Jo Mary Watson
Motherhood
Co-creation with E. (her drawings, my words)
Please note that I am using the word “Motherhood”, as this word describes my reality and experiences within my identity of being a cis-woman best, but is by no means meant exclusive. “Motherhood” in this context is a synonym for “Fatherhood” or “Parenthood”, so depending on your own identity, reality, and experiences, please swap “Motherhood” with what feels best for you.
- Impact of motherhood on being an artist
- Mental load
- How do my mental health issues and my ADD affect my ability to parent the way I want to parent
- Where do my beliefs come from regarding how I “should” parent?
- Generational trauma & breaking the cycle
- A safe space to address things nobody talks about
- Loneliness
- Shame, guilt
- Miscarriage
- Pain, discomfort, fear, frustration
- Identity loss/ change
- Queerness
- Not wanting to marry
- E. drawing on my notes, making it difficult to work (pictures of notes)
Weekly prompts (every two weeks? monthly?)
- newsletter/ group email sending our a word/ sentence as a prompt for that week, every artist that wants to get involved can create/ do something with the prompt and send back any ideas/ results (forms: text, audio, video, picture)
- Collection of works and ideas for artists to look through and see how everyone comes up with something different: diversity in creativity
Random Thoughts
- As a person that is just putting herself out there as an artist and without having any education/ further education in art: How do I fit in? Do I fit in? Do I need to fit in? Why do I want to “fit in”?
- Art language, academic framework, intimidation
- The Arts
- Narrative in the art world is becoming left wing, but that doesn’t reflect the world we live in which is becoming more right wing.
- Use art to show how the world we live in is, to wake up, start conversations and initiate change
- People’s relationship with the arts: the arts want to reflect/ represent working class/ minorities, but working class/ minorities are not interested in what is being produced at the moment or don’t want to have to do anything with arts
- Identity struggles of artists
- Narrative in the art world is becoming left wing, but that doesn’t reflect the world we live in which is becoming more right wing.
- Salomon, Romantik 2.0, Mystique (Magdeburg)
DOCUMENTING THE PROCESS
- Blog Posts
- Word clouds (every week, to see if/ how it changes)
- Video in location: working with E.
- Zine?
- Interviews (Zoom, record + transcribe, turn quotes into collages/ Blog posts)?
Jo Mary Watson, rolling updates:
Jo Mary Watson, Reflection
“The Impact of Motherhood on being an Artist” (very short) Booklist, Jo Mary Watson
Scrapbook, inspired by talks with others (part 1), Jo Mary Watson
What’s the weirdest thing, Jo Mary Watson
Care Wildly, Jo Mary Watson
Artist Hosts:
Jo Mary Watson, Harriet Burns, Matt Retallick and Elizabeth Challinor are documenting the festival, using their own practices to present the themes and methods of the programme. Follow their collective work HERE
Events:
Jo Mary Watson
Jo Mary Watson is an emerging writer and creator from Hamburg.
She has worked as a copywriter, social media manager and blogger for various companies, including Arcola Theatre and Bosch.
Jo mainly work with words, both German and English, using sentences, stories, collages and prompts to create places of understanding. Her work is inspired by mental health issues and finding the strength in healing, motherhood, people she has known and moments she has experienced, actual and imaginary. She is deeply inspired by her child, moving water (rivers, seas, oceans, tears, rain) and flowers.
With her work she is trying to open up room for people to come together to share and learn from, as well as challenge each other through creativity.
Jo lives in Liverpool with her partner and daughter.
Links:
