Mental Traveler

As I might have mentioned before, I work part time in one of the most interesting gallery in Tampere, Valokuvakeskus Nykyaika http://valokuvakeskusnykyaika.fi/. In August we had an interesting artist photographer Julia Weckman. At Nykyaika she had very great exhibition named On the Border of Existence. 

 But what really made me prick up my ears was conversation in the day of exhibition opening. Julia was asked to tell about feedback she has got of her work. And she told about her series of photos she have exhibit in year 2013 by name Mental traveler. One part of the series was photos of women wearing expedition uniforms. 

 

That is the series she have got a lot of feedback and it have touched many even to tears. She tells about the project in her web site:

”Occasionally, I feel the need to escape my own life somewhere. To freedom? But would I ever reach my destination as a traveller? Is travelling or my romanticized view of the journey toward freedom but a grand illusion? Myself, looking at my work, I feel i.a. longing, melancholy and wistfulness. Words I affiliate with
my works are essential, simple, restlessness, elsewhere, ease, freedom, departure.

Landscapes and images of leaving are in the spotlight of my exhibition. Portrait series of the likes of me, mothers of small children in expedition uniforms proves I am not alone with my wanderlust. There are seemingly more of us!”

When mothers of small children wear the red hat to say they are ready to leave everything and head to unknown it is really shocking. But it’s also so familiar feeling. It is relative to feeling of being trapped and a yearning for freedom,

 

Julia was amiable and answered questions I made about art and motherhood.

I asked how she herself succeeded to make art when she was mother of young children.

She answered:  “For me it is,  -and it was when my children born- important not to lose myself, and my own way to feel, express and to exist.

I exist, when I can express myself through art. As a mother of small children making art it is challenging, it is a hell if you are single parent, or if your partner is not enough supporting, or if you have to fight for your right to work all of the time. One faces many excruciating questions, which concern dignity, professional pride, partner’s values, and even respect (or lack of respect) of person and work. Personally I feel better, when I have possibility to do enough my work, my artistic expression (even if it is additionally to taking care of child). This should give enough explication for others, and that is the rule to follow. I have had to be perseverance and take my right. If I would have stayed crying how difficult things are, I couldn’t have done anything.”

I asked also, if she had dealt with the subject of motherhood in her works, if she is interested of works about motherhood and have she done any artworks with her children.

Julia answered: “I have not specially made art about motherhood. This series of freedom portraits I handle the freedom, but as I am the subject, as it is extended self-portrait, it just happen to be series of the women who are mothers of little children. Difficultness of motherhood I handled with the same importance as the other subjects of my life like curiosity, the experience of landscape, being artist photographer, getting old, world’s and life’s capacity, death, freedom and lack of it, nature etc.

I am interested in art, that concern for example relationships or humanity, and parenthood as it is part of it, but I am not interested especially of mother art or woman art.

I have made some piece of art with my children, but I think it is not yet the right time to exhibit them.”

To the question; what advice she could give to the people of same situation, and what things could have helped her, she answered:

“I think that many things (also in motherhood) are questions of arrangement. If you know, that you need your own time, arrange it. Sooner than too late. Not then when you are already got mixed up in the head. For men it is easier to concentrate on art making, even if one is a father, but that is not thing one should cry or bemoan. It is not fair, but it is all up to you. You have to be on the other hand compassionate, but also realize the facts. Child can’t be thing, which stops you working and stops your creativity. I could not have lived with myself, if I would have left art making just because I got a child or two. That was not an option in any moment. My child wouldn’t have gotten to know the real me.  Just the opposite, they would have gotten false and incomplete information about me!

What could have helped me is a partner, who would have been more present (entrepreneurs have very long working days). What helped me was peer support, meeting people and doing my own art. (My son was only two weeks old, when I was preparing a big photo print to an exhibition I was chosen without warning. Doing my own work felt amazing, some people might think it was really irresponsible!)”

Motherhood and art once again

I have been breastfeeding my children now almost five years all together. And it has been very important for us. It has been always clear to me that I am nursing long time, even if it has surprise some people around me. My firstborn I nursed 3 years and with my lastborn we finish just now, when he is 2 years and 9 months.  Finishing is bit wistful.

But suddenly I can sleep all nights. Suddenly I can wear clothes that don’t have easy opening, suddenly I find myself planning my own things, works etc.

It is not only that, and not only the fact that both boys are now in day care, but somehow everything starts to become easier.

When I started to write this blog I didn’t seemed to find a way to make art. I was full of questions and no answers. Today I haven’t made more art but things don’t seem to be so blocked anymore. I see some light; I start little by little to feel that maybe it is possible to work again.

