Posted by I often think that I’m not built for the digital age, for the sooner-than-now timescales of Twitter. I work more slowly, more at home in a world where handwritten news would travel by packet steamer across oceans, arriving weeks or months later. Accordingly, my latest ‘news’ is in fact not terribly new… towards the end of last year, I was delighted to have an essay I’d written a while back selected for a new online exhibit of art and prose by mothers.
Mothers Are Making Art (MAMA) is a collaboration involving Mom Egg Review (a wonderful literary magazine by and about mothers), the Museum of Motherhood in New York, and Procreate Project (who showcase visual art by mothers and support maternal creativity).
The Mothers Are Making Art exhibit is an ongoing project which pairs creative writing by mothers with work by mother-artists. My own essay, Good Enough to Eat, was set alongside artwork by Lynn Lu. As I see it, the intention is not simply to pair prose with art that illustrates it, or vice versa, but to show how mothers explore common themes; how we work in different media with the raw materials of motherhood. And both my work and Lynn’s examine the substance of milk – that most strange and fascinating material of motherhood.
There are some beautiful pieces of writing featured in the MAMA exhibit. I especially love Kristin Procter’s braided essay on things about to ‘burst’. There’s also much to enjoy on the Museum of Motherhood and Procreate Project’s sites – stories of how vaginas can calm storms, and magical collages made of little scraps of the natural world. Lovely stuff!
Becky Tipper 