This week we have Mary Burrows on the blog . With her husband, she runs mb art studios: a small, family run business that believes in the beauty of handmade and keeping it simple. Their work is influenced by a love for aesthetics, simplicity and words that can encourage and move us to live a…
Category: Art
“She saw me say who I was.” Featured Artist: Zsudayka Nzinga
Zsudayka Nzinga is a mixed media artist and designer from Denver, CO. Her portrait work features acrylic, paper, fabric, oil bars, charcoal and pigment. Nzinga fuses traditional art forms passed through the Diaspora to create work which speaks to the power of history and how visual art aides in defining culture and identity. Her subjects…
“While reading, weeding the garden, or making dinner, I’m also solving the painting.” Featured Artist: Crystalle Lacoutoure
Crystalle Lacouture is an artist based in Boston and North Adams, MA. She received her BS in Painting/Printmaking from Skidmore College in 2000. During the decade she lived in NYC, Crystalle was a longtime assistant to activist artists Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, worked at the Lower East Side Printshop, and at the Academic Arts…
“I find great solace in the rhythm of making stitches” Featured Artist: Kristen Ashbaugh
“Throughout my life, my ability to throw myself into a creative outlet has been so important to me. I learned this from my mother who taught me to sew, knit, and crochet”
“stigma can also be internalized, such as when I doubt my own impulses to integrate my experiences as a mother in my work” Featured Artist: Susana Ruiz
What’s been the best surprise about having a creative life in motherhood?
The media landscape expands! As a media artist, my world has become so much bigger and infinitely more interesting since motherhood. I go through my children’s cultural preoccupations and eccentricities with them and I, too, grow. My Little Pony this month? Okay. Red Dead Redemption non-stop for the entire weekend? Okay. Kendrick Lamar last week and Public Enemy this week? Okay. Unboxing Toys videos on YouTube? Fine.
“The best surprise about having a creative life in motherhood is when your children start creating and you get to be part of their creations.” Featured Artist: Tracey Ellert
“I recently started working more with my children. I wrote a story and I have asked my son to illustrate it, and I also asked both children if they had any edits or ideas. ”
Yeah, but did you puke? (why I take classes)
Riffing on Portlandia, we’ve decided that any charcoal disaster can be solved by “putting a pear on it.” My drawings are full of pears that exist nowhere in the original still life.
“I completely took over the kitchen table for years since I had no other space to work.” Featured Artist: Cid Longoria
if I was out all day shopping for beads, or up late at a show I would often be asked quite sarcastically, “do you even know where you kids are?”
“it’s important for me to drag the kids to openings and galleries. It’s healthy for kids to be flexible, to do things they might think are boring.” Featured Artist: Ali Smith
“The previous generation of female artists were often told they couldn’t have kids if they wanted to be successful and I thought that was ridiculous”
Out of sight….
Hard to do something when you don’t have the supplies or even know where they are.