At the same time making questions to other mother don’t seem so important anymore, but maybe my little research would give some comfort for somebody else. I have tried to interview some of my artist friends but this is holiday weeks from schools in Finland so they can’t answer so fast.

Treasures

When I was child our family travelled a lot, as my father had that kind of work. When I was 6 or 7 years old we were spending part of the summer in Stavanger in Norway. Our luggage arrived late and all mine and my sister’s toys were there. My Mother says that my habit of collecting stuff from the sides of the road comes from there, as we had to create our own toys by what we found.

I collect things like that:

And especially I do it in new places. I think these treasures vary also in different places. For example in France, Chambon-Feugerolles, where I was in residency in year 2002 I found lot of pins like this:

(Photo borrowed from Internet)

Maybe it tells something about the place also.

Before I haven’t made anything of my treasure, I have just collected them, but this time it might become a part of artwork.

Now I want to transmit my strange habit to my boys too. Etienne already collects nice stones -and cones and acorns sometimes.

That will be one part of our art projects in next two weeks. We will be big explorers all the family and we will collect all kinds of samples of Greater Manchester (sounds, pictures, drawings, maps, treasures etc…) and examine them and exhibit what we have found!

That is frame for our projects and it could include individual smaller projects that depend on individual interests. I will see if the rest of the family agrees.

Art of being mother-artist

Here is the text we made together with Helen Sargeant. In the Tampere art association magazine Täydellinen Ympyrä it will be but shorter. Helen was a big help to me while writing this text. I think it is also very important to share to public in Tampere, as practice of Helen is different that people are used to, and as her artist talk only reach part of the people who was interested of it. Photos are taken by Helen and also published in her own blog.

So here you are:

In Year 2014 UK artist Nicola Smith took part in two weeks artist residency in Finland with her 6-month-old child and with her husband. She recognised that biggest part of the residences are just for individual artists and in very few it is possible to take partner or child with. Nicola Smith started to create a residency, which would be meant specially to those artists who have not possibilities to participate normal residencies. We Are Resident –project is realised together with Tampere art association, Islington Mill Salford, Great Manchester and it is funded by Arts Council England

Helen and Naoise Sargeant have been in Tampere in We Are Resident – family residency that is created by Nicola smith. They spent two weeks in September in Takahuhti artist house. Helen says that her residency was a 14 day performance piece about caring for her son researching play, art, collaboration, education and finding out about artist/parents in Tampere. Did they face the same challenges as an artist/parents in the UK?

Before Helen and Naoise arrived to Finland We were writing to each other and I looked very much forward to meet them. With Helen we planned to meet at city centre on Friday 9.9, we pass by children’s culture centre Rulla and some flea markets and continue to my home to bake. Plan includes of course Helen’s artist co-worker seven years old Naoise and my two and four year old sons.

Baking seems to be an important element for Helen in her mother –artist –art. Before we met, she sent me real handwritten letter in which she hoped that we could bake together ”reikäleipä” – I proposed to make cardamom bread as I don’t know so well the secrets of the levan of bread. Baking is an important symbol of motherhood. Also in Finland we speak of  ”bun smelling mother” as a synonym for good mother.

I watched Internet site of Helen and I found a performance, that Helen have made at may 2016. Dust Bread was exhibited as part of the exhibition Artist As Mother As Artist at the Lace Street Gallery, Nottingham. As part of this project she worked with the public to make dust bread. She cooked dust bread with small groups. The groups included parents and children and mothers. Each of them baked bread from the dust in their Hoovers.

Actually she has made dust bread already at 2013 from the dust of her own family: cat and human hair, dead skin, lost Lego pieces etc.

Helen tells about that: “I made dust bread in 2013, when Naoise was small, before he went to Nursery School. I was interested in what artwork I could make from within the situation that I found myself to be. My days were primarily taken up with childcare, housework and managing the home. I had little money to buy art materials and I found it difficult to get to work at the studio without any access to childcare. Dust bread was about turning household waste into art. Caring for a child and domestic work in the home is often undervalued in society. I wanted to make the accumulative waste of our family that had come from our bodies and from our activities in the home into something of importance and beauty. I was also interested in making a subversive piece of work. I am interested in challenging idea of the "good mother” . In my work there is an attempt to reveal the reality and complexities of my work as a mother. The dust bread is disgusting, dirty and grey but it rises and cooks in the oven and is transformed into a beautiful loaf.”

Things don’t go always like planned. Naoise was tired and struggling with meeting new people and being away from his home and after some turnings and curvy road with a bus we ended up to Takahuhti art house instead. There I had change to see, what kind of subjects Naoise and Helen are working with.

