Art and Motherhood

I am an artist and a mother, and on January 1, 2010, I committed to make one photograph each day throughout the year about this dual existence. The project had three goals: 1) to open a community dialogue about the role of mothers in the arts, 2) to question the visual portrayal of motherhood and 3) to engage in an open exploration of the complexities of motherhood.

Motherhood is a role that crosses cultural, social and economic boundaries, yet is often portrayed simply as an archetype or stereotype. The images in this project approach motherhood through ideas, feelings, stereotypes and documentation. Along the way they deal with the emotional and physical struggle between living a creative life and having children. The vulnerability that comes from using my own life and family as a backdrop is essential to making photographs that become less about the individual experience and more about the universal questions of role, relationship and identity. By committing to a rigid, demanding photographic schedule, I mimic the rigid, demanding schedule of motherhood, allowing me to document a year of complex thoughts, ideas and feelings.

Black and white photography evokes nostalgia, romanticism and idealization. However, the subject in many of my photographs is none of these. The tension this creates mirrors the tension felt when I compare my life to the idealized one I desire.

Each day of the year a new image was made, edited and uploaded to the Art and Motherhood website, and community discussion occurred through the website and accompanying Facebook page and Twitter feed. Exhibition images range from 6”x9” platinum palladium prints to 20”x30” piezo inkjet prints.

Sarah Rust Sampedro is a fiscal year 2011 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.