A rocking visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

On a very very cold day last week (-13C or 9F), we layered warm clothes, packed a snack and headed to the one and only Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are many many museums in NYC, but this is the one that has always deeply and truly captivated me. First, there are the stairs. Then, there is the lobby. And then, there are the impressive collections of artifacts from ages past, things that were crucial objects in everyday life or in religious rituals from times and people that will never be again. Of course there is art as well, but again, it's mostly from the past. I call the Met my university, my vortex for getting inspiration, my place for meditation and discovery. I've been heard saying that the Met is the reason why I moved to New York. I've been heard saying it's one of the most incredible places in one of the most incredible cities. It's all true.
And now, enter my dear little one- Ava. Well, she's been there before. But this past week was the first time she took the kind of interest that history and art explorers take, and she became a proper Met lover. Going there with her was something of an experience. We have shed the carriage as I've become totally bored with it and Ava has demonstrated a wild interest in walking. But at 2 & 1/2 it was a bit ambitious to think that she can walk the 5 long avenue blocks and 3 short blocks that we had to from where I found parking (for free!) to where the museum is. But she walked, in the freezing chilly as ice wind, she walked.
Approaching the Met from 85th St is a sweet experience because once you turn the corner, its monumental grandness looms in front of you much like a mountain suddenly rises from a plain. The giant building is set against the beautiful Central Park and it rises above its treetop line. Then there are the majestic stairs. We always have an incredible experience at the stairs. It's a magical place. In the summer musicians come and draw crowds and in the winter, tourists feed crowds of pigeons. Ava promptly chased a flock of those resilient city birds and they flew up over her head but only as a tease, landing just a few feet away. Then Ava did something that sort of took me by surprise. She climbed all of the stairs completely by herself (!). By the time I took my gloves off and turned the camera on, she was already at the top, at the main entrance frame by two superbly large columns. The light changed at that moment and everything around me shone with a little more contrast, as the sun rays fell at a sharp angle, the sun already behind the museum.
Once inside, we felt like were the fashionable latecomers to a fancy ball. That't the effect that the marvelous airy lobby has on the unsuspecting visitor. It always has that effect on me, no matter how many times I go there. We checked our coats, gave our dollar each (yes, the ticket price of 15 per person is only suggested, which is totally awesome) and opened the map. That is some map! Ava had so much fun with it- tracing with her finger my suggested route and pretending to be a character from her favorite cartoon Umizoomi who is going to look for the treasure.
And looked we did. We started in a somewhat narrow gallery that contains liturgical objects from Byzantium, the empire that included my birth country Bulgaria prior to its founding in 681. It felt immediately personal, immediately deep. As an Orthodox Christian and a believer, I was standing in front of a Processional Cross from the 6th century and thus in front of 14 centuries of faith. The space was quiet and intimate and I felt an immediate connection to the people who must have labored over its intricate details as well as the people who must have walked after it on holy days, on streets less paved than ours and with shoes less fancy, perhaps, yet with hearts just as full of yearning and complex emotions.
Ava settled in a nook between two panels with engravings that spoke to my heart (picture bellow). Their simple yet timeless designs were reminiscent of ritual bread making as on Bulgarian Christmas Eve (Bydni Vecher, Бъдни Вечер).
Hours of exploration flew by and this little girl stomped on and asked me to read the tag of display after display after display. We flew through Medieval, then a visiting Venetian glass modernist collection, took a loop of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and ended up in Greek and Roman Art. We had seen roughly 1/12th of the museum and I was exhausted. Four hours had disappeared in observing, dreaming and learning. On our way to the car, we stumbled upon the Big Daddy's diner, the perfect spot to wrap up the outing in a candy dream environment.

The Crazy Things That Mother Artists Dream About

Motherhood is full of contradictions. At least for me. Right now.

I find myself constantly trying to find the time and the space to think. To take a breath and to think. About art- about my art and what I want to create. Sometimes I have the time, but not the space (think waiting for the whatever-is-in-the-oven to be done). Sometimes I have the space, but not the time (the house is empty, but for like 30 minutes). I feel like a total wanna be. It irritates me that I am.

