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Mothers Making Art

Diana Hobstetter: (MommyMommyMommy.com (You Are Here), DianaHobstetter.com, LemonYoga.com, MemoryMapsArt.com, APeoplePalette.com, SecondStreetDesignStudio.com)
MommyMommyMommy.com showcases my work on motherhood; DianaHobstetter.com has all my artwork; Second Street Design Studio is my design company; the other sites are for other specific art projects.


MATERNAL METAPHORS: Artists/Mothers/Artwork
Gallery Overview
Curator's Statement by Myrel Chernick
A 2004 exhibition at Rochester Contemporary featuring women artists making artwork about motherhood.

Faith Ringgold
Story about experience of motherhood and career as an artist in "A Question of Balance" (see below). Famous for story quilt art and children's books.

Linda Vallejo
Stories about experience of motherhood and career as an artist in both "A Question of Balance" and "Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds" books (see below). Chicana artist that incorporates the feminine unconscious, religion, morality and nature.

Renee Cox
Controversial (usually because she's black and nude) feminist photographer/artist; includes "Yo Mama," a nude self-portrait carrying a child. In "Maternal Metaphors" below.

Judy Gelles
In "Maternal Metaphors" below. Photography on the mess of family life.

Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe
In "Maternal Metaphors" below. Video stills; includes "servant of this very small person bearing my own freedom and independence-loving genes."

Mothers Making Music

Mamapalooza
The Festival for Moms Who Rock. This year in May in New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Nashville, & Detroit.

The Mydols
Detroit all-moms garage band. Songs include 'Soccer Mom Stomp,' 'Never Mind The Laundry,' and '(I Wanna Be) Jack White's Mom.'

Housewives On Prozac
Rocking audiences since 1997 with a distinctive blend of disco, rap, blues and ballads, with original lyrics about domestically intriguing themes, including songs like, 'Fuzzy Slippers', 'Baby Slave', 'Eat Your Damn Spaghetti', and 'I Don't Think Like My Mom Anymore.'

Andrea Echeverri
The album is made up of "songs from the bed" for her longtime romantic partner, and "songs from the cradle" for her baby girl.

Liz Phair
Self-titled album released after having a child; although not mainly about motherhood, it includes "Little Digger", a song that unflinching portrays a child seeing his mother with a man other than his father.

Mothers Books

A Question Of Balance:Artists & Writers On Motherhood by Judith Pierce Rosenberg
Working artist/author moms, ranging from Dorothy Allison to Rita Dove, and many more, wax eloquently, movingly -- and practically -- on how one embraces the gifts of family and children, yet stays true to one's muse. An indispensable book for art-producing moms -- and dads -- everywhere.

Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds: 21 Artists Who Are Mothers Tell Their Stories
by Anne Mayer & Christine Eagon
Various artists discuss how and why they became mothers, how their motherhood affected their artwork and how their artwork affected being mothers. They speak about the hard parts of combining these two demanding jobs as well as the rewards.

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner
Warner's book seeks to answer the question, "Why are today's young mothers so stressed out?" Whether shuttling kids to "enriching" after-school activities or worrying about the quality of available child care, the women of Perfect Madness describe a life far out of balance. Warner spends most of the book explaining how things got to this point, and what can be done to restore some sanity to the parenting process.

Flux : Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World by Peggy Orenstein
The advances of the women’s movement allow women to grow up with a sense of expanded possibilities. Yet traditional expectations have hardly changed. To discover how they are navigating this double burden personally and professionally, Orenstein interviewed hundreds of women and has blended their voices into a compelling narrative that gets deep inside their lives and choices. With unusual sensitivity, Orenstein offers insight and inspiration for every woman who is making important decisions of her own.

The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women
by Susan Douglas & Meredith Michaels
The authors have turned a sardonic (but never jaundiced) eye toward the cult of the new momism: a trend in American culture that is causing women to feel that only through the perfection of motherhood can true contentment be found. This vision of motherhood is highly romanticized and yet its standards for success remain forever out of reach, no matter how hard women may try to "have it all."

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued
by Ann Crittenden
This provocative book shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that exploits those who perform its most critical work. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and the most current research in economics, history, child development, and law, Ann Crittenden proves that although women have been liberated, mothers have not.

Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It by Andrea J. Buchanan
According to Andrea Buchanan, "mother shock" is the state in which many new parents exist during those first confusing, chaotic, and often comical years of parenting. It is the clash between expectation and result, theory and reality; a twilight zone of 24-hour-a-day living where life is no longer neatly divided into day and night. It is the stress of trying to acclimate quickly to the immediacy of mothering; of formulating a new conception of oneself, one's role in the family and in the world; of shouldering a fearful new level of responsibility and a new delegation of domestic duties.

