawbacks of parenthood -- less time and less money -- have been to turn them into assets.

Outside the specific needs parent-artists have, I see many ways that current structures are in opposition to balanced family lives. Most of the people I know fall into a pattern in which at least one of the partners works full time, while the other is a full time parent/caretaker. This is necessary to keep benefits and to maximize the families earning power. The most profound change that is needed, in my eyes, is to create a structure that enables both parents to equally participate in the rearing of their children. This would require more quality part-time work or job-sharing options, the ability to purchase affordable healthcare, and free quality education for everyone.



CR: How did you get back into a studio practice after having a newborn? Any advice to other artist-parents for getting through that phase?

Selina: I worked harder than I had ever worked while I was pregnant and had a solid body of work done by the time Maxine was born. I am very glad things worked out this way, as it allowed me to be relaxed while spending quality time with Maxine in those first months, but also ensured that I had shows lined up for the first year of her life without needing to produce new work for them. I would have been nervous not showing at all during that first year especially, and it was good for my mental state to escape the bubble here and there.

Nursing made it hard to be away from Maxine for more than a few hours at a time, and not sleeping made it hard to focus. Taking long daily walks with the baby was great in the sense that I did think a lot, and all those thoughts eventually found their way into work and made it stronger. I returned to a solid studio practice once Maxine was a bit over a year old.

In the first year of Maxine’s life my active studio practice was mostly focused on Spectralina, partially because working on Spectralina happens more in our home as opposed to the studio, and partially because we were so tight as a family unit that we wanted to do everything together.

Selina Trepp, Motherhood Flowchart After One Year of Motherhood, pencil on paper, 2012

CR:  What's the balance now between parenthood, art making, and teaching? What strategies might you recommend to other artist-parents?

Selina: I am very lucky to be in a situation in which my husband Dan and I are able and committed to sharing the work and pleasure of raising Maxine as equally as possible. Keeping things equal isn’t always easy. It requires constant renegotiation and adjustment, as we fluctuate between intensely working on projects, performing, exhibiting, teaching and having down time.

Spectralina, promotional photo with nursing Maxine

In general we split up the days into two shifts, giving each of us half a day to be with Maxine and half a day to use as needed. Up until a few months ago we had a babysitter one afternoon per week. Now Maxine attends a co-op daycare two days per week. When I am teaching, Dan is with Maxine one of the days, and the other she is in playgroup. This way when Dan is away on tour I only have half the headache of figuring out what to do with Maxine, while still being guaranteed a full day in the studio the day she’s in playgroup.

A difficulty we didn’t consider before having Maxine was that collaborating and performing together means that we need somebody to watch her while we are working, and that costs money. When we perform we need to make this work as a family: it is a priority that Maxine is happy. The last two years have been a lesson in finding playgrounds everywhere we go. We learned that a six-month-old baby is much easier to travel with than a 2-year-old toddler and that the first night in a new place is never easy.

The truth is, if it’s hard for Maxine, it is hard for all of us. We get most work done at home. We still love to travel, but it can be disruptive. If we do it, we try to do it in a way that works for all of us. Keeping that in mind we’ve learned to focus our energy [only] on projects that are financially or creatively rewarding, or, ideally, both.

Residency Report: Dylan Miner at the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico

work in progress in Dylan Miner's SFAI studio

Residency Report is an ongoing series of posts from artists undertaking creative residencies with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience.

Because of the relevance of the Santa Fe Art Institute's new Family Residency Initiative, we're pleased to feature a special dual report from Dylan Miner and Helen Knowles, two artists who were among the first to participate in the program. Here the artist, activist, curator and historian Dylan Miner shares his perspective.

This past summer, I spent time at the Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI) as both an Artist-in-Residency (AiR) and Visiting Artist (VA).  SFAI has an interesting two-tier system that invites a Visiting Artist each month.  The VAs give a public lecture, receive a small stipend, and usually hang a solo exhibition. The AiRs are selected from a pool of invited artists, as well as those who apply for a residency.  Once at SFAI, both residents and visiting artists have the same access and privileges.Since I was both an AiR during July and a Visiting Artist during August, I was able to string together two residencies with a brief family trip in the middle.  As artists with children know, trying to do a residency can be quite difficult while trying to balance family obligations.  While some residencies will allow families, most specifically ask that artists not bring their families.  Those that are more open are not generally equipped to handle the extra needs of children or artists with children.  I have even experienced, on occasion, situations when artists without children were unkind to those who did bring family.  After all, a residency places various individuals in an immersive residential experience.

