We rarely have the luxury of bringing an idea to its natural conclusion in a single session. Our time is fragmented and our ideas take on tangents as we are repeatedly blown away from our train of thought. Our kids get sick when we have deadlines. They spill their juice on our work. They use our $30 brushes for TinkerToys, our clay for facials, and our typewriters for science experiments. We all have horror stories that we'll laugh about later (and by the way, I'd love to hear them), but my hope is to provide a community where solutions come from women relating to women as they have done throughout history.

Some of us awake early to find uninterrupted time to create. Some of us stay up late into the night. Some of us grab time to sketch or write between PB&J sandwiches and in pediatricians' waiting rooms. We use babysitters, cool videos and locks on our studio doors, all with varying degrees of success. Some of us need for our art to be completely separate from our parenting. Some want the two to flow together. We want our kids to see their mom fulfill her creative passions, yet we often need separation in order to do the creating.

Whether we were involved in art before the children came, or whether we discovered it after they arrived, our kids influence our work tremendously. Though many of our projects are directly about mothering or children, many more are not. Work done by mothers often symbolically reflects the strength that we discovered we had during the intensity of birth, the emotions of adoption, the heartache of loss. We love fiercely like we never did before, and often for the first time, we have something we would die to protect. All of this is inevitably reflected in our work. Embrace the heightened awareness of being a Mother, and use it in your art. We have a lot to say and our experience is as valid as any single artist's. Ours is a noble pursuit. Whether we choose mothering as our subject matter or keep it at a deeper, more metaphorical level, we validate the importance of creative parenting with every word, every brush stroke.