The MAN Festival Day 6 - Multi-Tasking Mother Artists

In a permanent state of multi-tasking, as mother artists we are often overwhelmed by the conflicting demands we feel from family and artistic lives. And each of these twin selves also contains its own conflicting needs and demands. Despite all these competing demands we continue to undertake creative work because if we didn`t we would be denying ourselves and depriving our children of an essential aspect of who we are.

Each feature in the MAN Festival has shown how these twin selves can also feed into each other augmenting and developing rather than dividing and destroying our parenting and artistic roles.  

As mother artists we live in an alternate time frame to the rest of the world. Everything takes longer despite the fact that you are moving faster than you have ever gone before. I am very drawn to Frank Partnoy's idea from Wait: The Useful Art of Procrastination, of  how we 'manage delay'  in order to expand time:

The best time managers are comfortable pausing for as long as necessary before they act, even in the face of the most pressing decisions. For good decision makers, time is more flexible than a metronome or atomic clock.

PAUSE AND ENJOY!

Viv in her Looking Glass project

In wrapping up this week with the BIG MAN, I have truly enjoyed spending some virtual time with each of the artists featured in the Festival and all the other artists I have come across in the process. What a rich and multi-dimensional experience! Ideas are coalescing and a Phd proposal is making its way onto paper to be submitted at a time somewhere in the future. Virtual presence is being reassesed so I too can participate in the magnificent community of artists of all disciplines who dance the weft and weave of motherhood and arts practice.

Thankyou to Jo and Lilly for providing a platform to connect, discuss and celebrate art, creativity and motherhood.

Bravery is…  accepting change

Imagination is… core to resilience

Generosity is…  allowing your self to expand

Viv juggling rehearsals for her Quiet Spirit film project

BIG Editors note:
As two mother artists we live all of it at once.  BIG was built in the sleep hours and habits of our littles. You cannot undo being an artist or a mother. You just are.  Scroll through the posts below to find a week of links to mother artists and projects inspired and true. There are many more coming. If you want to join the MAN party send us an email to info@bigkidmsagazine and we will do our best to position you in the mix of our next curated MAN Festival early next year. Here we extend our huge thanks to Vivienne Rogis who has done a wonderful job working within our immediate and madly responsive BIG process as guest editor. We look forward to welcoming you into the blogosphere Viv ;) 

The brand new issue (3) of BIG kids Magazine just been released called Game On! We have a feeling both you and your child just might love it! We also thought to point you Into The Dark in the hope you might like to CONTRIBUTE a little something side by side with your child. 

See you there, Jo and Lilly xx

The Mother Artist Network (MAN) is an initiative of Jo Pollitt and Lilly Blue and BIG Kids Magazine. This inaugural mini MAN Festival has been curated in collaboration with guest editor and mother artist extraordinaire Vivienne Rogis

The MAN Festival Day 2 - A Calling

For many of us Rachel Power's work The Divided Heart – Art and Motherhood is an inspiration and support to the continuation of our own creative parenting lives; a document we can identify with and learn from and that brings to light important themes and issues we all face.

"What strikes me most about The Divided Heart – Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power is that each and every woman sees her creative work as a 'calling'.  As an integral part of who they are in the world and not just some separate identity.  They all seem to understand that the creative self and the mother self are fluid and move in and around each other". Mary Trunk 

In some recent research I undertook into life transitions I came across some research by Deidre Anderson (2009) looking at career transition in elite athletes. I found it interesting because Anderson suggested that many elite athletes understand their occupation as the core aspect of their self-identity, something more than what they do. A way of being in the world and expressive of who they are, just like artists do. The suggestion in this research was to encourage a broader view of the self to ease points of transition but also to improve performance in their chosen field of expertise or 'calling'.

What I have found most inspiring (but not surprising) as guest editor of this BIG Mother Artist Network Festival is the innovation, determination and depth of work created by mother artists. Not to put us above artists in other contexts but to acknowledge the particular power of our own context. Having a child is a major transition in an artist's life and the necessary broader view of the self as something more than (not other than) an artist not only gives rise to new ways of approaching artistic practice but, taking the suggestions of Deidre Anderson, may in fact boost our ability to move through future career or life transitions.