I have always been interested in letting my daughters experience the positive and negative

realities of being an artist.  My partner, Prof. Estrella Torrez, and I have always felt that our daughters (Reina, age 15 and Mexica Tiahui, age 11) should be integrated into all aspects of our lives. Reina was born when we were young undergraduate students and Mexica born during graduate school. As parents we have always desired to include our children in our academic and artistic lives.

It is common for me to use the small stipends I receive from exhibitions and lecture to purchase extra plane tickets so that my children and partner can be involved in my life as an artist.  Much of this has to do with my artistic practice, which focuses heavily on social justice and employs cross-generational pedagogy as an artistic mode. While exhibiting in Australia in 2012, the four of us traveled across Queensland working with urban and rural Indigenous communities.  That same year Estrella traveled with me for a solo exhibition in Tromsø, Norway, where I exhibited in a gallery in a building owned by the Sámi Reindeer Herder’s Association.   Unfortunately, Reina and Mexica were unable to attend because of their school schedules (their grandparents stayed with them while Estrella and I were in the Arctic).  On each of these experiences, traveling and working as a family was paramount to the artwork itself.I share this information because I think it is crucial that residencies like the Santa Fe Art Institute offer space for artists with children.  Chiracahua Apache curator Nancy Mithlo writes about the way that Indigenous arts infrastructures offer collective and mutually-beneficial components that do not exist in the mainstream.  For Mithlo, this Indigenous practice includes ‘work that is long-term, mutually meaningful, reciprocal, and with mentorship—all collective constructs.’[i]  Inherent in these Indigenous constructs are multi-generational practices.  For me, including my children in my practice is part-and-parcel to my identity as an Indigenous person.  For SFAI to create a space where artists can live and work with their families is one of the most powerful decisions that the institution could make.  For this, we must former Residency Director Katie Avery (Iñupiaq) who advocated that SFAI try a residency just for artists and their children.

During our month long family residency there were four residents who brought 1-2 children each.  Two of us also had our partners stay with us for parts of the residencies.  Importantly, SFAI conducts arts education camps during the summer and allowed the residents’ children to attend for free.  This decision was doubly meaningful.  It meant that artists could work for 6-8 hours while their children were also working on arts projects.  This established long-term relationships between the children, who still stay in contact via social media.  The children would hang out in the evenings, using the Institute’s computers or walking to the gym facilities on the university campus where SFAI is located.  All said, this left lots of time in the evening for exploration and family time, as well as time for the children to play together and the residents to develop projects relationships.  Meals were often communal, which felt open and not a requirement.  I have been in residencies where this felt like a burden more than a privilege.  During the family residency, it was definitely time well spent. 

Since I stayed for the family residency as well as returning without my family for a shorter stay as the AiR, I was shocked to recognize the very real group dynamics that existed between the different residences, even in the same institution. I am always surprised at the way that group dynamics develop and during my three residencies at SFAI can say, without a doubt, that the family residency was the most enjoyable.
The rooms are comfortable, while the studios are quite large.  SFAI offers two vehicles for resident usage. Santa Fe and nearby Albuquerque are great places to stay and work on one’s art.  As a printmaker, it would have been nice to have access to a print studio, and access to large-scale digital printers would likewise been beneficial.  That said, the staff at SFAI were great, and their willingness not only to accommodate families but to make us feel welcome was something that SFAI must be commended for.

[i] Nancy Mithlo (2012).  ‘No Word for Art in Our language?: Old Questions, New Paradigms.’ Wicazo Sa Review (Spring), 120.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Dylan Miner (Métis) is Associate Professor at Michigan State University, where he coordinates a new Indigenous Contemporary Art Initiative. He holds a PhD from the University of New Mexico and has published more than fifty journal articles, book chapters, critical essays and encyclopedia entries. In 2010, he was awarded an Artist Leadership Fellowship from the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution). Since 2010, he has been featured in thirteen solo exhibitions and been artist-in-residence at institutions such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, École supérieure des beaux-arts in Nantes and Santa Fe Art Institute. His work has been the subject of articles in publications including ARTnews, Indian Country Today, First American Art Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian and Chicago Sun-Times. Miner is descended from the Miner-Brissette-L’Hirondelle-Kennedy families with ancestral ties to Indigenous communities in the Great Lakes, Prairies and subarctic regions.

