Monday, November 30, 2009

Mother/mother


My posts will be sporadic in the next week due to travel.  Tomorrow my son and I leave on a six day trip that will take him to State College, Pennsylvania (where very excited grandparents await) and then Philadelphia to meet me before we return to North Carolina.  I will travel to State College with him, and then embark solo to New York to visit good friends from college, see some shows and attend the opening of a group exhibition of mine, Mother/mother--at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn.  (Do you recall the photo of those who established A.I.R. in the 1970's from your college art history/criticism/womens studies/gender studies class?  I haven't been able to dig it up online but I see the image vividly in mind--a bunch of women together in a beautiful B&W photo...Nancy Spero, Ana Mendieta, Harmony Hammond maybe.)  
The above image is my collage in the show--an older collage from 2006, made one year after Alexander was born.  I'm excited to be in this show because the curator, Jennifer Wroblewski, is interested in how one's work has changed/evolved/been conditioned by becoming a parent.  Nothing has affected my work more in the past five years, but the result has not produced a bunch of images about babies, or diapers or domesticity (which is not to say those things can't produce amazing work).  The changes I've experienced in the studio have more to do with world view, with looking and with vision.  When Alexander arrived, I found it nearly impossible to conceive of a WHOLE from the outset.  Instead a whole had to be built, literally constucted--piece by piece by piece. 

1 comment:

Judith van Praag said...

Hi Barbara, Your collage brought a smile to my face. Sorry I missed the opening at A.I.R. One of my pieces is in the Mother/mother-* show as well. Best, Judith