The Maternal in Creative Work examines the interrelation between art, creativity and maternal experience, inviting international artists, theorists and cultural workers to discuss their approaches to the central feminist question of the relation between maternity, generation and creativity. This edited collection explores various modes and forms of art practice which look at mothers as subjects and as artists of the maternal experience, and how the creative practice is used to accept, negotiate, resist or challenge traditional conceptions of mothering. The book brings together some of the major projects of maternal art from the last two decades and opens up new ways of conceptualizing motherhood as a creative and communicative practice. Chapters include intergenerational discussion of art practices in the 20th and 21st centuries, representations of breastfeeding and infertility in creative projects, the notion of the ‘unfit mother’ and childlessness, together with the experiences of women and men that take on maternal identities through many forms of kinship and social mothering. The Maternal in Creative Work will be essential reading for interdisciplinary students and scholars in cultural studies, gender studies and art theory and will have wider appeal to audiences interested in maternity, childcare, creativity and psychoanalysis.

Reconciling Art and Mothering contributes a chorus of new voices to the burgeoning body of scholarship on art and the maternal and, for the first time, focuses exclusively on maternal representations and experiences within visual art throughout the world. This innovative essay collection joins the voices of practicing artists with those of art historians, acknowledging the fluidity of those categories. The twenty-five essays of Reconciling Art and Mothering are grouped into two sections, the first written by art historians and the second by artists. Art historians reflect on the work of artists addressing motherhood-including Marguerite G?rd, Chana Orloff, and Ren?Cox-from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Contributions by contemporary artist-mothers, such as Gail Rebhan, Denise Ferris, and Myrel Chernick, point to the influence of past generations of artist-mothers, to the inspiration found in the work of maternally minded literary and cultural theorists, and to attempts to broaden definitions of maternity. Working against a hegemonic construction of motherhood, the contributors discuss complex and diverse feminist mothering experiences, from maternal ambivalence to queer mothering to quests for self-fulfillment. The essays address mothering experiences around the globe, with contributors hailing from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.

This edited collection examines conflicting assumptions, expectations, and perceptions of maternity in artistic, cultural, and institutional contexts. Over the past two decades, the maternal body has gained currency in popular culture and the contemporary art world, with many books and exhibitions foregrounding artists’ experiences and art historical explorations of maternity that previously were marginalized or dismissed. In too many instances, however, the maternal potential of female bodies—whether realized or not—still causes them to be stigmatized, censored, or otherwise treated as inappropriate: cultural expectations of maternity create one set of prejudices against women whose bodies or experiences do align with those same expectations, and another set of prejudices against those whose do not. Support for mothers in the paid workforce remains woefully inadequate, yet in many cultural contexts, social norms continue to ask what is “wrong” with women who do not have children. In these essays and conversations, artists and writers discuss how maternal expectations shape both creative work and designed environments, and highlight alternative ways of existing in relation to those expectations.

An insightful, provocative, and witty exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art—for anyone who is a mother, wants to be, or has ever had one. What does a great artist who is also a mother look like? What does it mean to create, not in “a room of one’s own,” but in a domestic space? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge. With fierce empathy, Phillips evokes the intimate and varied struggles of brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Ursula K. Le Guin found productive stability in family life, and Audre Lorde’s queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms. Susan Sontag became a mother at nineteen, Angela Carter at forty-three. These mothers had one child, or five, or seven. They worked in a studio, in the kitchen, in the car, on the bed, at a desk, with a baby carrier beside them. They faced judgement for pursuing their creative work—Doris Lessing was said to have abandoned her children, and Alice Neel’s in-laws falsely claimed that she once, to finish a painting, left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. As she threads together vivid portraits of these pathbreaking women, Phillips argues that creative motherhood is a question of keeping the baby on that apocryphal fire escape: work and care held in a constantly renegotiated, provisional, productive tension. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary life.

Maternal Performance: Feminist Relations bridges the fields of performance, feminism, maternal studies, and ethics. It loosely follows the life course with chapters on maternal loss, pregnancy, birth, aftermath, maintenance, generations, and futures. Performance and the maternal have an affinity as both are lived through the body of the mother/artist, are played out in real time, and are concerned with creating ethical relationships with an other – be that other the child, the theatrical audience, or our wider communities. The authors contend that maternal performance takes the largely hidden, private and domestic work of mothering and makes it worthy of consideration and contemplation within the public sphere.

Performing Motherhood explores relationships between performativity and the maternal. Highlighting mothers’ lived experiences, this collection examines mothers’ creativity and agency as they perform in everyday life: in mothering, in activism, and in the arts. Chapters contain theoretically grounded works that emerge from multiple disciplines and cross-disciplines and include first-person narratives, empirical studies, artistic representations, and performance pieces. This book focuses on motherwork, maternal agency, mothers’ multiple identities and marginalized maternal voices, and explores how these are performatively constituted, negotiated and affirmed.

Give and Take: Motherhood and Creative Practice explores the diverse ways contemporary artists navigate the unique tensions of motherhood in all its varied stages. Becoming a mother is a life-changing event that can give mothers greater perspective, drive, and inspiration for making art. But motherhood also takes time and energy from pursuing creative work. This fundamental challenge, this give and take, is explored through this book as it forefronts the art and lives of dancers, playwrights, musicians, visual artists, and creative writers. The book contains thirty-three first person narratives from practicing artists along with written analyses that place these artists' essays within the broader context of arts writing and scholarship about motherhood. The concluding section of the book includes overarching thoughts about how artist mothers can move forward despite structural inequality and cultural bias and includes a resource guide for practical support.