Residency Report: Helen Knowles at the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico

Helen Knowles and family in Santa Fe, NM

Residency Report is 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.
Because of the relevance of the Santa Fe Art Institute's new Family Residency Initiative, we're pleased to feature a special dual report from Dylan Miner and Helen Knowles, two artists who were among the first to participate in the program. Here artist and curator Helen Knowles shares her experience at SFAI:
I travelled from the UK to the wild west of America last June and July to carry out a research project and a family artist residency at the SFAI in Santa Fe. Originally, I happened to find myself in this part of the world when I travelled there in 2012 to meet and interview the artist Judy Chicago, and to hand-carry back to the UK two art works from her 1980’s Birth Project which she had donated to the Birth Rites Collection I curate. I immediately found myself in awe of the landscape and the people, the vast open spaces and Native culture. It was this experience that catapulted me to actually apply to the SFAI as I heard that they were thinking about a new kind of residency whereby we artists could bring along our families. Well that seemed like an absolute first in the art world!

The Birthing of Azheyo Aeoro, from the YouTube Series

I managed to fund the trip through an Arts Council England grant to carry out the project Birth Online:Birth Offline, a cross-cultural participatory arts project exploring varying communities contemporary and shifting perspectives on birth in the digital age. Over the past ten years childbirth has become increasingly visible via television, print and online media. Women’s need to document and publish their own birth on online platforms has exploded and I wanted to meet with Native women and midwives to see how they might feel about this phenomena. I have also been working here in the UK with communities around the northwest of England and elsewhere to gauge their responses and ideas about birth in the digital age. This work is directly linked to a recent body of work which I produced called Youtube Portraits series whereby I appropriated imagery from the vast library of birth films found online to create seven large-scale screenprints. Exposing a screen with a digital projector, I created images that oscillate between the figurative and abstraction. By selecting footage that portrays the women’s euphoria, I captured the intense emotion through a heightened colour contrast, challenging the separation between women as mothers and women as sexual entities.

Native-American birth imagery etched into the Puye Cliffs

The point of this research in the US was to find material and ideas for a new exhibition of artwork on the subject. What was so incredible about being at the Santa Fe Arts Institute was the opportunity to meet other artists and their families and learn more about American culture and Native culture by living and working alongside the adults and kids. The super modernist space of the Institute was inspiring and practical. On arrival we were given our rooms: the kids were able to share a fantastic double room right next to me and my partner Ivan’s room. Our studios were allotted around the other side of the central quad to our living quarters. Huge and airy – quite unlike anything I have ever used in the UK bar my initial studio when I was student at the  Glasgow School of Art.

But the best thing ever (and I say this not because I wanted time away from my kids) was that Olaf and Leo were genuinely excited every day to attend the summer school. Each morning we would wake up with the New Mexico sunshine and eat breakfast around the table with all the families, it was comical to see how we all parented our kids! Then there would be a period of time where all the kids ran around the giant space together, sometimes climbing the trees in the quad, sometimes teaching each other how to use Instagram, sometimes skating on the near-perfect concrete pavements just outside the centre.  Around 9.30 am we would share in taking the whole cohort across Santa Fe to the where the summer camp was based. Amazingly, the Institute also had a fleet of cars we could use and this was an absolute life-saver. This meant I was free from about 9.30am to about 4.30pm to explore the landscape and meet up with various individuals. And frankly, despite an incredible studio, having the chance to be out in that desert is what really stays with me. In the evenings after dinner either in or outside of the centre, when all children were finally shattered from all their hip hop, puppetry, installation making and dance, I would saunter along to my studio in the evening quiet.

Being around other artists who are similarly parents was particularly conducive as we all connected with each other fundamentally. The staff at SFAI were also brilliant and seemed to enjoy the probably quite different atmosphere of having families around. Above all, it was the opportunity to spend an extended length of time abroad without having to be away from my family. I felt proud to have given them that experience and know it will stay with them as much as it has stayed with me.

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Helen Knowles (b.1975) is an artist and curator of Birth Rites Collection.  She studied at Glasgow School of Art and lives and works in Manchester. Recent exhibitions include; 'Private View : Public Birth', GV Art, London, Women’s Art Library, Kingsway Corridor Programme, Goldsmiths University (2013); Life is Beautiful’, Galerie Deadfly, Berlin (2012); Digital Romantics, Dean Clough Gallery (2012) and Walls are Talking, Whitworth Art Gallery (2010). A recipient of awards from Arts Council England, The Amateurs Trust and winner of The Great Art Prize, Neo Art Prize (2012). Her work is held in public and private collections including The Whitworth Art Gallery, Tate Library and Archive, Museum of Motherhood, New York and Birth Rites Collection, Joan Flasch Artist Book Collections, Gallery Oldham and MMU Special Collections. Helen has carried out artist residencies at Jodrell Bank Science Centre in 1999-2001 as part of the setting up scheme, AA2A at UCLAN in 2002 and recently she went to New Mexico in the summer of 2013 to carry out a research project called Birth Online: Birth Offline and to undertake an artist residency at the Santa Fe Arts Insititute.

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