Sophie Hammer (she/her)

I've been left with crumbs, Feb 2021

Digital image featuring resin art waste products on resin chopping board.

This sketch is an attempt to grapple with the incremental exhaustion of my identity during the pandemic. Once an artist/mother, the encroachment of maternal duties over the past year has erased that life balance entirely. My sense of self as a separate entity is depleted and I have been left with crumbs, figuratively as well as physically.

I created the image using the waste products of my resin art, the literal leftover fragments of my artist identity. Covid x patriarchy forced me to pause building my art career in March 2020, though in the brief windows of childcare towards the end of the year I clawed back some time for me. I was able to create and sell small items of resin homeware, including chopping boards. I began enjoying success and moments of validation. I was seen as an artist. My labour brought joy to strangers, not just my household. I felt energised.

However, during Jan-March 2021's homeschooling, that time for me was again abruptly taken away. My career was back in limbo as I could not do anything in my studio, the flurry of sales at Christmas a distant memory. Exacerbated by a lack of social contact and the winter weather, my energy evaporated. The burden of being reduced, once more, to mother/caregiver pushed me to burnout.

I had no time to make anything and yet I had to create some thing. So I started a series of quick 'digital sketches', reclaiming materials and snatching creative moments. "I've been left with crumbs" was a means to convey my frustrations, but the act of making was itself a process of recovery. Resourcefulness led me to rediscover playfulness and also to engage with the wider body of art about the maternal experience. Both proved to be my antidote to burnout. Time is being returned to me as lockdown eases and I feel a shift in my practice. I am fired up to create work that is more personal and meaningful than before. That contributes to our collective visibility. I found there is nutrition in these crumbs, enough to grow.

https://www.unusualgirlart.com/

@unusualgirlart