Thesis, MA in Art Education/Curriculum Studies: Community-based Art Making: Examining the Experience of the Artist, Participants, and Audience in the Normalizing Extended Breastfeeding Project (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mother Making: Artistic Practice and the Formation of a Mother
My artistic practice focuses on the lived experience of motherhood as the primary point of departure. This text details my decision making process in the creation and display of the artwork included in my Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibit, A Bringing Forth, at George Mason University in March 2016. I recount the ways my studio practice was formed specifically by the experience of pregnancy, birth and caretaking and the ways in which the practice has enabled and supported these experiences. A Bringing Forth included drawings, paintings, sculptures, video art and an annotated prose poem created as auto-ethnographic work focusing on acts of care performed during my daughter’s first year. The social, cultural, economic, and biological circumstances that influenced this personal experience and the ways these concepts are represented through the art objects and exhibition decisions are detailed in this article.
Artist Mothers and Virtual Collectives: Making Art and Community from Home
2020
Artists who are mothers are still disadvantaged in the trajectory of their careers by the patriarchal institutions of motherhood and the art world as well as by the physical realities of mothering that may prevent them from pursuing their professional creative practices. Despite the contemporary discourse around equality in the home and the workplace, women still carry the burden of the majority of domestic chores. The transformative experiences of pregnancy, giving birth, and mothering are often dismissed by professionals in the art world, a disavowal that may exaggerate the split between one’s artistic and maternal selves. This failure of recognition within the art world may be deleterious to a mother artist’s sense of wellbeing. Conversely, art that embodies maternal experience may be beneficial to the wellbeing of mothers who may otherwise only be exposed to images of idealized motherhood in mainstream visual culture. This article examines the ways in which technology and the In...
Live Art and Motherhood: A Study Room Guide on Live Art and the Maternal
2016
This Study Room Guide on Live Art and Motherhood features fourteen individual artists and two artist collectives working in the mediums of Live Art and performance around the topic of the maternal. Motherhood and the maternal are difficult terms. There is an inherent essentialism and biology is often assumed. For us, motherhood refers to the lived experience of mothering regardless of our route to it, whereas the maternal refers to the study of and representations of motherhood. All of the contributors in this volume are mothers but we hope this volume is of interest to both those who have cared for children and those who have not, after all, we all have direct experience of being m/othered. We are all first of all natals before we are mortals (thank you Hannah Arendt).
Maternal art practice: emerging field of artistic enquiry into motherhood, care and time
The Maternal in Creative Work Intergenerational Discussions on Motherhood and Art, 1st Edition, 2019
This edited collection explores, challenges and critiques various modes and forms of art practice which deal with the maternal. We invited artists, theorists and cultural workers to discuss their approach to what Sarah Ruddick (1989) calls ‘maternal thinking’, a unity of refl ection, judgment and emotion about motherhood. The collection also addresses what Ruddick has always contested, that there is a profound need for sustained political and intellectual effort before maternal thinking can be heard and acknowledged in the public domain. So, ultimately, this edited collection seeks to understand how art allows practitioners to reimagine the processes that solidify the mother as metaphor and trope in culture. Maternal art practice is an encompassing term that I use to describe a set of art practices which explore, reflect and critique the dominant cultural notion of motherhood and the role of ‘the mother’ in contemporary art practice. I believe that maternal art practice is opening up new territories where artists can productively contribute to a wider set of political and philosophical discussions on care, labour and time.
The Central, Yet Invisible, Labor of Motherhood in Art
Hyperallergic, 2020
A review of the edited volume "Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity," edited by Rachel Epp Buller and Charles Reeve. https://hyperallergic.com/562684/inappropriate-bodies-art-design-and-maternity/
Methodological Innovations Online, 2013
In this paper we highlight the way in which research around teenage pregnancy has been commissioned in relation to a specific agenda. The pervasive political discourse authoritatively places teenage parents' experiences outside of the norm, constructing teenage pregnancy as negative for young women, their children and wider society. Over several years we have worked with young mothers to produce visual resources including storyboards, story booklets and film which serve to challenge this dominant discourse. These resources have been used in training and cascaded to health and social care professionals to provide a more holistic picture of the lives of young parents which, in turn, has influenced changes in professional practice. We have found visual images to be a powerful way of encouraging practitioners, young people and wider society to question and reflect on stereotypes which permeate contemporary discourse relating to teenage parents. However, whilst using the arts has led to some very positive experiences for participants who have been able to utilise a range of art based mediums to express and share their lived reality with others, some methods-visual methods in particular-raise a number of ethical, moral and methodological issues. We suggest that whilst there is no doubt that arts based approaches to research and evaluation can be rewarding for both participants and researchers, our work with young mothers highlights tensions and challenges in utilising this approach.
Review of Reconciling Art and Mothering by Dr. Rachel Epp Buller (Ed.)
Reconciling Art and Mothering, by Dr. Rachel Epp Buller (Ed.), Routledge, 2012, 332 pages, 149.95/£75.99;Paperback,2016,149.95/£75.99; Paperback, 2016, 149.95/£75.99;Paperback,2016,54.95, ISBN-13: 978-1409426134, ISBN-10: 1409426130 How to Cite: Schaer, M., (2017). Review of Reconciling Art and Mothering. Studies in the Maternal. 9(1), p.10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/sim.242
This feminist research has its aim to analyze the balance of gender roles of contemporary female artists who become mothers and start combining art making and maternal practices. Using methods of in-depth interviews and observations we study how women are inscribed into gender institute of motherhood, and how they find the possibilities to resolve the conflict of roles. In our focus - professional artistic practices of a female artist after childbirth, their co-existence with practices of intensive-extended mothering as well as problematization of gender role balance – of the mother and the artist. Its successful combination directly influences future careers of female Artist and her sustainability in the arts in general. Key words: intensive-extended mothering, artist-mother’s balance of gender roles, sociology of art, feminism, cultural production