A while back, my five year-old granddaughter asked me, "Grandpa, I know there are men and I know there are women, but are there any other kinds of people in the world?" I told her no, there aren't. But on second thought, I should have said, "Yes darling, there are and they're called artists."
Seven years ago, inspired by seeing a prenatal sonogram of one of my other, as yet unborn grandchildren, I foolishly decided to alter one of the reportedly beautiful but perhaps conventional sculptures that I had created as part of a 40 year-long career as a sculptor. I carved out a space within the midsection of female figure, and inserted a second, disparate image as if a fetus. With this act, I achieved two remarkable things that had never previously happened to me. The first was to open myself and my work to a barrage of criticism and derision, which was a first for me with respect to my work. The second was the clear and convincing feeling in my gut, that brashly depicting pregnancies would make a greater positive impact on the world, even the world beyond the one that appreciates sculpture, than anything I have ever done before.
Despite the startling unpopularity of my pregnant pieces, which I call "Prenatal Art," I have chosen to continue to pursue this vein of artistic exploration for the last seven years. My pregnant sculptures have been rather uniformly rejected, even ridiculed. While there has been some minor interest within the art world, even my local outdoor art festival rejected my work saying it was "unfit for public viewing." There is plenty within the art world that might be unfit for public viewing, it is my belief that the rejection of my work has less to do with the work itself as with the subject. I have sensed that it is the very natural, beautiful state of pregnancy itself that is widely deemed not-beautiful, even taboo, and depictions are unwelcomed, especially if coming from the more traditional arts, like sculpture.
It is part of the special nature of artists to want to keep at it, despite hardships and rejection. Since then, I have taken my sculptures in new directions and have done a bit of research on the history of pregnancy depicted in art. There is surprisingly little. As a result of my probings, I have elicited a modest amount of expertise in an area that few people seem focused on and I have aroused some interest in my findings from various groups, mostly those including professionals within the OB/GYN field and the more arcane Prenatal and Perinatal psychology and mental health field.
Nevertheless, I eschew cute portraits of babies in bellies. I see prenatal art as a representation of the powerful and vital role women play in the perpetuation of humanity. I see working to make pregnancy less "taboo" and making strong images of it acceptable, despite not being beautiful, something to strive for. I continue to aspire to find the right combination of beautiful and bold, to achieve this result.
