Talk

This panel discussion will focus on artists who are also parents who are able to balance time with their children along with devotion to their studio practice. Artists Scott Alario, Qiana Mestrich and Leah Bedrosian Peterson, along with moderator and artist Anna Ogier-Bloomer, will discuss the challenges faced by artist-parents, methods for increasing inclusion and awareness of issues, and ways in which parenthood has impacted each panelist’s practice. They will also investigate the altered artist identity of those with children, how it shifts, and how we see ourselves in comparison to how others view artists with children. These three artists on this panel exemplify the ways in which artists and parents can manage both, and, in the process, make great contributions to art making and contemporary discourse. Register here.

This panel includes three active photographer/artist/educator/parents: Scott Alario’s recent solo exhibition at Kristen Lorello in New York City includes a series of works created collaboratively with his wife and two children; he also teaches at Alfred University. Leah Bedrosian Peterson serves as the chair of the department of communication at Lycoming College; her multimedia work Erasure examines the cultural and environmental changes occurring in Southeast Asia and has been featured on Hunger Magazine's website and published in the magazine Heritage for the World, a distribution of National Geographic. Qiana Mestrich is a prolific writer and photographer, and has co-edited two editions of the book How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood. Her upcoming book, Diversity in Contemporary Photography, will be published by Routledge in 2017/18. Moderator Anna Ogier-Bloomer is the assistant director of Career Development for the School of Visual of Arts in New York City and a practicing photographer whose work has been featured in Feature Shoot, Huffington Post, Bust, Refinery29 and the Daily Mail.