𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳
Opening Reception May 9th 5-8pm
‘I used to believe it was impossible for me to become a mother and artist. Despite how much I desire both life experiences, my art practice demands a certain level of devotion, and I imagine raising a child requires that, on top of the million things one urgently learns in order to keep another being alive, full, happy, and loved. Since moving to Mendocino I have had the chance to witness closely working mothers who are also artists. Some include the children in their art making, others take fragments of time alone to create, a quiet hour in the studio until one of the kids comes barging in asking about dinner. My mother’s medium is the garden, and I was lucky enough to grow up running around community gardens, learning to plant seeds, feeding chickens the greens from our carrots, hands stained from grazing fresh strawberries. Coming from a landscaping background, my mother threw herself in the gardening community in Santa Clara when we first immigrated to the US from Singapore. I imagine watering the soil and seeing what grows was her way of getting to know a land completely foreign to her. Communing with those who are interested in California native flowers, absorbing English vocabulary centering horticulture, her relationship with tending the land shaped her transition into an immigrant mother. I learned about new textures, smells, tastes, and how we take care of our more than human world through picking borage flowers, coming home with a basket full of ripe yellow cherry tomatoes, nibbling on nasturtiums. To this day, the smell of sweet peas beats any bouquet of grocery store flowers, reminding me of my mother’s care for the land, for her practice, for me.’
-Rino Kodama
Good Mother features the work of Jenn Ban, Dima Mabsout, Mal Moser, LuLing Osofsky, Julia Schwartz, Isabel Severi, Jessica Thompson, and Zomhlaba | suné woods.
Co-curated by
@bread.kiln &
@manzanitachange_
@jenn.ban
@dmbsut
@malmoser
@lu_ling
@juliaschwartzstudio
@barelyvisabel
@jrthompson.artist
@constellation.matters
Flyer image by
@barelyvisabel 
