The Expanding Belly
I've been drawn toward sculpting the pregnant belly recently.
It is a beautiful form potent with powerful emotions and symbolism. I am curious about what it represents to me.
My thoughts have been about the power of the female body to create and harbor another life, and what she gives up and what she gains. How joy and pain are forever after shared with this new other who is part of her body always in some way, even after they’ve grown and are on their own and I suspect even when they have passed away too soon.
To glory in an expanding belly, to wonder at the creature within should be a joy, and I hope it is. It was for me although I was horribly sick all day, not just in the morning, and had the aching joints of a grandmother. Pregnancy for me wasn’t easy. The sign of a healthy baby, it’s said, is the mother’s sickness. Lucky me! And I did birth two healthy babies, so perhaps my sickness was my good fortune.
A mother carries the weight of the needs of a child, the expectations she puts on herself and those of her family. Also, society adds to it: the community, the church and the State. A pregnant woman becomes everyone’s business.
To some, the life of a woman and her born child are less significant than the fetus. A woman and child can be caged, ripped apart and lost for political power-play, without a glimmer of empathy or any wisdom about consequences for the person or society. It’s as if the fetus is sacred above all else - until it’s born.
Our species depends on woman’s biology to nurture life and the Might and Right demand her sacrifice. Yet, it’s also her life, plain and simple, becoming more than one.
Something I wasn't prepared for in mother-hood was the remaking of my pre-child idea of me.
My childbearing years are far behind me, but I remember the fear and struggles, pain and pride, laughter and joys of mothering babies and children. I am grateful to be so lucky. I learned important things about myself raising children; some were very disappointing. Yet knowing about myself, no hiding from fact, is how I expand my personal "universe" and that helps me as a person and as an artist.
So, perhaps I’m drawn to the pregnant form because of my personal experience as much as my cogitating on the biological, political and social aspects of being female. In any case, for whatever reason, I keep finding myself drawn to the expanding belly and so must explore what it brings to my work.
Photo by Daniel Fox, Lumina Studio