The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Our Lives and Why We Never Talk About It
by Susan Maushart
In exploring the effect childbearing has upon women, the author removes the veils of serenity and satisfaction to reveal what she holds to be the truth: the early years of motherhood are physically difficult and can be emotionally devastating. New mothers increasingly enter full-scale identity crises, few women have sufficient information about child-rearing realities, and, as Maushart writes, "the realities of parenthood and especially motherhood are kept carefully shrouded in silence, misinformation, and outright lies."

Life After Birth: What Even Your Friends Won't Tell You About Motherhood by Kate Figes, Jean Zimmerman
Maintaining that motherhood is the best thing that ever happened to her, Figes describes the radical physical and emotional changes new moms face. She discusses sleep deprivation, love for the child, range of severity in postpartum depression, anger at the loss of control in life, common sources of tension between new parents, deepening intimacy with the father and the history of the mother's role, and more.

Mothers Who Think : Tales Of Reallife Parenthood by Camille Peri (Editor), Kate Moses (Editor)
Mothers Who Think
is a collection of pieces from the Salon magazine column of the same name. Anne Lamott, Jayne Anne Phillips, Sallie Tisdale, Susan Straight, Jane Lazarre, Nora Okja Keller, Beth Kephart, Ariel Gore, Alex Witchel, and many other contemporary writers elevate the discussion of motherhood above the level of tantrum control and potty training. Irreverent, wistful, hilarious, fierce, and tender, these essays offer an unsparing look at the myths and realities, the serious and silly sides, the thankless and supremely satisfying aspects of being a mom -- and are a testament to the notion that motherhood gives women more to think about, not less.

Mother-Daughter Wisdom : Creating a Legacy of Physical and Emotional Health by Christiane Northrup, M.D.
Northrup says most of women's deeply held beliefs about themselves and their relationships with others are a product of their relationship with their mothers — their first and most-powerful role models. Understanding this complicated but rewarding relationship can help women lead healthier lives. She blends personal stories with clear research. One part addresses the cultural legacy of maternal ambivalence and the prevalance of post-partum depression.

Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood by Moyra Davey (Editor)
This anthology includes excerpts from journals, memoirs, essays, stories, and interviews. The contributors include an impressive list: Doris Lessing, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Mead, Susan Griffin, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mona Simpson, Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, and Mary Gaitskill. These authors question the impact of motherhood on women's lives and careers, whether or not mothers have been given a voice in the canon, and the direct experience of motherhood. Several women write about their unequivocal desire not to be a mother.

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage
by Cathi Hanauer (Editor)
Women today have more choices than at any time in history, yet many smart, ambitious, contemporary women are finding themselves angry, dissatisfied, stressed out. Why are they dissatisfied? And what do they really want? These questions form the premise of this passionate, provocative, funny, searingly honest collection of original essays in which twenty-six women writers—ranging in age from twenty-four to sixty-five, single and childless or married with children or four times divorced—invite readers into their lives, minds, and bedrooms to talk about the choices they’ve made, what’s working, and what’s not.

The Mother Trip: Hip Mama's Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood
by Ariel Gore, Ellen Forney (Illustrator)
The author giver her inspiration, encouragement, and moral support to unconventional moms. In these essays, she bashes the stereotype of the "good mother" and encourages readers to follow their instincts and redefine motherhood in their own terms.


Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life by Daphne de Marneffe
De Marneffe studies, among other things, feminism (which, she says, fought for the right to have children but neglected the right to care for children), the feelings of ambivalence and pleasure in raising children and the role of other care providers (including fathers) as she strives to evaluate a woman's need to nurture her children. By examining both sides-the corporate woman who yearns to be home with her children, and the full-time mom who finds the boredom oppressive-de Marneffe avoids sounding judgmental.

The Mother Dance: How Children Change Your Life by Harriet Lerner
Lerner set out to write a book on parenting, and ended up focusing on the experience of being a mother--a woman's experiences, needs, and changes as she travels through the trials and pleasures of pregnancy, birth, power struggles, guilt, anxiety, relationship challenges, sibling struggles, and separation.

Misconceptions : Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf
Wolf finds new motherhood so difficult that it has rocked her celebrated feminism. "Yet here we were," she concludes "to my horror and complicity, shaping our new family structure along class and gender lines daddy at work, mommy and caregiver from two different economic classes sharing the baby work during the day just as our peers had done."

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke
by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi

The authors argue that the two-parent middle-class working family is on the brink of financial disaster.

Mothers Organizations
MothersOughtToHaveEqualRights.org
A grassroots coalition, whose mission is to improve the economic well-being of mothers and other family caregivers.

MothersMovement.org

Resources and reporting for mothers and others who think about social change; includes Family Initiative Campaign for Paid Sick Leave. Excellent information on work/family, family & culture, reproduction rights, and much more.

WelfareWarriors.org
Fighting for the lives of mothers and children in poverty; their
mission is to create a Government Guaranteed Child Support program in the US similar to that in European countries.