Mama Metalsmith Talk

In November last year, I did a studio tour for a few Art & Design Jewelry & Metalsmithing students from UW-Stout who were visiting Chicago for the SOFA Design Fair.  I was excited to engage with students and see my colleagues Masako Onodera and Lynn Batchelder since I was far too pregnant to waddle around the SOFA exhibition.  I was excited to introduce them to my new body of work about the experience of being pregnant.

 

"Areola O Plenty" (brooch)

2014

mild steel, deconstructed brassiere, nylon stockings

 

"Fountains" (brooch)

2014

mild steel, deconstructed brassiere, nylon stockings

 

"From B to D in 3 months" (necklace)

2014

mild steel, nylon stockings 

 

"Swelling" (brooch)

2014

mild steel, nylon stockings

This conversation of being a mom and having an artistic career, and whether or not this is supported by our field is a very interesting, current and relevant topic to me.  I have to be honest, I was very quiet on social media about being pregnant.  I was worried!  I thought as soon as curators, galleries and people with potential job opportunities considered me, if they knew I was pregnant, the decision would be made for me. "Oh, she probably won't be able to do it.  She's pregnant, ya know."  The last thing I want is to not engage with the field any longer.  Whether people knew and continued make me offers, or they didn't know and made me offers, whatever I did worked and I was still receiving invitations and acceptance into shows and opportunities.  I still wonder if I had been more open about it, if I still would have been invited.  This is why I feel the need to start this conversation.  I WANT to be a mom and be a participating artist.  I WANT to be the one who makes the decision about whether I can participate, travel or teach.  I don't want those decisions to be made for me, just because I have family commitments now.

There are SO MANY women that populate the field of Jewelry and Metalsmthing right now, why are we talking about this more?  Many of the fine institutions that nurture our future leaders are run by women.  Yet so many of them (that I have had conversations with) are hesitant to start a family because of the time they are required to put towards their institution, practice and exhibition schedule.  This is, of course, not a problem specific to our field.  Women in the US have to decide at some point if they can have a successful career and a family.  Unfortunately, that time when your career is really starting tends to be right around the same time our fertility might be at its peak.  Why is that?  Why couldn't we have kids into our 60s or 70s like men?

For all you moms out there, moms to be, or ladies considering momhood,  I thought starting the conversation about how I am making the mom/career balance work for me might encourage you to ask questions and tell me how it is working for you.  I don't think this is just one conversation, so I would love to hear from you!  In the mean time,  I would like to start a series about my work, my daughter and my practice.  I think we'll call it Mama Metalsmith Talk.

First off...it's hard!  Negotiating my practice, my husband and my daughter....that life balance, it isn't easy!  I recognize that I am so lucky to have a supportive partner.  That doesn't mean that I don't work my ass off.  Before Hazel came around, I had three jobs.  I worked 30 hours a week for another artist, taught classes at two art centers, then there was my practice (making work for galleries, exhibitions and trade shows).  About 4 weeks before Hazel was born, I stopped making work, stopped going to the studio and just laid low, which was hard because I am a worker!  I enjoy working on several things at once, so this "break" was surprisingly hard for me.  Hazel was born and I was totally sucked into her awesomeness.  However, after six weeks of baby, I had to get back into the studio. For me, I find that I have to carve out that time for the studio, or just "getting to it," never happens.  It was very clear to me that I had to create a schedule to outline my studio time in order to make sure there is always time set aside for me to make my work. For now,  I have stopped working for others and commit my time exclusively to my practice and my family.  What does that look like you ask?  A little something like this...

 

Hazel in the studio

Monday - Friday
6:30 am - wake up and feed the baby (ugh!  so early!)
7:00 - 8:00 am - exercise (daddy watches the baby)
8:00 - 9:00 - shower/breakfast (daddy goes off to work)
9:00 - 10:00 - get baby ready & get to the studio!!
10:00 - 3:00/4:00 - get 3 or 4 stretches of work time anywhere from 40 mins to 1 hr, separated by baby cuddles, feeding, changing & hanging out.
4:00 - 7:00 - head back home, hang exclusively with kiddo, make some dinner, put kiddo to bed, daddy gets home at 7pm
7:00pm - 10:00pm - head back to studio to get some late night solo work done, or computer time

Saturday & Sunday
7:30/8:30 - wake up with baby
10:00am - 5:00pm - studio time.  Get all the super noisy/messy or complicated work done while daddy hangs with baby at home.

At least this is what it looks like now!  I am very well aware that baby can change at any point and throw the whole schedule off.  That being said, having a schedule gives me something to stick to and ensures that both daddy and I get things done that we need to get done.  The hardest thing?  Motivating myself to leave the house everyday!  It's so easy to just stay home, especially when you live in a snowglobe of a city like Chicago.

