Artist from Japan
My mother, 82 years old, has lived in Japan, doing housework for her family for 60 years.
No retirement, no weekend. That’s very common for Japanese women of that generation. Her family feels at ease thanks to her contribution. She is like a comfortable sofa for her family but she doesn’t have her own chair.
I would like to offer her a comfortable cushion, hoping she can take a rest sometimes.
I decorated it in pink because she loves to go out dressing herself up.
Since time began, mothers have nurtured, loved, taught, protected, cherished and raised their babies, then watched them grow to be killed in war or by war. This inevitable cycle will repeat itself for untold generations unless our mothers’ universal plea to Stop The Killing results in WAR NO MORE!
My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.
On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?
On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?
A Mother’s Treasure was created to depict an experience that women share in common– the love and nurturing of our children. The symbol that came to my mind was baby teeth. Every child in every culture sheds its first teeth, and everywhere mothers soothe and celebrate this rite of passage from babyhood to childhood. Just as my two sons grew up and moved into their own adult lives, I give up my treasure – their saved baby teeth – to make a rattle to distract and amuse other babies in other places. Loving greetings to all the mothers and their young.
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Nita Song, PRESIDENT/COO OF IW GROUP, ASIAN AMERICAN ADVERTISING AGENCY and Ann Enkoji, ARTIST
The starting point of this sculpture began when I asked Nita about pivotal moments in her life and she began to share the stories that created the themes for the box:
— moving with her family to the US to live in Alabama with her aunt
— pinching a young playmate until he broke her nose with a brick
— taking that injury and wearing it as an emblem of her character
— delivering her first child, weighing in at 10 pounds
— her two children’s artwork
— deepening her family and community relationships, especially with her mother
— and her love of the soil
Clay became the natural connection between my art and Nita’s life when she said: “… soil represents who I am. Soil is fertile, nutrient rich and stimulates growth.”
With my work I explore the theme of a woman’s fertility. Fertility is a complex issue and fertility is not always a G-d given right. Age and circumstances can exert enormous pressure on women to define themselves, to reach important decisions at what could be an inopportune time.
To embrace motherhood or to reject motherhood, or to gain motherhood through extreme and unusual means: are all fraught with their own assumptions and characterizations, either internally innate or imposed by external forces.
The tendency to define a woman by her ability to bear children is limiting and demeaning. A woman must be defined by her ability to live a positive and meaningful life.
My quest is to honor all women who engage in creation whatever form it might take and encourage women to feel comfort and acceptance on many paths.
I wish to get married and have kids.
I work with containers because they make me happy. Each piece I create becomes a container of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings: a nest, a womb, a secret, a surprise or a giggle. And always, a feeling of being in touch with my female ancestral beginnings.
My containers contain “me”. Being a wife, mother and “Nana” have been the most important things in my life. My baskets honor and celebrate the family. I use words and images of women and children because I want my basket/vessel to have content…to say something. I want to validate the importance of the family and the values and morals it nurtures. My vessels are autobiographical and are the scrapbooks of my life.
Throughout history women have found creative time in their lives to make baskets. Knotless netting, the technique I use to cover the gourds and molded forms, is an ancient, tedious, continuous thread technique that is used for nets, baskets and button holes and is symbolic of women’s work in the home.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary
and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done for the children.
-Anonymous Tewa Source
This collaborative project focuses on the network of relationships which support the mother as she experiences changes in Self identity within the frame of Motherhood. The changing perceptions of Self, whilst universal in Motherhood, differs significantly from person to person. This project involves each member of my personal support group of expatriate mothers in Singapore, expressing their experiences of motherhood in a “foreign” environment. Through the box, I sought to express my personal experience on a theoretical basis, placed in the context of my support network. Thereby the work seeks to reveal the differing experiences and changes in the perception of self, as well as the importance of a transient support network.
This piece of art represents a woman with a steadfast and proud posture. She sits and carries in her lap the continuity of life: her own children. Her face reads of dignity. She carries on her head a pot with a dove: the symbol of love and peace. She creates and conveys life, pride and peace.
Medium: clay mixed with copper oxide, cobalt oxide, magnesium oxide, iron oxide and some kaolin as well as a wooden box
For centuries, women in Bosnia have been telling fortunes by looking at the bottom of their cup from which they drank coffee. This is a sort of white magic. They turn the cup upside down and then different shapes from out of the coffee grounds left in the bottom of the cup. Each ‘figure’ represents a symbol; dog-fidelity, horse-strength, rabbit-speed…
The weasel has a special place in the history of Bosnia. It represents the protector of the Bosnian rulers.
The weasel, which is a very blood-thirsty animal, amazes us because of the gentleness of the mother.
I started thinking about this after I had seen this ‘figure’ in my cup.
