https://www.artistparentindex.com/files/original/49ed2d09c8f7d03c18a5a48f4845163d.jpg 455a2d6a5c744c18099bc4e5f0bcac11 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Artist Parent Index Person An individual. Website The Artist's website <a href="http://www.sarahirvinart.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.sarahirvinart.com</a> Biographical Text When I started my graduate program in 2013, I was confident that becoming a mother was not compatible with my studio practice. In the middle of my first semester, I began to question this assumption. As an experiment, I assumed the opposite was true, that there was work that I could only make if I was a mother. I was suddenly able to envision not only the work, but also myself in the role of “mother” for the first time. Three months later I was pregnant and I got to work. Creating in this way allows me to form myself in a role of “mother” and in turn motherhood continually redefines my practice. The work opens up dialogues about circumstances that are publicly debated, but only privately experienced. I measured my stomach with a piece of yarn at navel height the day I found out I was pregnant. I tied the yarn off in a loop. I repeated this every day until the day I went into labor. Every week of the second trimester, I lifted 26 pounds, one pound over the recommended amount a pregnant woman should lift, using a block and tackle pulley system and created a transfer drawing with the impact when it was dropped from nine feet. I established mechanisms to capture the physical actions of parenting as a mark on a page, beginning while I was in labor. For instance, the area rug in the nursery created transfer drawings as we walked across the room, the glider rocker created drawings as we rocked, and the stroller created drawings as we strolled. These works were enabled by the activities of our daily lives and captured the kinetic energy and labor involved in the care and nurturing of an infant. During the second and third months of my daughter’s life, I created a series of watercolors exclusively while she slept, with each set considered complete when she awoke, allowing my circumstances to dictate aspects of my creative output. While breastfeeding, I made drawings on paper I created from my bed sheets with looping marks corresponding to individual suck and swallow motions of nursing providing a real-time read out of this experience. I commissioned a reproduction of the plastic measuring scoop that comes in a container of Similac infant formula to be cast from silver baby spoons. Other iterations of this series include my daughter’s nursery as camera obscura; cyanotypes created with her blankets, toys and clothing; early stages of her own mark-making captured through fingerprint dust; silverpoint drawings tracing her early movements made with jewelry from my grandmother; and paintings made with a baby bottle and formula. As a whole, this project-based work is a personal narrative taking form as poetic visual data. The works are exhibited as sets and series. An entire year’s action of rocking a baby is a set of 59 drawings made with our rocking chair. One year of walking across a nursery rug is a row of 12 large transfer drawings. Fifty feet of watercolors represent a tiny sampling of the available time during early parenthood when the baby slept. The work visualizes how care taking has shaped me as an individual and how it has transformed my mark making. I view everything related to the experience of parenthood as a valid subject matter and/or mark making tool and this has opened up new methods of creating. The pieces are derived from the everyday. The interface of specific materials and processes with the everyday provides an entry point into broader topics of gender, production, reproduction, care, biological processes and cultural systems. Medium painting drawing papermaking video art photography installation Topics The topics addressed within the Artist's work. motherhood parenthood breastfeeding infants and sleep pregnancy Location The location of the interview Richmond Virginia Topic breastfeeding motherhood infants and sleep pregnancy baby formula caretaking gender and caretaking domestic labor maternal ambivalence Artist Residency in Motherhood gender equality home domestic space care work Exhibitions Exhibitions in the Index that an artist has participated in. The two entries will be linked. <a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/274" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Labors</a> <a href="http://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/392">The End &amp; The Beginning</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sarah Irvin ambivalence body breastfeeding care work domestic labor domestic space drawing gender gender equality home infant care labor maternal abivalence maternal body maternal time motherhood mothering painting paper papermaking repetition repetitive tasks ritual tracking video