WAKE WINDOW

For years my studio practice has been rooted in familial relationships and childhood memories. The recent events in my life: years of infertility, a miscarriage, and a month-long hospital stay for my newborn baby have caused a major shift in how I think about my work; including how I reflect on past work. My sources of inspiration have shifted, once utilizing imagery from pop-culture and decades-old family photographs, now soaking in the daily habits and routines that come with mothering an infant. 

 

This shift in my studio practice has been a dramatic evolution in my life at large, and is part of my matrescence. The medical anthropologist, Dana Raphael, coined the term in 1975, and recently has made its way back into mainstream psychology and culture. It’s a developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Some of my “pre-baby” work is on display in Wake Window, in order to show my artistic transformation over the last two years. 

 

Exclusively breastfeeding paired with giving medicine to my baby three times daily have presented many challenges with an already shockingly new and life-changing event. I use self-developed routines to construct a sense of normalcy and comfort throughout these transformative times. The creation of these paintings and drawings have become part of the ritual, tied to the complexity of motherhood. 

 

In Wake Window, 400 amber medicine bottles are suspended from the ceiling. These are the same type of bottles that held the medicine I administered to my infant every eight hours for six months. Oil paintings hang on the walls, a triptych scaled to the same size as my daughter’s nursery window displayed prominently. There are also 42 drawings that I made in 42 days. This time is how long it takes for the uterus to return to its original size, and thus six weeks has become the allotted time for mothers to recover, although every pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience is unique and cannot be streamlined into one set timeline. The work in the exhibition brings what is traditionally viewed as private moments - creating paintings in a studio and breastfeeding an infant - out into the light, displayed in a public space to be seen by and connect with as many people as possible.