Below are some links to blogs, websites and projects of mother artists making vital, powerful and incredibly interesting work. Responding artistically to life and all its twists and turns. Take some time to really see and let the twin selves of these artists reveal themselves through their work.

Flannery O' Kafka - photographer, blogger of melancholy merry making and mother of five 

Kristina 1 from MOTHER - A series of portraits of mothers sans their children by Parisa Taghizadeh 

Amelia Carson  artist, blogger, mother

Michelle Johnston author of Woman on the Verge

The Mother Artist Network (MAN) is an initiative of Jo Pollitt and Lilly Blue and BIG Kids Magazine. This inaugural mini MAN Festival has been curated in collaboration with guest editor and mother artist extraordinaire Vivienne Rogis to whom we are so grateful! 

The Mother Artist Network is a place that invites BIG ideas and discussion about creative practice and motherhood. Through a forum of ongoing blog posts the MAN will feature voices of mother-artists at all stages of artistic engagement and motherhood.  We very much hope you will contribute to the conversation by commenting below or emailing us at info@bigkidsmagazine to add your story to the mix.   

Side by Side at Sydney HQ

'Side by Side' is the philosophy of BIG Kids Magazine to feature the work of kids and artists on the same page, disrupting hierarchies and provoking new ways of seeing.

Twyla and I often work side by side collaborating seriously on images, or singing and making playful marks on a shared page. We don't usually decide what we are going to draw although very often we create some kind of figures or characters that can inhabit the stories we make up. Often the beautiful traces of our paintings end up being lost underneath the sudden fall of night and a whole page covered in black paint, or someone's hair grown so long that it covers up everything that has come before. Other times I whisk the work away while the characters are still visible and we begin a second and third piece continuing a meandering story line or dipping in to make believe tales of long lost brothers and ogre's from bad dreams. 

If you would like to try collaborating with your child you could try the following to get you started:

• Draw a circle for a head and invite your child to draw the face. Talk about ears and eye brows and hair, hats and bow ties, wrinkles and ear rings and rosy cheeks. 

• Draw the body slowly so your child has time to jump in and add arms or legs. 

• Concentrate on details like patterns on shoes or clothing that your child might like to extend or design in their own way. 

I love finding ways to say 'yes' to all the marks that Twyla makes on our shared page rather than trying to direct or curb her impulses. We have been collaborating on work since she first held a paintbrush and have a shared vocabulary now that has accumulated between us.  

Hopscotch Character in response to Game On!
By Lilly Blue and Twyla, age 3

Mother and Child
By Lilly Blue and Twyla, age 3

Side by Side: Mother and Daughter map the Fairy Park and the journey of the lost umbrella

Map of The Fairy Park, Alexandra, age 5, Perth

The Journey of the Lost Umbrella, Rachel, Perth

Rachel and Alexandra created their maps side by side. Both loved the BIG task and got lost in the process to find their own directions. Rachel enrolled in art classes the day after.

Guest Post and Treasure from Japan: JoJoebi

Hi, I am Jo a British designer living in Japan and I have a 6 year old son, Ebi-kun, we are very excited to be here today.

I have always been creative and enjoyed making new things and experimenting with new techniques and I feel that art and being creative is an important life skill, the process is just as important as the final product, sometimes more so.

When working with children it is important to set them up for success although I am all for them making mistakes along the way, it is part of the process so I do try to plan ahead a bit with the projects we work on. With Ebi-kun we have always had an art shelf with materials made available at all times but I also used the Montessori method so that he would learn to prepare his work space, respect the tools that he was working with and most importantly (from a busy mother point of view) how to clean up afterwards. Of course, for a long time I helped in one way or another but by setting the stage from the beginning I have saved myself a lot of work in the end.

So, how do we decide what to create? Sometimes one of us will have a specific idea, such as the treasure chest money box that Ebi-kun wanted to make. He didn't have the skills to make it the shape that he wanted so I helped with that and showed him how to do it and then I left him to it with the painting.

