At SECAC in Winston Salem North Carolina, I attended Life Disruptions as Opportunities for Artistic Growth, Session I, organized by Stella P. Arbeláez Tascón. The first speaker at this session was Zoe Nestlie from the University of Central Florida whose art is influenced by an emotionally abusive relationship. Her talk was titled, Making the Invisible Visible: Giving Form to Emotional Abuse in Intimate Partner Relationships. The relationship had her questioning who she was as she faced unsteady ground with every interaction with her partner. At first she painted the eyes of her partner in front of an image of a wolf. She felt however that image empowered her abuser.
She switched to creating an alter ego character who navigated the uncertain world of healing after abuse. The character was cartoonish but, in each scene, there were visible hints of the abuse happening. Besides the digital paintings, she began sculpting plush sculptures that hinted at the process of recovering from abuse.
The second speaker, Hallie Bahn from the University of Massachusetts Amherst gave a talk titled, Sand Through My Fingers: The Negotiation of Time, Labor and Control as an Artist-Mother. She was an animator and had given birth. She got a grant to work on an animated film using sand. She wanted to collaborate with her child in the process, but her child was not interested in any form of linear storytelling. Hallie would animate a scene usually with an animal and then she would film her child destroying the final image. The film became a process of creation and destruction. It was displayed in a sand box which encouraged children to interact. The resulting spears of sand she would then reform and use to animate another scene. Having come from a Disney Feature Animation background I had multiple questions, as did Stella. The film is still in production.
Sally Brown from West Virginia University gave a zoom talk titled, The Architecture of Absence: Grief, the “Empty Nest,” and the Generative Power of the Archival Pivot. Sally is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores womanhood, motherhood, and the physical body through drawing, painting, and mixed media. Some of her pieces integrated drawings by her child along with her own drawings, many of which were expressionist self-portraits depicting her own body. Some paintings had breast prints along with drawings of the nude. She had to deal with an empty nest she was making a major pivot inn her work moving forward.
The last speaker, Paige L Morris from Tyler School of Art and Architecture gave a talk titled, Tending the Rupture: The Politics of Care and Slowing Down. I identified with her talk on a deep level. Paige is an interdisciplinary artist and educator in Philadelphia, PA. Building upon her foundation in glass, Morris utilizes material poetics, sound, and video performances to examine language, the complexities of love, and the human search for truth and meaning. Her practice actively investigates agency and desire as a method for unlearning her patriarchal conditioning.
She expressed the idea that a resume or CV should list things like overcoming grief among the achievements. A CV tends to only focus on achievements like shows. and job titles but life experience and resiliency plays into making someone a desirable hire. Page lost a sister and that grief at first made producing art seem meaningless. The demands of making enough money to survive tended to crush any hopes of creation. She has since become a beacon of creativity in her community by opening a shared art space with other artists which hosts shows. The space isn’t a non-profit, it is just a bunch of artists coming together to split the rent and mount amazing exhibitions. Her story was inspiring. All of the presentations tied together nicely being about motherhood and finding oneself in a patriarchal society while growing as an artist.