Helen describes her art: “The work that I am interested in making visible is care work and domestic work. In Britain today it is women who still do the majority of care and domestic work. My work is political in that I am highlighting that this is still an issue, and prevents many women from reaching their potential in the labour market or that they are unable to work outside the home. Care work mainly goes on inside the home where it is unseen. Ideally the work that parents do would be more equitable.”

Actually in the work of Helen and Naoise single piece of art is not as remarkable as the method.

At Takahuhti studio floor were a mixture of art and play. Helen told me: "I have left invitations to make, to play, to draw, to perform in the house and in the studio. By invitations I mean materials and equipment that Naoise can easily access.  Within my practice there is no delineation between art and life. Being a mother both informs and inspires my arts practice. In my work there is an attempt to extend my caring and creative actions into the work of an artist. Collaborating with Naoise is such an attempt. However sometimes creative strategies to collaborate don't work. For example Naosie was not interested in the junk modelling table but he did like to play in the studio. He drew on my nightie and in his sketchbook and enjoyed building a train track and bouncing a ball in the space.” 

From UK they have take with them for art material some bedclothes and nightdress made of linen. That and wooden railway composed a piece of art.

When we visited them, sculpture hasn’t yet found its final form and it was even taken off for children could play with trains.

With Naoise Helen made also some smart phone drawings during the residency  The Phoneix, Smart Phone Drawing, Naoise Sargeant, Takahuhti, 2016, 2/ Riding the Reindeer, Helen and Naoise Sargeant, Smart Phone Drawing.

Helen told me that their method to work is very similar as at their home and also Naoise enjoys making work alongside her at the studio.

The blog of Helen was the main piece of work at the residency. http://helensargeant.co.uk/motherandson/.  Although Naoise wasn’t interested in posting work himself, Helen made an effort to ensure that his work was represented via the blog. The blog takes the form of an on-line diary. Autobiographical and reflective, critical writing is a part of Helen's practice. 

The residency was informed by Lea Lublin's extraordinary performance (Mon Fils), 1968, in which where she cared for her baby each day during the hours of an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Helen says: ”I saw the residency as a 14 day durational performance piece between myself and Naoise. Me and Naoise looking after each other ad collaborating to make this piece of art work that was about care and play.”

Already 20 years ago. Prior to her first son Syd being born, She made work about the female body. Mince Her is a painting of a pregnant woman that she made during a residency on the site of an old hospital. The painting of the pregnant woman is a ghost a tribute to the women who were incarcerated on the site who had children but were not married. This was socially unacceptable in Victorian Britain. To paint Mince Her she used x-rays and medical notes and information that I had found on-site.

Same themes have interest her during her artistic career.  For example she made drawings about her pregnancy and about giving birth 2009.

Helen tells: Don’t scribble me out is a self-portrait from the year 2015. It depicts me as both mother and child. It sticks together two moments in time. It plays with ideas within my wider practice that are concerned with maternal ambivalence, vulnerability and the affect of the transition into motherhood on a woman’s identity. It is about the child that still lives inside, a child learning to mother or a child that has become trapped. It’s about loss and a yearning for freedom, independence, a life before. It utilises a family photograph taken by my father in 1973 in which you can see I am happily balanced on top of my mother’s shoulders. The felt tip pen drawing that I have carefully traced around, cut out and superimposed on top of the photographic image is by my son who was aged 4 when he drew it. In the drawing I am depicted shouting, you can see that my mouth is wide open. Marks from the drawing obliterate parts of my mothers face. I have scribbled her out.

I am interested in how lines can transmute feelings. When scribbling out my mothers face I was in fact thinking about my own invisibility as a mother and full time carer of a young child. I thought that the drawing by my son was really fascinating as it captured the sense of frustration and isolation that I felt whilst looking after him at home. I am silently shouting out or screaming from within the drawing. My voice is seen but not heard.

The title of this artwork comes from my mother’s reaction to the work when she first viewed it. She felt upset by the image I had made and said please don’t scribble me out!”

When being pregnant of his second son Naoise she started to think how she could connect the art and the motherhood. Helen found out that being a parent could be isolating and that’s why started to build networks around the things she was making research of. She felt that voices of the mothers left often unheard and that their stories should become told and their art to be seen.

She began to make research of artists, who were dealing with the subject. She created an on-line community for artist mothers with the name The Egg The Womb The Head and The Moon. The egg, the womb, the head and the moon was an online, interdisciplinary, collaborative arts project that that lasted for nine months (42 weeks) –a time frame that purposefully mirrors that of the duration of pregnancy. The site contained moving and powerful art and texts by artists, performers, photographers, academics and poets exploring a diverse range of subjects about the maternal.

