Greetings From Motherland

New Workshops!

Mindy — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:07:17 +0000

After our summer and fall hiatus, I’m going to be running a new project at the Harbourfront Community Centre starting in January. It’s funded by a generous grant by the Canada Council for the Arts, and I’ll be working with the same team of artists that I did last spring. Lisa Pijuan-Nomura, Cathy Nosaty, May [...]

Final Workshop

Mindy — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 02:55:37 +0000

I saw this series of workshops as a pilot for a new idea I wanted to explore, and after eight weeks of arts-based research into the question of how the pressure to be a good mother affects our lives, I’ve learned a lot. What was most interesting to me is that many women in this [...]

Mapping Motherhood

Mindy — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:19:22 +0000

This Tuesday, June 19th, at 6:30pm, I’ll be giving a talk about Greetings From Motherland for a speaker series called Mother Outlaws, which is part of MIRCI (Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement). I’ll be sharing the evolution of the project, my process of collaboration, and stories and art from completed and in-progress works. [...]

Motherland Travels

Mindy — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 20:50:51 +0000

We’re in the homestretch, as Tuesday was the second to last workshop. It was a busy day as people finished up their dolls, May interviewed them one on one about their creations, and I shot photos of them. After they were done, Cathy gathered them around to start playing with some melodies and lyrics she [...]

Mother Artist/Artist Mother

Mindy — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:45:03 +0000

One wonderful part about running an art project about motherhood is that people understand when my job as a mother has to take priority over my job as an artist. Last week, Micah was very sick with a nasty bacterial infection, and I couldn’t attend the workshop. If I had been running it by myself, [...]

Paper Dolls

Mindy — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:35:12 +0000

Back to our regularly scheduled workshops! To my pleasant surprise today, all of the people who missed the second week came back, and we had four new people, including one woman with a five week old baby. I commended her for coming–she’s definitely the newest mother we’ve ever had. She said she was really happy [...]

A Mother’s Day Film Release

Mindy — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:36:35 +0000

Two summers ago, I ran a five week project with an incredible group of mothers in Madison, Wisconsin that culminated in Good Eater, a site-specific installation about food and motherhood in the most beautiful community gardens I’ve ever seen. I still miss those women terribly. I was so lucky that Brijetta Hall Waller, a talented [...]

Good Enough

Mindy — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:07:22 +0000

We had a really nice drop-in workshop on Wednesday, although I was wrong to worry about it being mobbed. That felt a little frustrating, because it was just a logistical issue. We were set up in the room next door to the regular drop-in program room, and people were so used to going to that [...]

Resist the Pressure

Mindy — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:09:34 +0000

There’s a short piece in the Toronto Star about Greetings From Motherland this week, in advance of Mother’s Day. The reporter asked us to share tips on how to resist the pressure to be a perfect mother. It’s our first press coverage in Toronto, which is great, right in advance of the drop-in workshop tomorrow. [...]

Questioning

Mindy — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:22:56 +0000

It’s been a crazy week. I had a Canada Council for the Arts grant due the same day as the second workshop, and only started writing it last Thursday. Writing grants is difficult, but since I’ve received a couple now, it always seems worth it to try. Canada Council grants are notoriously hard to get, [...]