The Samford Art Gallery’s new exhibit, “Mother Nature / Mother Nurture,” opened Jan. 12, and is a beautiful and solemn tribute to the realities of climate change, motherhood, and the fragile nature of biological life. The opening reception for “Mother Nature / Mother Nurture” was held on the evening of Jan. 12, and a discussion panel featuring all participating artists was held the following day.
Lauren Frances Evans, the assistant professor of art at Samford and director of the Samford Art Gallery, explores themes of creation and motherhood in her works: two felt sculptures titled “As Above, So Below” and “The Weight of the World,” and a looping video project titled “A Fire in My Belly.”
“Questions of origin and existence are constantly shaping how I think about my creative work,” Evans says in her artist statement, “and my belief is that the work of the artist, and perhaps especially the mother artist, is primarily ontological.”
Evans has been using her art to delve into these topics for a large portion of her career, using unique materials to portray the complexity of the human body, namely in regard to the relationship between a mother and child.
“Even before I became a mother I was thinking about umbilical cords,” Evans said in the artist panel, “but I thought of it more in a kind of metaphysical way, like origins of the world and symbolic sectors… to become a mother made it a lot more visceral (for me).”
Artists Annie Campbell, Kariann Fuqua, Allison Grant and Brooke White are also professors of art at different universities across the southeastern US, and their unique life experiences as scholars, artists and mothers connected them over the past couple years and shaped the motifs seen in their art. They first met as an entire group in a virtual setting, during the brunt of the pandemic.
“We began a conversation online through familiar roles as academics, as artists, and also as parents as a way to support each other through this really huge change in the way of doing pretty much everything in our lives–at home and teaching online.” Fuqua said during the artist panel. “When I started researching everyone’s work there was this interesting connection which we thought we were all making individually that I found really quite fascinating… visual and conceptual relationships between the work that emerged.”
In addition to Evans’s work, “Mother Nature / Mother Nurture” displays a dazzling array of multimedia art, ranging from 2D painting and photography, ceramics, and an interactive exhibit tucked around a sharp corner in the room–a space where younger children of any parents present have the opportunity to occupy themselves with art-making activities.
Saturday, Feb. 4, the Samford Art Gallery will be hosting a “Birth Stories” gathering, where midwives will lead the telling of stories amongst the women present. The exhibit “Mother Nature / Mother Nurture” will be open to the public until Feb. 23.
Staff Writer
