
Here we are. The very, very first Creative Mama Roundtable.
Every month on Edison Rex I'll be hosting a discussion for creative mamas to share their experience on topics unique to being both an artist and a mama. For our first month, I posed this question to the group:
How has your creative work changed since you became a mom?
Maybe you've taken a break, hit your stride, switched gears, started new projects or mediums, honed your focus, widened your scope, found it easier or harder to be inspired. Whatever is true for you, please share!
I love all of the responses I received. Initially I thought I'd go in and take bits of everyone's answers and collage them together. But while there are similarities, everyone's experiences are also very different. Trying to create a unifying narrative from each of our stories made me feel a little like a reality show editor splicing together my film.
Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but I still felt the best way to honor the collective wisdom here was to share each contribution in its entirety, and uninterrupted. The creative mama monologues!
Let's get to it! I'll go first.
Maeg:
My work has changed in unexpected ways. I've found my relationship with my son appearing in my imagery, unintentionally and all the time. Eggs. Nests. Parent and child human-animal hybrids. Themes of protection. When I put it like that, it seems obvious. But while I'm sketching or painting I have no idea that I'm recreating us. It's usually not until much, much later that I see the connection.
The way I work is also different. I understand the value of an hour so much differently. I'm more productive as well as more choosy about how I spend my time when I'm working. I'm more focused. If something is going to keep me from myself or my family, it had better be worth it! While I no longer have as many hours to work, I think overall I get so much more out of the hours I do have.
I no longer worship multi-tasking. Trying to do anything that requires attention while also parenting is a recipe for miserableness--I'm far happier being totally present in one or the other. Sometimes I need to take a deep breath and remind myself of that, but it's the truth.
Marisa:
Creativity, what's that? When i was pregnant, I remember fantasizing about my maternity leave. I looked forward to being home with my sweet baby as I made art, grew flowers and veggies as he stared at me and the world with such delight and wonder. Then reality set in. My baby cried, nursed constantly, hardly slept and wouldn't let me put him down. Any minute I had to myself would be spent eating or trying to catch up on my own sleep. All of a sudden he was 3 months old and I was going back to work part-time.
So here I am today with a 7 1/2-month old and I'm still trying to figure out how to balance my creative side while being a mother and a wife. I feel proud of myself on days when I do laundry, wash the dishes, de-clutter, and get a fresh/healthy meal on the table all while making sure Forest is happy. Where is my award I sometimes think? So maybe this is where my creativity is used now. I'm trying to master the balance of making my home life peaceful and satisfying while my son enjoys life. But do I feel truly satisfied with this? No. Of course, I want Forest to be happy but I'm also trying to figure out how to make myself artistically satisfied.
I've been taking Forest with me to art museums and galleries. I'm trying to expose him to a life I feel like I've lost. I used to feel that my art defined who I was. But now for me being a mom has become the most important part of who I am. So maybe it's not as big of a priority as I once thought. But I have a hard time believing that statement. I'm hoping this gallery-hopping stirs an interest in Forest or somehow subconsciously affects him. I hope I can teach him about something I've been so passionate about. And I really hope I can figure out how to make my own art too...one day soon.
I have a BFA in painting, work as a graphic designer and live in easthampton, ma with my husband, son, stepson, our 3 kitties, and pretty things. Visit Marisa's blog, Bikes and Birds.
I became a mother in June of this year so I'm still learning to find time for my creative self. That being said I don't think I've ever felt more inspired. I feel like my brain is just overflowing with creative ideas and I can barely keep up! I make sure to keep a small notebook with me so I don't lose all this great energy. I've become more focused on what I want to do and how I want to do it and although I feel like I don't have the time right now I'm starting to put the pieces together that will make up the big picture.
Maryam is a wife, mother, photographer and blogs at Pamplemousse1983.
When Scarlet was born, the change was instant. I had always been a struggling writer/photographer and I mean struggling in the emotional sense and not the financial sense. I wasn't creating enough work to get to even get to that point! I had a beautiful, still in the package Canon DSLR that I had kept in its original box for years. Literally a day or two after we brought her home from the hospital, I started shooting. And then I started improving on my skills and my equipment. It's been a work in progress but I've learned so, so much. I've seen many new moms start buying fancy photography equipment to capture the beauty of their children. For me it was more important to collect technical skills and the equipment has (painfully) slowly followed. The love I felt for Scarlet also inspired me to start a blog and revisit my first artistic love - writing. I was rusty at best but am now getting syndicated at BlogHer every now and then, pouring my heart out about love, life, parenting and work. It's more rewarding than anything I've ever experienced - raising her, while writing about it and photographing it. Although now that she's two, the challenge is finding the time to write and take pictures. I have to get creative with time...to get creative in general. It's been working so far but it's a constantly changing challenge.
I am a Freelance Photographer, Writer and Social Media Consultant as well as a Full-Time Toddler Mama living in the best town I've ever known - Northampton, MA.
Visit Tamara's blog, Tamara Like Camera.
Audrey:
The huge change for me in becoming a mom is that my thoughts now always go to my kids before my own creative work. Before I can think about a design, a color scheme or a theme I want to explore, my brain has to let go of who has been fed recently, what clothes we need the next day and whether we have the stuff we need to get through the next two hours.
I recall preparing for a grand and pivotal event in my personal life, in which I needed some quiet time to reflect and think quietly in order to prepare. I retreated to my “studio”, which was primarily a storage space in the middle of the house with a door that closed, telling my then four-year-old daughter that I needed some private time. She peered in the window, knocked, came and sat as silently as she could, bumping my body and interrupting all of the concentration I’d been able to muster and said so innocently, ”I’m having private time with you.”
That’s what being an artist now means for me. I share my private time. OR… I schedule and strive to carve out that private time, from puny little bits of scraps left around the school day, the work day of my partner (who works nights and evenings), my cleaning, cooking, thinking, exercising..my life. It means I re-evaluate my thoughts on creativity and express them in my table settings, my kids clothes (when they were little), the ways I move my body- adding in swimming and circus and biking-whatever ways I can experience something new and different counts. It’s all good, and my patience is what gets me through towards that empty nest that awaits me.
Audrey Hyvonen is a fiber artist living in Easthampton MA. She blogs at hinkypinkie.typepad.com and sells stitched stuff at hinkypinkie.etsy.com.
Ladies, ladies, ladies, thank you for sharing. Much love.
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xoxo Maeg