MeWe was born when Helen and Mo Brown, intercultural psychotherapist, met on a park bench whilst watching their children play. MeWe – art about maternal is a peer support group for mothers, - visual artists, academics, writers, performers, poets and film makers- who also wanted to discuss their parenting and art making. They met once a month at someone’s home.

With her method of working Helen is connecting art, care work, domestic work, and play. She doesn’t make work in spite of her responsibilities of being a mother it is about being a mother and an artist. About how to do both?

A man just for love him – idleness and gender roles

I am for the moment making an article about We Are Resident and residency of Helen Sargeant in Tampere Takahuhti arthouse for Tampere art association magazine Täydellinen ympyrä. I will share the same text here after I have finished it.

We have made the text together with Helen and there was one thing that Helen said that start this thought of mine.

Helen tells: “The work that I am interested in making visible is care work and domestic work. In Britain today it is women who still do the majority of care and domestic work. My work is political in that I am highlighting that this is still an issue, and prevents many women from reaching their potential in the labour market or that they find it difficult to be able to work outside the home. Care work mainly goes on inside the home where it is unseen. Ideally the work that parents do would be more equitable.”

I red this and I was thinking my previous text about My time, his time, our time. Our gender roles in our family seems very different. My partner is home-daddy and I am the one who works outside of the house. Neither of us likes to clean, but Laurent cooks and I do the laudry. We both are not at all work- or money -oriented. We have get used to be poor (in Finnish scale). I did my master of arts graduating work about idleness. I like the books of British writer Tom Hodgkinson as well as Gorz, Lafargue and Illich. Still it is more me, who wants to work and who is more ambitious.

I think in Finland there is no more that kind of expectations of gender roles and domestical work or care work, unleast not same much as in Britain it seems to be. Time to time people ask me when my partner is planning to start work, but for most of the people (unleast in our social bubble) being home–daddy don't wake up any questions.

Finnish writer, politician and feminist Anna Kontula wrote very beautifull text called ”Vapaan naisen rakkaus”, - Love of a free woman. I try to translate one paragraph of it:

”Love is luxury of those, whose bread don't depend on chose of spose. Thanks to my ancestress's work of equality, I can take who I wan't, and there is no bigger freedom. I have my career, my room and my bank account, and I need no man for another thing than just for love him.”

*annakontula.fi/2016/09/vapaan-naisen-rakkaus/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

My time, his time, our time

Date of the actual residency come closer and Nicola have all ready made some plans for us.

Children are in day care the week that is usually autumn holidays in Finland and our trip to UK will be holidays for them. As I am working now, Laurent is taking care of the children daily, the time I am at work and children are no more at day care. My working day continues usually until 6pm.Often I also work in week-ends.

There are so many things I would like to see in my residency. So many places I would like to visit, and I would like to seriously to do work of my own in the way I could concentrate on it. I do have some plans, that I could put in to practise with children, but I also have a lot of ideas that need time of my own.

People keep saying to me ”Couldn’t your companion look after your children, while you are doing your things.” They don’t catch that that’s what he is doing all of the time.

I would like that this residency would be fun for all the family members. It is not fun to travel another country just to be babysitter while I am looking around and creating things. Children are also looking forward time, when I am not working and they are not in day care to do something together. For them being together is much more interesting than all the museums or other amusements. And they are both a bit shy too to meet new people.

We should find a way that pleases everybody. Both of us adults should get time for our own projects, and we should do fun things all together. And at the same time manage to create some art. This will be our challenge now. And I think this is one main question on what the family residency is about.

Place-based art I

I think there is at least three ways to work in a residency.

A way is to continuing the project that already exist. The work that artist is doing at home country. Residency just gives a chance to concentrate on it better in peace.

Second way is to observe and study in the place and then residence influence the future works. It is like collecting ideas and materials for upcoming works.

One way is to make place based art. This is something I have in mind. When we first time spoke about it with Nicola, I said that I might continue with my carnival theme, which I was doing during last year. But I think not. It could be the carnival, if I will see something like that in Salford.

One example of place-based art that I have made is the works I did in autumn 2009 on one lighthouse island called “Kylmäpihlajan majakka". These works I did in course of my school and they have not been exposed anywhere. Though I find them still  quite great. I think my idea was to catch the spirit or the nature of the island.

Lichen of the great rock was unique.

Drawing lines with rowan berries. There was endless wind on the island middle of the sea. Red lines supposed to show the direction of the wind.

 

Brown alga and the mermaid

And finally the lighthouse itself and my copy.

 

And the shadow that looks greater than the lighthouse I built.

I have got also some ideas of the place based projects we could do with boys.

 Let's see if they will  like it or not.