Any mother will tell you that being a parent is no game. Or is it? Get ready to have your notions of maternity challenged in The Mother Game, a book and a related exhibition by two locally connected artists that debuts this summer—after a year of, um, gestation—at the Casselberry Sculpture House.
In the prose and mixed-media book (published by Burrow Press as part of its Affordable Collaborative Artist Book series), collaborators Luca Molnar and Kat Shannon examine the concept of mothering as both a personal and cultural experience.
But their method of inquiry is anything but stuffy and academic. Taking their cues from the structures of such childhood games as “Taboo” and the “Choose Your Own Adventure” genre of storytelling, they explore the concept of motherhood in a manner that’s as playful as a new mom teaching her infant peek-a-boo.
Photographs, drawings, paintings and experimental writings in The Mother Game are organized using an unconventional and inventive approach to layout. The accompanying exhibition will include works created specifically for the book, as well as additional new artwork and site-specific installations.
The co-creators are longtime friends with intersecting approaches to the subject matter. Molnar, an assistant professor of art at Stetson University, was born in Budapest and now lives in Maitland, where she pursues her artistic strategy of layering historical photographs with painted patterns to illustrate the internal lives of women.
Among her recent pieces is Worker Bees, a 38-foot mural depicting Florida farmworkers and their advocates that has been on display since last October at the Mennello Museum of American Art.
The Canada-born Shannon divides her time between Orlando and São Paulo, Brazil, working primarily as a photographer whose artistic beat is the boundary between truth and fiction. She also curates exhibitions and compiles and distributes art publications through a collective she co-founded called “Memory Foam.”
During the making of The Mother Game, she gave birth to her second daughter, which is certainly one way of showing you’re committed to a project. The opening reception for the exhibition is free to attend on Friday, July 10, from 6 to 9 p.m.
If you can’t wait until July to gain a whole new outlook on mothering, the Sculpture House will host open studio hours in May and June so visitors can watch the exhibition come together.
