Date of Graduation

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Art (MFA)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Art

Advisor/Mentor

Thompson, Jody

Committee Member

Ling, Ambrin

Second Committee Member

Mitchell, Marc

Third Committee Member

Amirvaghefi, Maryam

Keywords

Matrescence; Motherhood; Drawings; Identity; Domestic Space

Abstract

“Shhh” is a collection of drawings that reflect on the many ways the first year of motherhood shifts identity, perspective, and relationships. Focusing on my personal experience of becoming a caregiver, each work acts as an exploration and artifact of the shared labor between parenting and redeveloping an art practice, articulating both the tension and the enmeshing of these two realities. The work poses questions around value and production and consequently presents considerations of the passage into matrescence itself. Through a combination of rendered images, gestures and marks from observed moments in domestic space, postpartum life, and my own inner, emotional world, intimate compositions are produced that ask for sustained attention, slow looking, and unconventional approach to viewing drawing. Through reevaluating a relationship to making, drawing serves as a way to navigate and engage with the cultural narratives around how one is meant to make work and tend to a family.

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