Shout!
a multimedia art show featuring works by women veterans. it is open to the public and absolutely free. everyone is welcome to come…
internship at birth center
with fellow midwives, outside MLL
i spent the last 4 months here at Maternidad La Luz, a high volume birth center on the border of El Paso and Juárez, working as a student midwife. under supervision i provided complete primary care including prenatal, birth, and postpartum services. the schedule involved 24-hour clinical shifts every third day (sometimes every other day), and classes, peer reviews, and meetings in between. along with the challenges of staying up all day and all night, i humbly learned the lessons of birth, studied midwifery academically, and spoke to all the clients in Spanish. well, i did my best anyway. 🙂
first day of work - tired from the long roadtrip, but at least i found some cute scrubs...
destruction of scale model fetuses
due to space constraints i had to part with my clay model fetuses. i considered giving them away. but because they were unfired clay pieces, they would break at the touch of a finger and over time would certainly fall apart. after spending 100+ hours creating them, i thought that instead of just chucking the board in the dumpster, i would archive its destruction with a series of photographs. soon all the work of sculpting, molding, and intricate detail lay clustered in scattered heaps of broken parts.
scale model fetuses
these pieces are scale models of fetuses at 2.5, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 20, 26, 32, and 38 weeks. in the larger models, only half the fetus is represented and the viewer is left to imagine the mirror half. this is partly because i wanted nice flat backs for wall mounting, and partly because in the third trimester fetuses i had trouble creating whole babies that were not deformed. before doing anything like this again, i think a sculpting class is in order. this was a project for the Embryology and Fetal Development module of my National Midwifery Institute studies.
self portrait
unglazed vase. i do not see myself as glazed. i textured and colored with sand, acrylic paint, shoe polish, and rub & buff metallic goo.
true nature
My feminist philosophy teacher, Shawn Doubiago, and John Stuart Mill’s “The Subjection of Women” challenged me to consider the true nature of women, the unadulterated-by-society nature of women. Can we ever know this nature? Mill doesn’t believe we can, claiming, “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.”
Maybe we can’t fully know the true nature of women, but I think that listening to women, taking time with/for them, and providing them a natural free space begins to uncover their true nature.
I found such a natural free space while attending midwifery workshops at the The Farm Community in Summertown, Tennessee. The Farm is saturated with decades of progressive truth and love, intentional freedom and equality. Through the energy of its powerful woods and the pure full moon, i began to feel….well, essence. “true nature” is about one essential woman, what she (in me) looks like, what she (through me) does.
Because the true nature of the woman can never be completely uncovered, one verse is written in a “foreign” language to respect the great mystery.
true nature:
“true nature” is dedicated to Wendy, Hannah, Beth, Beth, Sarah, Lisa, Charlotte, Zaina, Caterina, and Maria – the ten beautiful women who fed and inspired my vision of raw female.
V
Since losing access to the wonderful Ding Dong Studios in Arlington, VA, I have been experimenting with multilayered home recording. Created with Garageband, “V” was my first entirely self-grown musical project. It was written in response to a guy who scorned any public broadcast of the word “vagina.” He said it was a dirty word, a swear word. To this my vagina reacted quite strongly, insisting on taking the mic and speaking the truth. You might say this song fell out of my lap.
V:
christie hubbard creates things and often plays flutes 