As a general rule I don’t review books or movies due to a lack of time, but when I saw the trailer for the film Who Does She Think She Is, I knew I needed to make an exception because while it isn’t, it could have been about my life and my work. In this beautiful, thought provoking film, Pamela Tanner Boll follows 5 women artists, examining the way that they juggle family and their art and looks at both how their familial context informs their art and how it hinders it.
In her artist’s statement Boll writes about her early years of creative work before she had children and the chilling discovery that very few female creatives had children. She writes,
I loved their work but was frightened by their lives. So frightened that she spent the next 10 years working on Wall Street.
But then Boll did have children and what she discovered was that,
On becoming a mother, the buried part of myself-the emotional and curious, the creative-roared back to life. I wrote, then began painting again. Mothering had returned me to my expressive, creative self.
The details of my story are different, but I too was at a point of being creatively stalled when my first child was born. After his birth, while he napped, I started to draw, then paint, do collage, and later migrated into activism and writing. I juggled my work and my kids, the distractions were endless. There were shows and conferences I just couldn’t get to, times when I had to put things aside just when I had a brilliant inspiration. But I have no doubt that my distractions were also a source of inspiration. It was a double edged juggling act. It wasn’t easy butI wouldn’t trade that experience for anything and in the end, the kids and I and my work all survived and thrived.
But as Boll points out, utilizing the expert voices of Courtney Martin and Riane Eisler, creative women with children are not what society expects, we are truly outsiders. But what we have to offer is an authentic, real vision that comes from voices that have traditionally been shut out, and we need to be supported and seen and heard to truly understand our cultural identity.
The film, as well as discussion and educational materials are available on the website.
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[...] Lucinda Marshall, Director of Feminist Peace Network, wrote a wonderful review about Who Does She Think She Is? on their blog. Thanks, Lucinda, for your support of our film and for helping us to spread the word about our film! You can read her review here! [...]