Just A Quick Nap in your room...PLEASE!!!

She doesn’t sleep in her room. She sleeps with me which means I don’t sleep. Something has to give. How I made it through grad school with a 3 year old’s foot in my rib cage every night I will never know. Well, I do know… it was comforting and endearing. It was sweet and it still is; but, it is also time for her to sleep in her own bed. I would love to get some more blogs post out but none of that can happen if I am not getting some sleep! Let the makeover begin!

Where do I start?

As if an angel heard me asking that question, I get an email from the Baltimore Museum of Art. They are looking for a few folks and families to participate in a project where you borrow some art! They just launched a project called Home Stories created for the Imagining Home exhibition opening in October 2015. Participants will take home a full-size reproduction of a work of art from the exhibition to display in their homes for approximately one month. We can put the art up anywhere in the home and then after a month, a video team from the BMA comes to our home and interviews our family about the experience of living with the work. 

Here I am in a major overhaul of the little Goddesses’ room and the BMA is passing out art for people to live with! There were three options to choose from:

A Quick Nap by Walter Henry Williams

Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz

A selection from Jim Goldberg’s Rich and Poor series

A few others.

Well…I have a little ball of light in the form of a 3 year old girl who won’t sleep in her room for the life of me…guess which piece of suggestive art work I chose?

Yep, you guessed it!

A Quick Nap by Walter Henry Williams!

We are revamping the entire room to make it an educational wonderland with a sleep cove that can’t be refused.  She has out grown EVERYTHING in there so it all has to be re-purposed or replaced.

That being said…my post grad school life equals a budget.

However, a budget never stopped me from living the high life before. I just scored a piece from the BMA for a month!! The budget Goddesses are already blessing me!!


In addition, I’ve got my Pinterest board on hand, I have got you to chime in with a few suggestions and this new piece of art to work the walls! Stay tuned as we curate this little girl’s space and get this mommy some sleep.  

Design by Jermaine

Jermaine Tarron, a fellow UALP fellow designed the graphics for my upcoming show. The experience was seamless and I love what came out of the experience! I love being surrounded by so many wonderful and talented folks.

HOUSE according to Brandon the Barber.

http://vimeo.com/116794792

Jazzy takes us home

Stylist Jazzy tells her about her memories of home.

Sweet moments with my sweet

New Year's Day with my little girl in the home of Robbye Aperson.


Picture taken by Kafi D'Ambrosi

Because I said I would

There is this pressure to find the right words.

Just talk to people. Tell them why you are here, Melani. tell them why you need this space and you need them in it.

Then there is the pressure to have the right platform: Wordpress or Blogger? Your own website or a host? What’s your strategic plan? How will you collect your stats? Does it fit your thesis? Don’t you have other things to do? et cetera, et cetera and a cashmere sweater…

Just start! Like everything else in creation, your blog can evolve as well. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Perfection is starting and not stopping. Your help will come! Just KEEP GOING.

A blog? Like I need anything else to do. Who’s going to edit it? My website is not perfect. Where am I going to put it? Who is going to read it?!

Are you serious? Will you stop that!! You need a few quotes? Fine…

“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.” ― Salvador Dalí

“Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time.” ― Nalo Hopkinson, Sister Mine

Okay. Alright. No smokescreens. No wizard behind the curtain. No making this look easy or making it look hard. The process is part of it. This is life. There is an art to living and it’s sloppy and messy. There are no straight lines. There is more than what we see on the walls. Everything I am creating right now is celebrating the backstory AND the art because the BACKSTORY is just as much an art as the ART. This crazy internal dialogue is what really happens at 6 in the morning (or 4 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon). It is all a part of it. Why not share it?

This is woman as art, mommy as art, grad student as art and like anything that is really good or truly enjoyable - it’s not neat, it drips down the side of the bowl or sticks to your fingers. Sharing the process/backstory reminds me to be that pecan sticky bun-bun or that pot pie juice that cooked over the edges and caramelized the crust. This is life, it is sloppy, sticky  and messy - and it is good.