 

Would love to hear your comments!  Especially if you have any secrets about how to make it work!
xoxo - Sarah

Siamese Connection

 

 

Vessel is a table-top shield that effeminates stee' and structuralizes nylon stockings to contradict material gender.  This piece has not been shown outside of my thesis show, but will be on exhibit beginning this Saturday, July 20th in New York at Brooklyn Metal Works.  The Siamese Connection exhibition is inspired by a water pipe with two openings that is often seen in urban life.  The exhibition was intended to bring together work that has a "collision of two elements or an unexpected branching."  I'm curious to see the exhibition and to finally see the space.  This will be the second show that I've been in there and I thought the work included in the Re-Fresh exhibition was pretty killer, so I hope this show follows suit.

Sandra Backlund

Sandra Backlund is a a fashion designer from Sweden.  Backlund graduated from Beckman's College of Design in 2004 and started her own design label the same year.  I enjoy Sandra Backlund's work because of the way it morphs and shifts the slim female body that wears her work.  Although her work is mostly knit wear, the fiber becomes architectural, bulbous and exaggerated yet remains absolutely chic.

Backlund has become known for her signature knitting techniques, which Backlund completes by hand, entirely on her own (the only exception being her Fall/Winter 2009-10 to Spring/Summer 2011 collections where she worked with Italian manufactures in order to experiment with coupling machine-led processes).  Working between machine knitting and finishing pieces by hand, Backlund's experimentation with knitting processes are exciting and push the boundaries of the traditional sweater.

I also appreciate that Backlund views each of her pieces as individual works of art.  She often documents her garments off of the body as art objects, which yields great forms and unusual views of the pieces.  Backlund admits to working more like a sculpture than a traditional designer, "I improvise on a tailor's dummy or on myself to discover ideas of shapes or silhouettes that I could never come to think about in my head." I love the way her sculptural discoveries transform thin and slight models into powerful, obscure and often frightening creatures.

I was reminded of how much of love Backlund's work, when I visited The Art Institute of Chicago last week and discovered her work on display.  Fashioning the Object is a temporary exhibition on display at the Art Institute until September 13th.  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it.  Backlund is one of three design houses included in the exhibit, along with Bless and Boudicca.  A very exciting show and there is a great little catalog you can take away with you.

Ana Mendieta

video still "Body Tracks"

1982

Ana Mendieta was a cuban-born performance artist, sculptor, video artist and painter who immigrated to the US when she was only 12 in order to escape Castro's regime.  Mendieta struggled with issues of place and belonging and her work delt with these issues as well as themes of feminism, gender, violence, life and death. 

Mendieta lived to be only 37.  In September of 1985, Mendieta died from a fall from her 34th floor Greenwich Village apartment in New York, after an argument with her husband of only eight months, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre.  Andre was tried and acquitted of second-degree murder, although close friends of Mendieta, like the American visual artist Carolee Schneeman, argued Mendieta's death was not suicide.

Two of Mendieta's most iconinc series are her Silueta Series and her Body Tracks Series. 

In the Silueta Series, Mendieta placed her nude body into a natural scene, painted her body to mimic the natural scene and placed herself there, left an ephemeral silhouette of her body in the earth, or sculpted/drew the image of a female form into nature, which would wear away with time.

 Untitled (Grass on Woman)

1972

 Tree of Life Series

1973-1980

Untitled drawing in sand

1970s

Silueta Series in Mexico

1973-1978

One of her most powerful pieces is from her early performance career while she was attending the University of Iowa.  There was a woman who was raped and murdered on the Iowa campus and Mendieta responded with protest to the way the school's administration chose to handle the situation (hush, hush and hopefully it will go away) by staging an image of what the scene might look like.

Unititled (Rape Scene)

1973

Friends and fellow students were invited to her apartment. Upon arriving they found Mendieta stretched across a table and tied up, half nude and covered in blood.  In this way Mendieta was attempting to "name" rape, to create an image of it and to avoid allowing rape to be overlooked.

The use of blood in Mendieta's work is very important and linked to her childhood development in Cuba, where she was raised under the religion of Santeria, which commonly employs rituals of animal sacrifice, exposing Mendieta to the power of blood from an early age.

Unititled

Body Tracks Series

1974

stretched out and tied up - her almost-nude body smeared in blo

I was at the Art Institute of Chicago last night and currently on display are a nice collection of photographs and drawings from the Silueta Series, as well as one Silueta Series video and one Body Tracks video until January 15th, 2012.  Diane and Bruce Hall currently own these works and will be handing the work off to the Art Institute in the future, making this the largest collection of Mendieta's work to be owned by any one museum.  THANK YOU!  Very exciting that Mendieta's work will be so close.  I look forward to going back and seeing it again and again.