Anne Mavor has compiled in-depth interviews with 21 varied artists who are also mothers. There are writers, scuptors, painters, musicians, video artists, performance artists, and printmakers. They come from different class and ethnic backgrounds and have made different choices in their lives. They discuss how and why they became mothers, how their motherhood affected their artwork and how their artwork affected being mothers. They speak about the hard parts of combining these two demanding jobs as well as the rewards. Each interview is accompanied by an elegant and candid photo of the artist taken by photographer Christine Eagon specifically for the book.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Scientific American
Anne Mavor's Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds should appeal to a wide audience--those who have children and those who don't, together with apprehensive would be mother-artists. Intelligent questions are asked and intelligent questions are given by a wide range of women. From beginning to end, Mavor's book, accompanied by Christine Eagon's fine photographs, makes for wonderful reading and speculation.
From The New Yorker
The following four paragraphs are from the introduction to Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds
The year I turned thirty-six I went from being a single woman living on my own, doing performance art and making wood sculpture, to a married mother of a baby boy, trying to get some sleep. It was quite a shock. But the biggest shock was that I was suddenly alone. I hardly knew any married people, let alone other mothers of infants. I couldn't stay up late anymore and my artist friends dropped away. I felt insane, frantic and depressed. And what about my artwork? It was sporadic at best and very hard to do. What had been my lifeblood--my art, was just not available. I was adrift in the sea of new motherhood with no rescue ship in sight. How could this be?
I wasn't buying that crap about my child being my best creation, either. Rowan was and is, of course, beautiful and smart and funny and amazing, as all kids are, but he cannot satisfy my artistic urge. He cannot be my voice to the world. He has his own voice. The biggest gift I could give him would be to use my voice to the fullest. I had to find a way to combine motherhood with artmaking. I didn't want him to grow up telling people, Yes, my mother used to be an artist before she had me, but she stopped and could never get going again. I guess it wasn't that important to her. As Rowan would say, Yucko!
One day, during a particularly trying day with my then two year old son, I had a tremendous desire to know what other women in my situation were doing and thinking. I wanted to hear their stories, their successes and failures, their ideas, everything down to the last gory detail. I wanted to know how they did it, and I needed to know that I wasn't the only one struggling to strike a balance between two demanding offspring: my art and my child.
So I decided to write a book. If I was craving this information, thousands of others must be, too. We needed to know that the lives we are yearning for are possible, because for all of us, life without creative expression is unimaginable.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-have for artist moms.,
By a man (Boston, ma) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds: 21 Artists Who Are Mothers Tell Their Stories (Paperback)
Each of my jobs as mother and artist are like crawling under a rock. Art is done lonely, slaving away without recognition for long spurts between shows, sublimating self into objects. Kids demand everything I have, especially when they are newborn, there is virtually no time for me to exist. I don't make my professional identity to hang out with other artist moms, that wouldn't even be good for business. I just love having this and one other book like it around for redemption. Agree or not with their parenting styles, it feels good and makes me wiser to know how they did it, how it is, how it goes in their worlds as artists and mothers. Candid stories, valuable stories, lessons but no preaching.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The only unifying factor among these four women is the fact that they all raised children during the fifties and sixties, which was a stifling era for women. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
inspired minds Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Hung Liu, United States, Ling Chen, Los Angeles, Franklin Furnace, Linda Vallejo, Miss Scott, The Woman's Building, Black Mountain, Diane Torr, Laura Ross-Paul, Margaret Dean, Martha Wilson, Native American, University of California, Marion Winik, Opal Palmer Adisa, San Antonio, Susan Banyas, African American, Cheri Gaulke, Down's Syndrome, Naomi Shihab Nye, Norie Sato New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The only unifying factor among these four women is the fact that they all raised children during the fifties and sixties, which was a stifling era for women. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
inspired minds Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Hung Liu, United States, Ling Chen, Los Angeles, Franklin Furnace, Linda Vallejo, Miss Scott, The Woman's Building, Black Mountain, Diane Torr, Laura Ross-Paul, Margaret Dean, Martha Wilson, Native American, University of California, Marion Winik, Opal Palmer Adisa, San Antonio, Susan Banyas, African American, Cheri Gaulke, Down's Syndrome, Naomi Shihab Nye, Norie Sato New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 5
books:
1
book
cites this book:
- Of Woman Born - Motherhood As Experience And Institution by Adrienne Rich on page 178
- Opposing Viewpoints Series - Health Care (paperback edition) by James D. Torr on page 209
- The Song of Songs: A New Translation by Ariel Bloch on page 173
- Art and Design: Flexible Learning Resource Pack: Advanced Higher Art and Design (National Qualifications Curriculum Support) by Dorothy Balmer on page 72
- Mother Courage and Her Children (Modern Plays) by David Hare on page 15
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