Other times I will get inspired by something I have seen on the Internet or in a book and we will make it together, I love the kind of projects where the end product then takes us off on another journey, the Rainbow Collecting Board started as a discussion about the beautiful natural colours in nature and ended up as an exploration of the neighbourhood as did the spinner.

I am also a big fan of projects that incorporate using different senses, I think that sensory development in children often overlooked these days, things are deemed to messy or too smelly which is such a shame because even messy activities don't need to be overly messy if the environment in prepared properly, if I think a painting project is likely to get out of hand we will do it outside or in the bath, I am all for easy clean up!

As time has gone by I have watched my son grow into a creative and curious little being, I observe him intensely and wait until I see one of those little sparks then I grab that spark and run with it. We find books about the subject and I will come up with some activities and projects, we brainstorm and discuss, we imagine and dream often we will go our separate ways and come back with something new. Sometimes we create together as a team other times we work side by side often using different mediums but joined by a theme or idea. Now we are at a point where we feed off each others ideas and suggestions which how the treasure map came about, Ebi-kun had a sudden interest in pirates, I had spotted a great book to get his for Christmas and decided to make him a map to go with it, since then he has been on many adventures and I suspect there are many more to come. The map then led us to the treasure boats and another project was born.

As I work from home Ebi-kun sees the process of my design work, from the sketches through to the final product, he sees the mistakes, the dolls with wonky legs or the dog that won't stand up and understand that these mistakes are an important step along, I hope that he takes the lesson from me that from a doodle or sketch or an idea or dream, if you work at it and even if you mess up along the way you can create something beautiful and meaningful.

If you would like one of Jo's Treasure Maps there is a 10% discount for all BIG Kids Magazine readers, just enter BIGMAP as the coupon code, it is valid for everything in her Etsy Store until the end of February.

Meeting and Magazine Making

First night landing at the Sydney Festival

The BIG begin

Twyla heads off with the pirates while we work

Treasure seeking

A few pages in..

Late night renderings and the pressure is on. 48hours.

A different sky

Photo by Paea Leach

"Tree fall over" said Nadia, as my beloved old Jacaranda tree was felled today to make room for the building of our new house.  I imagine the relocating of birds tonight, and try not to think about them. A single bird landed on the stump and I saw a human recognition of change in his pause. Of disappearance. I think about people forced to flee. About homes burnt. Or under water. Or occupied by force. I think about Boatbird. I distract myself by looking at flights that will see me land in Sydney in January to map out the BIG pages side by side with Lilly. It will be 13years since we last saw each other. We have a very BIG magazine to make.

Sacha climbs the tree stump top and finds a different sky. 

Editing BIG Kids Magazine

As an editor, I must be quite methodical. As a parent, I must be organised and practical. But as a writer and illustrator, I love being swept up in a creative storm where there are no boundaries. (Karen Comer)

The 'First Flight' edition of BIG Kids Magazine in September this year was our first experience of publishing a magazine. Lilly and I have authored published papers, produced limited edition artist-books and directed full length dance and theatre works - we are obsessed with the 'process' aspect of creative practice and used to drafting and re-drafting. However, when it comes down to the wire of copy editing, we could read through our work 50 times and still not see the missing 'i' in Imagination (Oh yes, it happened, MORE than once!) 

Once you are so close to something it harder to see it with any distance or indeed, perspective. And here is where Karen Comer came in. She acts as copy editor, and increasingly as advocate and friend. Based in Melbourne (I know - you'd think we could at least get ONE of our team members in the same city as one of us!), Karen is brilliant at her job and her incredible generosity helped to get us over the BIG line on numerous occasions. We asked her a few questions and here she shares insights - no doubt she will read and want to edit this post, but again she generously gave us range to edit HER words and so we have enjoyed the play ;) Thanks Karen, we LOVE having you on the BIG team!

Can you explain the role of an editor?

An editor’s job involves asking lots of questions to the author.

