I see you, Mama.
Artist. Mother-artist. I see you breast-feeding until your baby falls asleep. I see you working long hours while your kid is at day-care so you can put food on the table, and then coming home and taking care of everything. I see you staying up until after midnight to jot down ideas in your journal. I see you trying to squeeze in time to paint or get to that dance class, or… You love your baby. You care about your work. And what about your art? Your paintings, the book you promised yourself you’d write…
You are not alone.
The Mother-Artist Salon
A gathering place. An honoring of the mother-artist—she who births babies and books, who mothers her children, blood and otherwise, and her artistic visions.
Join Us
It is time to come together, as mothers have for centuries, to support each other as mothers and as artists.
All are welcome, whether or not you consider yourself an “artist”
Each Salon features:
Mother-artists from different disciplines sharing their work
Dedicated time to create in community
An opportunity to share your own work in a community open-mic
Our next Salon:
Sunday October 17th, 4–6pm ET (online)
Featuring Visual Artist Kate Quarfordt & Poet and Literary Activist JP Howard
& Special Musical Guest Ishle Yi-Park
This event is donation based, all donations support the mother-artist presenters and production costs.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
It’s not an event, it’s a movement.
When I became a mother it was an unmaking of who I thought I was. The parts of my identity that had defined me, the ways I had known myself, began to unravel.
Becoming a mother changed me profoundly in many ways. One of those ways was how I understood myself as an artist.
Before becoming a mother, I travelled the country and the world to perform my poetry and lead creative writing workshops. Suddenly I was confined to the four walls of my small two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with an infant who required my full presence and attention, which didn’t leave space for much else.
Before my son was born I used to write for long stretches of time in the morning, listening to quiet piano music in my headphones…Many of my poems were written while I was away on artist residencies—away from work and the city and my daily concerns. After I became a mother, as the primary caregiver, that kind of time away not only wasn't an option, it wasn't what I wanted. And, as I started to understand more deeply, I see how this model reinforces the paradigm of the artist as separate from his or her own life, as opposed to integrated.
I started to look to mother writers/artists that I loved: Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes...I heard stories of books being written on napkins on top of the washing machine, poems being scribbled with a baby on the breast...and my own creative process started to change. Many of the poems from Mother Country were written in my phone as I walked, sleep deprived, around my neighborhood, Surya strapped to my chest.
What I desire is to create community around and for the Mother-Artist. I desire to create a space where the Mother-Artist is honored and celebrated. Where she does not have to choose between mothering and making. Where all of her is welcome (including her breast-feeding baby). Where she can be inspired by other mother-artists and where she can have space to explore and play and create herself.
Will you join us?
“Because of the Mother-Artist Salon, I’m realizing that I can shed this old, very tired myth that it’s a choice between mothering and making. You are showing me how it blends. Thank you.”
Join the Mother-Artist movement.
Our next Salon:
Sunday June 6th, 4–6pm ET (online)
Featuring:
Visual Artist Kate Quarfordt & Poet + Literary Activist JP Howard
& Special Musical Guest Ishle Yi-Park
Kate Quarfordt is a painter and mixed-media artist whose luminous abstract works evoke inner landscapes and portals into other worlds. A frequent collaborator with singers, performers, writers, and activists, Quarfordt also creates larger-scale multidisciplinary works that explore the inner multitudes of women’s lives and invoke stories of resistance and resilience. In addition to her visual art practice, Quarfordt is a singer, performer, educator and school co-founder, and mother of three.
JP Howard is an educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY-based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. JP is a general Poetry Editor for Women's Studies Quarterly and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online.
Ishle Yi Park aka Lani, is the first woman to become Poet Laureate of Queens. She is an award-winning poet, singer, hula dancer, surfer, certified yoga teacher, lomi lomi practitioner, and mommy. Kehaulani means "morning dew from the heavens" - it is a name gifted to her from her first Kumu Hula - Kumu Healani Youn, Miss Aloha Hula 1986. She is of Corean ancestry (her name means morning dew in her mother tongue)- and both her daughters were born & are now being raised on the Hawai'ian islands. Her musical influences include Bob Marley, Jack Johnson, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Norah Jones, and Sade, among many others.