motherhood.

Catherine Opie image of herself and her son.

Last night I went to a very informal discussion at A.I.R gallery that was part of the current exhibit and calender of events put on by tART. The discussion was about motherhood and being an artist.

It was a a great boost of: I am not alone in this craziness.

As I said it was very informal - picnic style just sitting on blankets on the floor with a cup of wine. There were perhaps 7 or 8 of us all with young children. The discussion was somewhat haphazard & unstructured but it was still great.
Most of the mom's were feeling the same issues as me: How do you find a chunk of time in the studio? No real answers but shared issues.
I look forward to when me and my studio mate can swap baby days as she is having a little one next month. That will be AMAZING but of course a few months away since her babes will be brand new.

One of the great things about the discussion was finding out about the blog Momtra- or "art mom" backwards.
This blog is not regularly updated but a site that:

-lists writer and artist mama's - to show us that it can be done-(I actually made a list like this as part of my thesis show and made a piece about it. It was amazing to see how many very successful artists had children and you never knew)
-has a list of books, such as one that is artists talking about the experience of motherhood and the life as an artist. (I already ordered 2 of them.)
-lists family friend residencies
-mentions this documentary - I must somehow see it.
-and a very interesting recent article on mother/artists.

It also links to the search site called Searching for Mother that searches recent post, tweets, and articles hat mention the word "mother" it is in short AWESOME.

So I recommend checking all this stuff out even if you are not a mama.

But I still have not figured out how to get any actual work done?