Can we find frogs to keep?

Balancing motherhood and artistic study requires shapeshifting. The violence of taking and losing shape reflects Simone de Bouvior's claim that woman is divided. I experience the divide in the tension between my creative drive and role as a mother.

The realm of art and ideas is a place far from home, I get lost there. My son leaves notes on my desk, pleas to come home. What should we have for dinner tonight? Steak with a side of hermeneutics? we’ll have poetry for dessert, Or ice cream, if I can find a spoon under this pile of books. Being an artist and mother means experiencing the violence of taking and losing shape; balancing the demands of a creative drive against the needs of my children and home. This means I must learn to shapeshift, but changing between artist and mother is excruciating, every time. 

Frogs are liminal creatures; moving between dark depths and sunlit surfaces, they are symbols of intermediary experience. His plea for frogs is also mine: make me a bridge, make me porous, able to move between worlds. This project is an attempt to develop the art of inbetween-ness, To be present, to attend to the many worlds inside woman, creating a visual artifact that holds the tension.