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Date: 6/27/2022
NORTHAMPTON – The Mothers Institute for Collaboration and Art (MICA), a community that aims to bring artistic mothers to the forefront of community art, is making headway with pop-up multi-artistic performances spotlighting creative mothers.
According to Lyza Fennell and Elena Allee, the founders of MICA, the idea of this community is something they have been thinking about over the past couple of years, and is an opportunity that really started coming to fruition over the past year or so.
After graduating from Smith College, Fennell applied and received a MAGIC grant from the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation and started brainstorming the idea for a community that uplifts the voices of artistic mothers.
“We were just talking about how, as mother artists, how you have to put things aside because of your kids,” said Fennell, who is also the managing director for MICA. “So, we felt like we wanted to create an opportunity to showcase artistic mothers’ work and also have something where artistic mothers of all kinds could have an outlet to get together and brainstorm.”
Both Fennell and Allee have children, and both have experienced the joys and obstacles of being artistic mothers. Allee developed a successful career as a visual artist and painter in Los Angeles but had to make some sacrifices to raise a child. “As that happened, I came across so many different moms in the same situation who had to either put their career on hold partially or completely,” said Allee. “And then 10 or 15 years later, trying to get back into being a professional artist is very difficult.”
According to Fennell, the goal of MICA is to conduct pop-up events to showcase the artistic work of mothers. After talking with the Northampton Center for the Arts, the group came up with a three-day Visual & Performing Arts festival at 33 Hawley.
The festival this year will occur from Oct. 28 to 30, but details are still in the making. According to the MICA website, they are currently looking for artist submissions by filling out a form at https://experiencemica.org/art-submission-form/.
“We’re trying to keep it as local as we can, and we’re trying to get as many local mom artists as possible” Allee told Reminder Publishing. “But we are accepting artists from elsewhere as they come in. We’re trying, at the very least, to keep it regional to the Northeast.”
According to Allee, the plan is to have this type of festival twice a year, once in April and once in October, with the one coming this fall representing the inaugural festival for MICA. “There may be smaller pop-up events throughout the year, as well,” said Fennell. “Eventually, we want to have different kinds of workshops, but we’ll have to see how the community grows and what that turns into.”
MICA also began a Facebook community group a few weeks ago, which is a place where mother artists communicate, network, resolve problems and share art. Eventually, the group wants to have a once-a-month meetup online or in-person. “The idea is to really grow and develop the artistic mother community,” said Fennell. “I think it’s really a niche that needs to be built…a place where moms can come together and commiserate and support each other.”
To learn more about MICA and what they are working on, visit their website at https://experiencemica.org/.