On top of everything, I am also studying programming and trying to find a job in the field. I have been taking classes for the past yearish and feel confident that with a job sufficiently supported, I'll be able to patch together processes and fill in a position. Because I need it bad. First of all, I am in complete love with technology and have developed a passion for the machine that can only match my previous disenchantment with it. Second, I want to work in the real world and make real money so that I contribute to the family and am able to afford my own little studio in Long Island City(Queens) or Bushwick (Brooklyn). Why those neighborhoods and not Soho or Chelsea you might ask. Do I dare dream that high? 

In time, only in time. For now my office is the kitchen. Or my bed. Yesterday in between the tasks of cooking, I would fall down to the floor and alternate downward dogs with push-ups. Then I'd get up and do some tendus and attitudes. Michael peeked and raised his eyebrows with curiosity and amusement.

Today after a tedious day of researching how to upgrade my Mac's OS (the poor thing is kind of old), I finally shoved my little family out the door and declared that we are to explore Long Island City. We headed over there and as usual, Avka fell asleep in the car. Which works nicely, because we can then take the time to have one of our nice usual arguments that we always have without our daughter listening to us. Though sometimes I'm worried she somehow hears us even in her sleep. It probably bores her at this point. I never am able to allow myself to argue passionately in front of her because even one glimpse of her absolutely incredible warm sweet smile thaws away any sort of negativity.

We ended up in our favorite LIC coffee shop- Sweet Leaf. A latte and a pleasant conversation with a stranger from Guangdjou, China, put us in the right mood for exploration, so we headed to the brand new waterfront playground and Avka got to play and chase us around and yelp in delight with the magnificent background of the Empire State, the UN and the Chrysler Buildings all lighting up the midtown skyline behind is.

On our way back in the car, after running around in the freezing cold (25F), and with the latte well settled into my neurons, inspiration started to flow freely and I quickly open up my notebook and start writing:
"Make 10 portraits of mothers who share their stories of unglamorous mother moments- cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc... with each photograph accompanied by a short personal story that reflects on the burden and monotony of these chores. Everyone pays so much attention to the cute mommy blogs, to the pretty staged photos of kids eating ice cream while their giddy moms snap away. And that's fine. But what if with the same zealousness, I examine what lies underneath that? Why is housework so unglamorous? Why can't one be famous because they do their laundry? (mine is staring at me unfolded from my armchair right now).
The final product can be a book with the portraits and stories in addition to 10 collages made from the printouts with perhaps fabric or other physical presence attached to them."
I like this idea. I hope I can go beyond planning and get to work and get over the seemingly constant high barriers that stand between me and my work.
From this morning: Heavy snowfall in -6C. We head to the grocery store and on the way back we are lucky to find a parking spot. But Avka does not want to go home. She insists: "Go straight mamiiiii". So I do. We go straight. It's a strange feeling- not having a specific place in mind but listening to the instructions of a 2 and 1/2 year old. "Straight Mami", she continues navigating. We keep going straight, despite the many warnings that the street might soon be hard to get out of because of the quickly piling snow. The back windshield is now covered. We get to the end of the street- to the tiny State Nature Preserve beyond which is the Long Island Sound. We go out and take a walk. Our hands freeze. Avka's little face grimaces in the snow and wind. But she persists. She's a strong one, this one. She walks to the edge and looks out toward the water, where the snowfall looks so quiet and peaceful. Suddenly the phrase, "If God is willing and if I will", comes to my mind out of nowhere. I say it out loud. It makes sense. If God wills and if I will, surely, I can achieve anything I aim to.

Self-Portrait Series "The Mother's return to self"

This series began with the playfulness of matching lipstick and nail polish. It turned out that I have a blindingly bright red orange color of both, so I put it on and the transformation was immediate. The name of the lipstick is "Femme Fatale". I decided to play with that layer and mix it with the base persona of "mother".

