M.A.M.A. Issue n.24: Elisabeth Schön and Judy Swann
The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 24th edition of this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA
October, 2017 Art by Elisabeth Schön Words by Judy Swann
Art by Elisabeth Schön
The postpartum period is a surreal time and space that can hurt or heal a woman but either way she’ll never forget it with her in body in flux and a human being that just came through her and is utterly dependent on her for survival. Their meeting binds them as she’s confronted with her biology and its vulnerability.
ZMOTHERINE
Words by Judy Swann
Fool
I threw rose petals on the ground
and her pink slippers slid on that silky surface,
the Muse, when she came just now.
Her small hooves have worn every fabric, every skin,
every color, my kids
try them on when she slips them off.
Her little goat horns wobbled and she scolded,
“Why am I not connecting? Why so many
dreams and so little in my basket, Fool?”
By ‘Fool’ she meant ‘Innocent Child.’
She said, and I could see her beard,
she said, “Tell me that you love me.”
“I am,” I said, “not sleeping alone.”
She said, “Tell me that you love me.”
I said she was always on my mind, I called
As often as I could. She said,
“Tell me that you love me.” I said “I’ve spent twenty years,
two husbands, and all my thrift on those roses.”
Judy Swann is a poet, essayist, translator, mom, blogger, and bicycle commuter, whose work has been published in many venues both in print and online, including the Mom Egg Review. Her son is (always) on his way home. Her book, We Are All Well: The Letters of Nora Hall has given her great joy. She loves. She lives in Ithaca, NY.
M.A.M.A. Issue n.23: Jane Glennie and Sarah Goshal
The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 23rd edition of this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA
April, 2017 Jane Glennie
Art by Jane Glennie
Container//contained 2012-2014
In psychoanalysis the container-contained notion, as introduced by Wilfred Bion, holds a neutral position, without judgement, that can be used as an approach to the analysis process. Reading texts through this position, from within the paradigm of motherhood, seems to be illuminating. It provides numerous ways of probing the question: ‘who is the container and who is the contained?’. How does the relationship between mother and child, mother and son, mother and daughter stand at any one discrete moment? What is the basis of the container at that moment? What is the emotion of the contained? The container can be actual, practical, or explicit. It can be metaphoric, emotional or implicit.
The complexity and variability of container-contained could, potentially, provide a framework to better understand and accommodate the complex and variable ‘emotional storm’ of minds (mother and child) that both ‘crave and resist’ each other.
more about the artist:
Jane Glennie was born in Rustington and grew up roaming a horticultural nursery; planting fuchsias on piecework and selling cups of tea to raise some cash. A winding path traversed fashion & textiles, economics and archaeology before a BA in Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading University, freelance graphic design, and then MA Art & Space at Kingston University. Jane exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and has managed and curated projects with other artists.
Words by Sarah Goshal
Blur
They say you
block it all out:
no sleep, sore
hips, racecar
blowtorch wake
up heartburn,
tests, tests, tests,
feet hurt, slow
walk waddle,
timing, waiting,
talking to you
for hours and the
pain …
I haven’t forgotten.
You were a pot of acid
in my side, trying to escape
with tremendous effort,
announcing the future
in seconds.
Originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 15
Sarah Ghoshal is a poet, a mom, a professor and a runner. She has published two poetry chapbooks and her work can be found in such publications as Red Savina Review, Cream City Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives in New Jersey with her happy little family and her faithful dog Comet, who flies through the air with the greatest of ease. You can learn more about her at www.sarahghoshal.com or find her on Twitter, @sarahghoshal.
M.A.M.A. Issue n.22: Martha Joy Rose
The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 22nd edition of this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA
March, 2017 Martha Joy Rose
Art and Words by Martha Joy Rose
“Disruptions, Extrusions, and Other Chaotic Consequences”
PRODUCTION SITE
MOTHERING THE WORLD
This project started after I moved to the Artist Enclave of Historic Kenwood.
I’ve spent the better part of the last ten years championing other women’s work. Prior to that, I focused musically on “performance” art. During years of songwriting and concert-making ideas are projected outward in a noisy fashion. The work I’m engaging in now is very intimate and is more of a reflection than a projection.
I am interested in exploring my body is a site of production and reproduction. It is (and has been) a site of concept making and conception-formation. Through the years it has belonged to many people, including children, partners, governments, societies, country, state, church, and home. Some of these places are unique, and some are not. However, this basic premise is clear – my body has been a site of production and “making.”
As I began editing my thoughts for this project, I realized that I never said my body belongs to me. So, more than ever this fact becomes a justification for this work, which in so many ways, mirrors what so many women have been taught to feel –namely, that women’s bodies belong to others more than they belong to themselves. Now, in the era of the new Trump administration, this may be true more than ever. It is especially important to share the truth of what it is to bring forth another human, to nurture them, and to make my body a site of visible production and labor. I want to disrupt the “nice,” “perfectly groomed,” woman-mother-persona. Here she is. Stripped down: naked, bloody, imperfect, and old but still a work of art.
Martha Joy Rose, January 29, 2017
Joy Rose is part of the Artist Enclave of Historic Kenwood. Sheis a musician, concert promoter, museum founder, and fine artist. Her work has been published across blogs and academic journals and she has performed with her band Housewives On Prozac on Good Morning America, CNN, and the Oakland Art & Soul Festival to name a few. She is the NOW-NYC recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Award, her Mamapalooza Festival Series has been recognized as “Best in Girl-Power Events” in New York, and her music has appeared on the Billboard Top 100 Dance Charts. She founded the Museum of Motherhood in 2003, created the Motherhood Foundation 501c3 non-profit in 2005, saw it flourish in NYC from 2011-2014, and then pop up at several academic institutions. Her current live/work space in Kenwood St. Petersburg, Florida is devoted to the exploration of mother-labor as performance art.The upcoming date for the next Kenwood Artist Tour is March 18thand 19th, 2017 noon-5pm. See map and find out more and to tour the studios of participating St. Pete, Fla craftspeople:
The Disruptions, Extrusions, and Other Chaotic Consequences exhibit begins with an enhanced chest of drawers. Says Rose, “we are always trying to put everything in a box….Make it neat. Or, hide things away. Here is your chance to pick a secret or leave a secret behind.” There are also photographs of body parts, paintings, and mixed media with emerging dolls. You can visit the MOM Art Annex during the Kenwood Artist Tour.
Poem for Canvas Squat
I went out to the studio and sat on a canvas
I don’t know why except that everything that has sprung from my loins is fantastic.
Four amazing kids- now adults: Brody, Blaze, Ali, Zena.
Before that, lots of painful blood. Since them – ART!
If art is like giving birth, then let the creations be fantastic too. This is my pop squat.
Everything truly great has come from between my legs. Occasionally my throat, but, mostly from between my legs…. What have you got down there? Show the world.
https://m.soundcloud.com/electric-mommyland-1/electric-pussy