About 44.4

In 2014, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/Flower No. 1 sold at auction for $44.4 million dollars, setting the record for the highest price paid for work by a female artist. This sales record is three times the amount of the previous record, and hasn’t been superseded in the five years since it was set.

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O'Keeffe never had children, despite wanting them, as she did not believe that child-raising and art were compatible careers. 

 

44.4 is our number. It splits, divides, shares, carries and builds.

For practicing Mother/Artists the balance is delicate. How can we be both mothers and artists? Our energy is siphoned, often spoken for and difficult to keep in our grasp. Mother/Artists are piecing together time, space, resources, and the cognitive labour to create. How do we simultaneously grow our artistic practices alongside our children in a way that results in our contributions being valued in our community? These are our questions; this is our conversation.

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Through critique nights, discussion forums, social events, and special projects, our group works together to engage with the specific challenges of combining artistic practice with the gendered, and very real, performance of motherhood. For some of us, these issues are visible in our work. For others, our role as mothers is apparent only outside our studios.

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The 44.4 Collective is a group of mother artists, but we do not represent all mother artists. ‘Motherhood’ is an imprecise term which is not always deployed in the spirit of inclusion. As a group, we continue to question the term itself as much as we probe its relationship to art production. We recognize that both parenting and identifying as female are charged acts and that people’s lived experiences include an enormous diversity of views, privileges and opportunities.

Want to be part of the conversation? Please contact us at fortyfourpointfour@gmail.com

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Active 44.4 Members:

• Sarah Anderson, Painter

• Natalie Bruvels, Painter

• Jennifer Cherniack, Artist

• Rebecca Clouâtre, Artist 

• Sarah Jane Estabrooks, Co-founder, Visual Artist

• Greta Grip, Artist

• Sayward Johnson, Artist 

• Alexa Mazzarello, Artist and Photographer

• Karen D. Miller, Artist 

• Andrea Mueller, Metalsmith

• Kristine Nyborg, Photographer

• Lucie Raymond, Visual Artist

• Victoria Solan, Writer/Art Historian

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Thank you to Elizabeth Raymer Griffin,  Co-founder, Photographer.