The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 17th 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

May 1, 2016 Beth Grossman and Nadia Colburn

Art by Beth Grossman

Out of the Frying Pan, 2004
Sandblasting on mirror, frying pans, men’s belts
46″ x 66″
© Beth Grossman 2004

Seven frying pans are hung from men’s belts. Text from The Total Woman, written by Marabel Morgan in 1970 as a response to the feminist movement, is sandblasted into round mirrors stuck in the pan. As viewers read the text, they will see themselves in the mirrors. I ask them to take a look at how much has changed and improved as a result of feminism, and to consider how much remains the same within the male/female relationship.

Text in frying pans:

“The days were sunny, the nights were star-studded. Indeed married life was strawberries for breakfast and loving all the time.”
— Marabel Morgan

“Many a husband rushes off to work, leaving his wife slumped over a cup of coffee in her grubbie undies. His once sexy bride is now wrapped in rollers and smells like bacon and eggs. All day long he’s surrounded at the office by dazzling secretaries who emit clouds of perfume.”
— Marabel Morgan

“The typical American housewife begins each day with every good intention. As soon as her husband and kids are out the door, she nobly faces the disaster areas.”
— Marabel Morgan

“She may whine, play the martyr, or escape with her box of bonbons to her favorite soap opera. When the kids come home at three o’clock, she screams at them because she’s mad at herself.”
— Marabel Morgan

“The woman who would never think of serving the same frozen TV dinners every evening sometimes serves the same frozen sexual response every night.”
— Dr. David Reuben

“Would he pick you for his mistress? A mistress seduces. A housefrau submits. We all know who gets the most goodies.”
— Lois Bird

“It’s only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him. She becomes a priceless jewel, the glory of femininity, his queen!”
— Marabel Morgan

Text by Nadia Colburn

The Physical World

From MER 14 “Change” Issue

For nine months
I anticipated,

as the other end
of pain,

a revelation:
a world turned

inside out.
Each inch I grew

marked a promise:
my present physical

certainty, my approaching

release. And, indeed,
torn open,

I gave birth
to the end of ideas:

Beyond pain was born
no understanding,

beyond understanding
was revealed

no new knowing but
another body, robust

which no thought
set screaming,

purple faced,
infuriated at air,

and no thought moved closer
to my breast,

and not thought closed
its thinly lidded

round brown eyes,
so soon worn out

by the unfamiliar light.
A proud mother of two, Nadia Colburn lives in Cambridge, MA. Her work has been widely published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, LARB, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. A founding editor at Anchor Magazine: where spirituality and social justice meet, Nadia teaches online and in person creative writing workshops that bring together the head and the heart. See more at www.nadiacolburn.com