Unwrapping The Gift

Art and parenthood..

My experience of continuing my practice since becoming a parent has been opposite to that which I was socially conditioned to expect. I feel much more driven and focused than before – now I know why we need our multi-tasking skills..

I feel more committed yet less attached to ‘success’ as having a child brings an enormous perspective to everything else I do. I have never had so much funding or opportunity to make my work come my way as since I first got pregnant. This may be simply my time-arc as an artist but it could be the new emotional energy children bring or the sleep-deprived lateral thinking that seems to manifest the ideas I need within this new expanded sense of who I am as an artist and mother in the world.

I worked hard to give up feelings of guilt about being away when my son was so little (I started Crafting Space when he was 7 months old). To me it was very clear that the opportunity to make my work through this commission was connected to the birth of my son – that both he and my daughter have somehow brought me the drive to be play out my part in the world in a fuller way. The fact that my mother died suddenly just after Delia was born, is also connected to this – a strong sense of the finite nature of my life here and a deeper sense of my creative purpose.

Drawing on my life experiences to make work (The Loom project, Mother to Mother) has meant that there has been a connection and mutual resource –sharing between the two sides of my life.

Having said all this, I am in the fortunate position of having a partner who is also a creative and understands where I need to go with my work. He is a ‘natural born parent’ – so when I have been away for several nights installing work it hasn’t been the huge issue it might be.

The intense adrenalin state I get into when I am on a project deadline is not, I realize, always compatible with being around my children (Delia, 4 and Moses, 18 months) and my partner often prefers it when I stay away completely rather than come home and am still obsessing….

One thing I had as a child was the example of my mother as a working creative person. I think my daughter Delia seeing me as a fulfilled creative person helps her to grow up with a more comprehensive image of what a woman can be as well as respect the fact that I have a need for personal space which I must meet in order to be a balanced human being.

So -following on from the last post, here is what i wrote re my proposed methodology for my project;

' 1. Locate an organization/partner in the female mental health / BME sector to work with in providing access to relevant groups and individuals. Saj Fareed is working with me on this and we now have Eleanor Hope on board, BMECP Community Development Worker for the area.

2. Run text/textile workshops in the region/s using book weaves, writing/drawing and other methods. Try out a series of core questions to see which resonate with participants and feel relevant to the form of the work.

3. Create a network of participating venues that then link into specific target groups to participate in the project. Plan the nomadic path of the weave itself and its development in one/series of large venues within the next 2-3 years.

4. Collaborate with an architectural/structural consultant to consider ways in which this final space could be created. I am considering collaboration with an architect and software designer, as what I need to develop is really a large scale piece of soft architecture which will need its own budget and longer timeframe.

I am very open to developing an intermediary stage experimental work that works more site –specifically with the textile-text wrapping of existing architecture in some way.

5. Take a ‘Mother Spool’ around with me to workshops and other situations and invite people to add to it. Use existing content from Mother to Mother site to begin the spool. Develop an online access point for adding text to the spool. Other spools could be sent out around the world and then be sewn to the mother spool once we are ready to weave the space.

The creation of these Child spools could be done not only online but by participating venues on the final trail independently. There would needto be an overall context to the participatory framework prior to final exhibition, i.e. through the venues, to guarantee a meaningful outcome and also to open up a publicised channel for the work as it develops, both online and in-venue'.

I have had some vital conversations and thoughts since writing this which i will detail here soon.Time for rest now.