Starting an Artist Residency in Motherhood
In April 2020 I started a self-directed Artist Residency in Motherhood with the support of Lenka Clayton’s ARIM platform. For the next three years I intend to participate in this residency and document my experiences, art work and progress. My first step into this residency was creating an Artist Manifesto and a window display for public view.
To learn more about Lenka Clayton and how her ARIM began, please visit LenkaClayton.com
There is a relation between the art I channel and manifest inside my studio, and the day to day experiences I witness outside my studio. So should my artwork be instructed by daily experiences, and the daily experiences explained by my artwork.
In March 2019 the birth of my child changed many things in my life. One of those changes is the way I think about my career as an artist and its purpose to my daily life as a full time Artist Mother. I find now that many aspects of my art practice have to adapt and evolve with the unpredictable qualities of parenthood. As Lenka Clayton’s Manifesto declares, “...it still seems to be a commonly held belief that being an engaged mother and serious artist are mutually exclusive endeavors. I don’t believe or want to perpetrate this. I like to imagine the two roles not as competing directions but to view them, force them gently if necessary, to inform one another.”
I will undergo this self-imposed artist residency to create a body of work that is conceptually a holistic representation of myself as an individual and as a parent while also structuring a practice that becomes a philosophy of life and as a daily ritual. I will cultivate a flexible practice and schedule where I'm able to work with the general challenges of parenthood, and where I wholeheartedly nurture myself through art making, quiet time and spontaneous experiences that intrinsically ministers to my interior life and supports my soul expression. However conceptual it may be, there will be an emphasis on the material and labor of art making, and the physical work as a symbol of my whole self and the introspection of my experience as an Artist Mother. These works may be drawings, paintings, or sculptures, and may resemble an abstract form of relics and artifacts of this personal journey. I look forward to the ways in which I'll be consciously and unconsciously inspired by the integration of my practice with interactions I have with my child and the general experience of daily life.
Special thanks to Lenka Clayton for her support to all Artist Mothers and determination to do radical things.
