Mother's Project Ariel Lavery

Vadis Turner is an artist living in Nashville, TN. Her work, in recent years, has focused on the transitions a women encounters throughout her life and borrows from the experience of other women. We met on her mother's land for this interview and she talks a lot about the inspiration she has garnered from her mother's daily practices. Charred refuse and biological materials come together with more traditional art making products to create alchemical structures. This was an inspiring conversation that explored the ways her art practice has informed her mothering.

Daisy McGowan lives and works in Colorado as an artist and curator. Being mother to a newborn has spanned over 20 years of her life with her first being born when she was a junior in college. In this episode she describes the way becoming pregnant didn't veer her off course, but rather solidified her resolve in becoming a career driven mother. She reflects on how people treated her 20 years ago, a young woman with her first baby, versus today. She tells the story of finding new love and family after 40 and the empowering birth experience she was able to have at an older age.

Emilia White is an artist and educator who works through performance, video and writing to express her comedic outlook on life. While the work she makes explores taboo and repugnant content, her personal story has introduced more difficult subject matter, and the problem of how to talk about it through her work. We learn about her experience of loss and how she came out of the depths of grief with the birth of her daughter and the creation of new work.

This episode may not be appropriate for you if you are currently pregnant or suffering from depression or anxiety.

Jean Villapique is a comedian, actress and writer known for I Love You, Man, IV-Effing, and Key and Peele and plays economics teacher Michelle Jones in AP Bio. In this episode she talks about her long journey trying to become a mother. After several miscarriages, multiple cycles of IVF, dealing with family death, and battling through the adoption process, her miracle finally happens. We also hear clips from some of the work she was inspired to create out of this journey.

Kaylan Buteyn is an artist and mother who has started a movement among other artist mothers. She launched the Artist/Mother Podcast in early 2019 and immediately saw thousands of mothers flocking to the community by listening and posting their work on the podcast's instagram page @artistmotherpodcast. She talks about how early motherhood is different from being a mother of three. Feelings of isolation and loneliness, both as a mother and as a professional, drove her to launch the Artist / Mother Podcast, which set the stage for organizing a multitude of other groups like a critique group and book club.

In this episode I visited her first retreat, and interviewed women who attended. We get a sense of what it means to be among like minded mothers in this nurturing professional environment. And we hear a bit about what this journey has meant for Kaylan.