SOCIAL PRACTICE
Portland Prints Itself (2016)
In conjunction with the Corita Kent exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, I developed an engagement activity in which museum-goers responded to the prompts “what I love about where I live” and “my wish for Portland is…” to express our ideas about our home in print form.
Seen & Heard (2016)
Recognizing a need for children to voice their experience of current events, I envisioned and led a rally in which local artists and musicians guided children in artmaking as resistance.
Inktober (2019)
For the month of October (Inktober), I invited mother/artists and their children to respond to drawing prompts and post their artwork on Instagram #motherist. One of the biggest challenges I hear about from mother/artists is finding time to make work. The second is figuring out how to share work. This was an experiment in finding solutions to those issues. It was also an experiment in using social media to share and connect.
MOTHERIST
Motherist is a social practice experiment in artmaking between mother/artists and their children. It began a couple years ago when artists Briana Linden and Heather Hawksford began investigating the intersection of motherhood and artistry. We found that when we became mothers, we were profoundly changed. The belief we had in the necessity of creativity is driven by our daily lived experience. Being a mother constantly informs our practice as artists, so it was only natural that our children became a foremost inspiration in our artmaking, as did the experience of motherhood. We were curious about how motherhood altered other artists.
At its heart, Motherist is about seeing and responding to the world with a childlike curiosity. It’s about using the gifts of childhood to banish judgements that hinder creativity. It’s about finding ways to express our ideas about our lived experience, whether that’s noticing the beauty of the way rain wets hot pavement, or imagining what it would be like if we walked on our hands instead of our feet. By calling upon the imagination of our children, who harken us back to a time when our own ideas were limitless, we find endless fodder to investigate and articulate artistic expression.