Coffee Talk: Conversations on Art & Motherhood
Online with host Stacy Mehrfar and featured guests
Fridays, 1-2:30pm ET
February 2: Rachelle Mozman Solano
March 1: Janna Ireland
April 5: Anastasia Samoylova
May 3: Penelope Umbrico
June 7: Rachel Hulin
COURSE FEE: $150
Enrollment is ongoing. Participants will have access to screen recordings of all events.
Join acclaimed artist and photo educator Stacy Mehrfar for five empowering discussions on being an artist mother working in photography. The course features guest photographic artists Rachelle Mozman Solano, Janna Ireland, Anastasia Samoylova, Penelope Umbrico, and Rachel Hulin. They will each share their personal experiences, challenges, and inspirations as artist mothers embodying these two significant roles. Monthly sessions will feature a guest presentation, a conversation between Stacy and the guest, and ample time for questions and open dialog with the group. Topics will include:
- Inspiring stories of being an Artist Mother
- Strategies for building and sustaining a career with kids
- The benefits of creating structure and setting goals
- Finding balance as a caregiver to both children and an art practice
- How motherhood affects how one approaches subject matter
Let’s meet as a community and break down barriers for critical dialogue around motherhood and art!
HOST
Stacy Mehrfar is a first-generation Iranian-American artist. Drawing from personal history, her photographs, video installations, and photobooks raise questions about how we build and sustain 'community.' Central to her practice is examining the interdependent relationship between the individual and the group and how landscape shapes identity. Mehrfar has exhibited her works at TEDxSydney, ClampArt, International Center of Photography (ICP), Australian Centre of Photography, and State Library of New South Wales. She is the recipient of several grants, including the Australian Postgraduate Award and Australian Artist Grant. Stacy has received positive press coverage by Collector Daily, L'œil de la Photographie, and BJP, and her works are published in Der Greif, Aint Bad, Fraction. She holds an MFA (Research) from UNSW School of Art & Design in Sydney, Australia, a BA from UW Madison, and a certificate in Creative Practices from ICP in New York. Her second photobook, The Moon Belongs to Everyone, published by GOST Books, London (2021), was named one of Photo Eye's Best Books of 2021. Most recently, Stacy was nominated for the 2022 Silver List. Stacy currently resides in NYC.
Guest Artists
Rachelle Mozman Solano is the recipient of the Colen Brown Art Prize and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation award. In 2023 Mozman exhibited in Entre/Between at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, The Rose at Lumber Room, Portland, OR and others. In 2021 she had a solo exhibition, All These Things I Carry with Me, at South Bend Museum, South Bend, IN. In 2020 Mozman released her monograph, Colonial Echo with Kris Graves Projects. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition, Metamorphosis of Failure at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY. Mozman has been awarded residencies at LMCC workspace, Smack Mellon, Baxter St at CCNY, and Light Work. Mozman has been awarded the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, the NYC Film and Media Grant from the Jerome Foundation and others. Her work has been published in Aperture, Vogue, Contact Sheet, Presumed Innocence, Exit and numerous other publications. Mozman Solano is a Fulbright Fellow, and has exhibited at The Lumber Room, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, New York, the National Portrait Gallery at Smithsonian Institution, the Americas Society, National Hispanic Cultural Center and others.
Janna Ireland lives in Los Angeles, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Occidental College. Her photographic work is primarily concerned with the themes of family and home. In 2016, she began photographing structures designed by legendary Black architect Paul R. Williams. A collection of 250 of these photographs was published in a monograph entitled Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer's View, in 2020. In 2021, Ireland was awarded a Peter E. Pool Research Fellowship by the Nevada Museum of Art to photograph Williams' work in Nevada. Ireland is the recipient of the 2023 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize; in February of 2024, a mid-career survey of Ireland’s work will be jointly hosted by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. Ireland’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of institutions including LACMA, SFMOMA, the Nevada Museum of Art, the California African American Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been the subject of articles in publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Harvard Design Magazine, and Aperture. She holds an MFA from the UCLA Department of Art and a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU.
Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984) is a Russian-born American artist who moves between observational photography and studio practice. Her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. Recent exhibitions include C/O Berlin, Fundación Mapfre, Eastman Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, and Kunst Haus Wien. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Her work is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum, Miami; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Published monographs include FloodZone (Steidl, 2019), Floridas (Steidl, 2022), and Image Cities (Fundación Mapfre/Hatje Cantz 2023).
Penelope Umbrico’s installations utilize search engines and web platforms as an expansive archive to explore the production and consumption of images and objects. Engaging common software applications, and the physical apparatuses of image authoring and display technology, Umbrico takes aim at our mediated experience of the world through the screen. Umbrico’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; MassMoCA, MA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Milwaukee Art Museum, WI; Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Benaki Museum, Athens; Daegu Photography Biennale, Korea; Guangzhou Image Triennial, China; Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany; Rencontres d’Arles, France; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Australia; among many others, and is represented in museum collections around the world. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; Sharpe-Walentas Studio Grant; Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; and New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowships. Her monographs have been published by Aperture NYC and RVB Books Paris.
Rachel Hulin is a photographer, writer, and author. She is currently the Deputy Director of Photography at The L.A. Times. Previously, she was a photo editor for Rolling Stone, Radar Magazine, and People Magazine. She thrives on pairing narratives with new modes of delivery, developing fresh visual stories across all platforms. Rachel has written about photography for The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Nerve.com, and has lectured at the School of Visual Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, Parsons School of Design and The New School. Hulin's work has been exhibited at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and ClampArt Gallery. Her editorial clients have included The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, The New Republic, and Real Simple. Additionally, Rachel is the author of "Flying Henry," a children's book published by powerHouse Books in 2013, and "Hey Harry, Hey Matilda," a novel released by Doubleday in 2017. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and a Master of Arts from New York University.