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.”

― Leonard Cohen

Today, is my birthday. The New Year for some and my NEW YEAR. It’s barely morning and I’m sitting here on a bed that my daughter refuses to sleep in. A Doc McStuffins pillow props me up. Olaf sits in the corner reminding me that even snowmen like warm hugs. The belly of a stuffed bear is my lap/desk. Her bed has become a comfortable office. She sleeps quietly in my room sprawled across my queen size bed while I make due of her less than twin. In another universe, I would be up googling sleep training...again. Grad school has murdered and buried that demon who whispers in the ears of mothers reminding them of all the things they didn’t get right. Whatevers...the child sleeps with me, she sleeps through the night and a 2-year-old girls bedroom is actually quite pleasant to work in.  I’ll take it.

A lot will happen this year. God willing and the creek don’t rise...I will graduate. When I think of where I was two years ago...I can’t believe I am here. This time two years ago...I was holding my daughter like a football and nursing her on the left, on the right there was a computer screen with a grad school application to MICA on it. I had promised myself that I would push send on this day two years ago. I hadn’t even built up the courage to ask for letters of recommendation, yet. The conversation that was happening in my head would have stopped time. I kept talking myself out of it then crying myself back into it.  It had to be done. Something had to give. I had more to do in this world and I could not figure it out alone. I was too scared to admit that I did not know what I was doing and I did not know how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. I didn’t even know where I wanted to be. My saving grace was that I was more scared of staying where I was than I was of venturing out to live the life I came to live.

I will never forget that acceptance letter. The package from MICA was thick and I thought, “That’s a whole lot of paper to tell somebody no!”

Now, look at life.

• My beautiful daughter turns three in a few weeks
• She knows all of the planets that revolve around this sun, has a crush on Jupiter, writes the letters in her name and just yesterday, she turned to me and said, “We are all mommies.” (I’m still pondering the meaning behind that.)
• My first exhibition/community pop-up/soft launch of my museum will happen in 45 days (Love on the Line: Stories of a Baltimore worth living for)
• I have other exhibitions in the works and art projects in the oven cooking
• Am I starting a museum?
• I graduate in MAY
• Did I say I was starting a museum?  What?! Wait...

Yes, Melani. You are starting a museum. The Family Arts Museum, to be exact. A nomadic, non-collecting institution that focuses on family as fine art, home as curated space and community as gallery.

THAT’S RIGHT, WOMAN!! Spit that elevator speech like fire!! Brian Francoise would be proud. Those UALP Fellowship professional developments are working! I see you!

YES. I AM STARTING A NOMADIC MUSEUM. This is what two years at MICA in the Curatorial Practice program will do to you. Teach you all the makings of the white cube, wrap you in it, demand that you know it, make you love it, make you sick of it, make you question it, make you put a show in it and then dare you to jump out of it. Not bad, MICA. Not bad…

What do I want for my birthday, you ask? That’s right!! It is my birthday! In just a few hours, it will be official! So, what gift do I want from you...

I want you to walk with me. Come with me on this journey of starting a museum, being a woman/mommy, merging my artistic self with my administrative self and living the life I came to live.  Ride that line of public and private with me. Walk with me as I fight the voices that say that becoming a parent means you give up turning dreams into reality. Every now and then, lift the hood and see what makes this vehicle go. If you see some advice you can offer, please share it. If you have a connection I should make, help me make it. Come out to a few events or tell your friends. Sit on the sidelines and cheer, if you like. Follow me on the book of faces. Leave me your email if you want to join my mailing list. Something piqued your interest? Comment on it. Talk to me. Walk with me. Let’s go.

...and I want you to have HAPPY NEW YEAR! Let’s make another one for the books! Let's be that sticky bun-bun and make this life taste good.

Best,

Melani

“Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”   
― Dory, Finding Nemo