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What has been your proudest art moment so far?

This! Being asked to be a represented artist with you!

What do you hope 2021 will bring?

Competent leadership of our country. A shift towards goodness, justice, and positive action. More scientific breakthroughs to make it safe to travel and hug friends and family again.

Who is your biggest art crush?

I can’t choose just one. Maya Lin, Agnes Martin, Chakaia Booker.

What is your favorite thing to listen to while in the studio?

Artist/Mother Podcast! (No, really). Or I Like Your Work or sometimes I listen/edit my own podcast (Teaching Artist Podcast) while making art.

What is your favorite thing about being an artist?

Using my hands to turn one material into something new that maybe enlightens someone or brightens their day.

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Rebecca Potts

Rebecca Potts is a teaching artist from Montana currently living in Los Angeles. Her work is inspired by the intersection between ecological concern and the female experience. She is a member of Spilt Milk Gallery and is listed in the curated directory All She Makes.

Potts received her MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis in 2009 and her BA in Studio Art and Geography from Middlebury College in Vermont in 2004. She also studied printmaking, painting, photography, wilderness issues, and Australian aboriginal art at the University of Tasmania Centre for the Arts.

Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and in Europe and Australia at spaces including The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Zhou B. Art Center, New York Studio Gallery, and SoLA Contemporary.  In 2010, her essay on art and climate change, “Creating a Fourth Culture,” was published in 20UNDER40: Re-Inventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. Rebecca has also worked as an arts administrator, community organizer, and school co-founder. She hosts Teaching Artist Podcast and coordinates Play + Inspire, a curatorial platform, in partnership with Maria Coit.

She participated in the Artist Residency in Motherhood from 2015-2019, which was the time it took to fully resume her art practice after becoming a mother.

Play-doh and polymer clay squish and crack as I work them into clay paintings of urban and suburban scenes, interiors of domestic life, and close-ups of the body. There is a playfulness in using these materials of childhood, yet there’s also something dystopian about the way the clay wiggles and cracks. My thigh squishes a bit like wobbly clay. My living room overflows a bit like the clay pushing just outside its precise borders. I work with precision, using clay tools and a sewing pin to help position tiny bits of clay, yet the clay rebels, as do my students, as does my daughter. I’ve learned to allow that rebellion, to embrace it rather than fight it. I forfeit control and seek materials that force me to give up a bit of control.

Color sticks in my memory. The saturation is slightly exaggerated, while the precision of light and shadow highlights the everyday, the scenes we rush past, the colors we take for granted. This work advocates for the importance of play, of slowing down, of taking time to squeeze clay in your hands and notice the particular grays of the sidewalk and road. It advocates for the importance of mothers and mothering, saying this craft material is Art.

During hours of mixing colors by mushing and rolling clay in my hands, I reflect on my days and process past and present traumas. There is both a disconnect and an uber-connect between the mundane daily rituals of early motherhood and my deeply felt femaleness. Tea parties and leaf collection, pancake flipping and butt wiping, purple baths and personification of everything fill my days. While worries about continued climate inaction, pervasive racism and specific racism directed at my child, the breakdown of my relationship with my mother and the breakdown of the world around me fill my mind. Things fall apart. Concrete crumbles and the sky cracks. Will the powerlines hold?

As I watch my daughter go under the water, kick down, and come back up, gasping and laughing, I feel the waves. Waves of joy seeing her in these moments of fun, peace, and calm. Waves of anger and grief over my own childhood. Water has memory (or so Olaf tells us)... and we’re made up of 60% water. So how do I overcome generational trauma? How do I stop from passing it down?

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