Well, for me the two don't mix very well. The femme fatale gets up late and parties all night. The mother goes to bed early and gets up early to take care of her children. Or so it supposedly is (it does not always work out that way). But a femme fatale can turn into a mother and vice versa. And that's where we get something interesting.

So in these portraits we get a bit of the vulnerability and a bit of the coquettishness and a touch of the wisdom behind aging. We get measured liberation, rejection of being defined by the every day objects of mothering (notice the bath toy and the toilet seat) and determination to not be pigeonholed. 

Ava noticed me setting up to take the pictures and in her stompy gait quickly arrived to bombard me with a million "Wha doing mami? Mami, mami, what doing mami?" I explained that I am setting up to take some self-portraits. She quickly grabbed the camera remote and started taking the pictures for me. It was nice. It was really easy to all of a sudden be able to pose freely. My little one did not stop taking the pictures until I indicated that we are done. It was a seamless collaboration, without that many words. And then this beautiful realization crept through the vine of my thoughts- even young children can feel the subtle shifts of mood that create unspoken communication during the creative process.

So bellow are some photos from the shoot that I edited in order to heighten the ideas behind them. I hope that they speak to you. I hope they help you undertake your own questioning of what's beneath the surface of a mother's persona. This type of question deeply motivates me- what is beneath, what is beneath, what is beneath the surface that we see. I can hardly ever look at something without questioning it especially if that something is widely accepted as a norm.

There are two other important aspects to mention- the use of hands to frame the face (inspired by the one and only Auguste Rodin, whose reproductions I grew up with and by Madonna's "Vogue" choreography), and the color processing I applied in order to create a slight surrealist feeling when it comes to perceiving skin (inspired by one of my most favorite artists who I revere beyond description- Louise Bourgeois).

And here is a quote by her:

"Sometimes it is necessary to make confrontation - and I like that." Louise Bourgeois

Labor, labor, labor. New moon. (thoughts on the creative process)

I have been obsessing about the creative process lately. It is always like this with me – struggles and bursts of ideas lead to more struggles. I tell her "listen". "Listen ". But she does not. I spin in circles. We spin in circles. Good ideas come and go as if they were mere waves on the waterfront of my mind. I don't even notice them. The recipe remains a mystery, I must come up with it myself.

Caught up in this kind of circling, it is always a challenge to move because there are no tangible results. I dream of my own studio. But I know I will take her there. She will want to open everything. She will want to tear everything. She will want to spill everything. I will want to let her. Just like I want to let her do that here, and I do. But I should not. There is carpet. The carpet of our home. As the caretaker of this carpet, I am also the one to clean it.

As the day progresses, frustration and negativity bubble. Nothing is done. Finally we get dressed and go out in the freezing cold on the coldest day of the winter here at the edge of New York City. As we walk to the store and as I push the carriage through the slushy ice, its little wheels unable to take the friction of the frozen snow, I hear my daughter muttering something to me. "Louder, I can't hear you". She points up. I look toward the perfectly clear darkening sky, visibility increased by the frigidity of the air, to see the tiny sliver of a moon that must've just "risen" in the hour before sunset. It is the thinnest most delicate moon I have seen in a long, long time. Perhaps ever. Later I discover that the moon in fact was setting, trailing behind and shadowing the sun. What an elusive, tricky move, dearest moon. How subtly capable you are to tug at our deepest of emotions. 

Gazing at the wispy crescent, I stop to snap a picture as bewildered drivers pass by and wonder who is that mother who would take her 2 and 1/2 year old out at 10F and walk. But it all starts to make sense to me. Creativity will come. The project will come. The beauty of the moment softens the creases around my eyes. I let go. Productivity is present after all. The birth of the piece will happen. It'll come tiny and barely detectable in the grand scheme of things, announced by my daughter.

A girl and her grandma

We stand close to the alter in this most magnificent of structures- St. Nicholas in Whitestone, queens. I look at two people I don't often see together - my mother and my daughter. It is a powerful feeling. So many memories and kilometers simmered down to a precious now. Only God knows.