any resemblance to actual Cheerios is pure coincidence

When I started this blog in the summer months of 2007, before I was even pregnant with Elias, I thought I might write a bit about the relationship between creativity and motherhood. It's becoming a pretty tired idea by now, but I think the pressure still exists for artists, female artists in particular, to sacrifice a lot of other things in order to pursue their practice full-time. When I decided to major in art in college (the first real step I took toward taking art seriously, despite being one of the "artistic" kids all my life), I never imagined I'd have much in common with the gal who wants to be the CEO of a company, feeling like if I got married and had kids that would place any limits on my capacity to create and promote my work as an artist. But it does take an awful lot of time and energy to be an artist. Like being a mother, being an artist is much more than a full-time job. And I'm not one of those artists who has to create art in order to survive; for better or worse, I've discovered a lot of different ways to satisfy my need to be creative and well, make stuff. I always wondered, though, if part of the reason why I knew so many female artists who never had kids, or had an only child in their late 30s or early 40s, was perhaps because the constant production and creative thinking satisfied some of the urge to procreate.

Anyway, I'm sure someone's written a book about this very dynamic. As it concerns me, turns out having a child, while it is probably the single most fulfilling experience of my life so far, has not in fact satisfied my need to make stuff. My time is, of course, very limited, but I have managed to carve out some space for continuing my practice as an artist. For the most part, I'll save these kinds of posts for my other blog, but should I happen to have a baby blog reader who's not a regular visitor to my other blog, I thought I'd do a little double duty in introducing a new project I'm working on. Products from the Makery will be posted to the blog - fresh! - every Monday. Every product/post will be part of an ongoing giveaway so if you like what you see, leave me a comment on that blog post and I'll put your name in a random drawing at the end of the week to determine who, for example, will be able to put these slightly functional, but mostly decorative magnets on their fridge.


You can read more about the inaugural product of the Makery here.