My job as an editor – regardless of the subject I am editing – is to help the author communicate with their readers. It is that simple! I want to ensure that there is nothing that will distract or confuse the readers. So spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correct. This does mean I am slightly pedantic at times but I couldn’t bear for a reader to put down a fabulous book or magazine because one sentence did not make perfect sense! Whatever the message or idea or theme or information the author wants to share, I want the audience to receive that message or story presented in its very best form.

The relationship between the illustrations or photos or diagrams and the accompanying text is very important. When I edited a nursery rhyme book for Hinkler books a few years ago, I checked an illustration for the rhyme – ‘Hector Protector was dressed all in green.’ The illustrator had used red for poor Hector Protector! I became particular about precise illustrations as a languages publisher for Jacaranda, John Wiley and Sons. If you are learning the French word for donkey and your only clue is a picture, it is imperative that your donkey does not look like a horse!

Can you paint a picture window of what your day was like as a full-time editor and as it is now as a freelance editor and mother?

When I worked full-time for an educational publisher, I loved all the big-picture projects. Starting with a blank piece of paper and a subject, then finishing up two or three years later with a tangible book. I loved the collaboration with authors, copy editors, designers, sales consultants, illustrators, subject consultants, multimedia specialists …

How did having children impact your work life?

Now, with three small kids, my editing life is quite different! I work in carefully planned but snatched hours, often first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and often in my pyjamas! I work while my oldest son is at school, my daughter is at kinder and my youngest son sleeps in the afternoon. I carve out hours on the weekend, when my husband takes the kids to footy practice or in between kid birthday parties, family events and grocery shopping.

I have swapped my office with the window overlooking a pub for a home study with bits of lego and colouring pages on the floor. My projects are not of the big picture variety any more – there is no time for that expansive, spacious kind of thinking so I usually do the detailed copyediting part of the project after most of the decisions have been made.

My work as a freelance editor ebbs and flows. I love having a project – it teaches me new skills, I learn something new, have the chance to work with creative people and it pays the bills. I also love not working – it gives me the chance to spend time on my own writing and illustrating projects!

What drives you to create worlds for kids in the stories you are currently working on?

Being at home with my kids means I have permission to read all day – well, nearly all day! And so I started my blog – Earthly Joyride – to share all the amazing picture books we like to read and the things we make and do in response to what we have read. And then I started to do a few courses on writing and illustrating for children. And now I write and illustrate my own stories and hope that eventually there will be a tangible book with my name  on it, just as I always imagined as a child.

As an editor, I must be quite methodical. As a parent, I must be organised and practical. But as a writer and illustrator, I love being swept up in a creative storm where there are no boundaries. Most of my stories are sparked by tiny ideas – a fragment of a sentence, half a story from a friend, a photo, a scrap of material, something one of my kids said. 

It takes me a long time to write a picture book. Perhaps 18 drafts over 7 months. Perhaps half a story written on holidays, then finished 8 months later, reworked for the next three months. The process goes on and on. Mostly enjoyable, sometimes frustrating.

There are times when my timetabled life infuriates me – school and kinder pick-up times, editing deadlines, Monday’s swimming lesson. But it does provide a sturdy frame for everything to hang on and within that there is the space to create. Not always enough time, but it is a starting point. And once you start to create, there is no choice but to hang on for the ride!

Turquoise tailed peacocks
From a picture book Karen is working on

Kids Art Exhibitions - Lilla a

1. Jean-Claude le Parisien, by Elia 9 years. 2. Paco Ray-Ban, by Jeff 39 years

These very fabulous robots from around the world feature in the latest exhibition now open on the gorgeous creative blog Lilla a, and we are very excited that the next exhibition will  be in collaboration with BIG Kids Magazine!

 1. R1 by Jaś (3,5), Antoni (6,5) and Mom. 2.Robot Brummi-Brum by Annika, 9years.

We first connected with Anna from Lilla a ("the small a") early in the BIG journey when we fell in love with this Bird House Exhibition, and her approach as a designer and mother to creating projects that can be done side by side with your children on their terms!

Bravery is being just a little bit scared
Imagination is a whole world
Generosity is the little hand giving you half of his last biscuit 

(Anna)

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