A painting by Latoya Lovely is layered on top of an abstract piece by AJ McCreary in "Motherhood" at Oregon Contemporary. The show goes through Aug. 27, 2022.
courtesy of AJ McCreary
AJ McCreary wears many hats. The former candidate for Portland City Council is the executive director of the nonprofit Equitable Giving Circle. She’s also an artist and a mother. McCreary curated a show called “Motherhood” at Oregon Contemporary that runs through Aug. 27. She calls it “a celebration of Black motherhood – the bright moments, the soft moments, the unique journey that is nurturing in a world that is inhospitable to our seed.” We hear from McCreary and Alice Price, another artist whose work is in the show.
Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB, I’m Dave Miller. When AJ McCreary lost her bid for Portland’s city council in May, she refocused her energy on what she had already been doing. McCreary is the executive director of the nonprofit Equitable Giving Circle. She’s also an artist curator, and mother. McCreary has put together a show called Motherhood at Oregon Contemporary in North Portland. It is up now, and it runs through August 27th. She calls it a celebration of Black motherhood: The bright moments, the soft moments, the unique journey that is nurturing in a world that is inhospitable. AJ McCreary joins us now, along with Alice Price, who is one of the artists whose work is featured in the show. Welcome to both of you.
AJ McCreary: Hi, thanks for having me.
Alice Price: Hello.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. AJ first, what was your inspiration behind this show?
McCreary: I’ve been an artist forever. It’s one of my first identities. And my relationship with my art has just really not been in sync with motherhood. It has not been something that I’ve had a lot of time for both. And so about a year ago, when my kid was on his annual trip, I was just like “I’m gonna paint while he’s gone, I’m just going to paint.” I did that, and it just got me back into like, “this is the feeling that I really love, and I wanna show my own work and get back into my own practice.” And so I worked on that show, and I applied for a RAT grant in December, and then I contacted my fellow artists and was “like, hey this thing is going to happen.”
And then fast forward, I had to put it on hold because of the campaign. And then after the campaign, a friend connected me with Oregon Contemporary, and I was able to secure a space for the show. That’s a really short, boiled down version of how it all panned out.
Miller: Alice Price, what went through your mind when I approached you about this show?
Price: I was instantly on board, because anything she puts her hands on is amazing. I was very excited about it.
Miller: What did it mean to you to be a part of a show that had this specific focus about Black motherhood?
Price: Well, that’s a big part of my identity. I’m raising a teenage son, and so it’s important for him to see me in this way.
Miller: What do you mean?
Price: He is a creative as well, and so I feel like he needs to see that you can show your work and get the positive attention that you want by displaying your craft to the world.
Miller: You have a number of paintings in this show. One of them is a woman with the upper body of a very pregnant woman, but instead of legs, she has a tree trunk. Can you explain the inspiration for this piece?
Price: So originally, I saw an image of the amazing Beyonce when she was pregnant with her twins. That’s why the stomach is so big. But the way she was standing with so much pride, and like, “here I am,” that inspired me. The tree trunk is just something that I just popped in my head, because it’s like we’re the roots, we are the nurturers, we are the first teachers to our children. That’s what it means to me.
Miller: AJ, how did you decide who to hang in this show, who to invite to be a part of it?
McCreary: I reached out to artists that I personally admire and love that are in town, both just as friends, but also as incredible artists and creatives. I really just love their artwork. If you look at all of their art, they’re very different artists, but they’re just so incredibly talented. And I also knew that they would trust my kind of different want in the way that I was going to hang the show. So, I knew that there was a rapport and trust for something different.
Miller: Can you describe physically how you did decide to display this work? It’s some unusual choices.
McCreary: Yeah. So it is a play on maximalism, which is an ode to my best friend who has really nurtured my motherhood relationship. She’s not a mother, but she’s my kid’s godmother. And we always talk about maximalism, and there’s quite a few museums in our country that have different examples of that that I love. So, I wanted to try something really different.
And I like the abstract paintings to interact with other art. I love layers. I love patterns. Motherhood is all about layers and patterns, and things interacting in different ways and pivoting. So it’s all sort of symbolic. My large abstract paintings are on the wall directly, no frames, they’re just stretched canvas. And then all of the other artists’ paintings, which are more realism, like actual people, are overlapping my paintings. And Alice actually stopped me from putting holes directly in the middle of my paintings, and I’m very grateful for that.
So maybe in future work, I will continue to play with this. But it’s this overlapping, this overlayering, I haven’t really seen anything like it. It’s a play on maximalism, it’s an ode to my own journey. And it’s just exciting to see art sort of interact in a space in this way. It’s very vibrant and colorful, and it’s layered.
Miller: How do your own paintings reflect your experience of motherhood? I’m asking because, for example, for Alice’s painting that I asked about, it is the torso of a pregnant woman. Yours, as you were noting, are much more abstract. Where do you see or feel the motherhood in your own works you chose for this exhibition?
McCreary: Yeah, that’s a great question. So partly it was the vibe, the tone, the intention behind me making them and my own artistic journey. But also, they are about patterns. The paintings are very full of movement.
They’re also titled in a way that is about the experience of motherhood. For example, the purple painting has a lot of symbolism, it’s called It’s A Journey. It’s 18 ft and 10 inches, which speaks to how long this motherhood journey is in terms of the 18 years and the incubation time of pregnancy. Motherhood is much longer, broader than that, but it’s just symbolism in that way. There’s a lot of symbolism in this series, which is sort of how abstract works
Miller: Alice Price, one of the works you have in this show is a nude with a moon in the background. There’s also a big moon in a painting you have right now at the same time in another gallery at the Portland Art Museum, behind a portrait of a man. And it just made me wonder what moons mean to you?
Alice: Wow, I actually never really… I have a thing with the moon. I just think it’s so beautiful, and the moon with women and our cycle. But I’m still developing that. I’ve noticed just naturally, I’ve put moons in all of my recent works. I’m not sure how to answer that question, honestly. That’s a really good thing for me to think about.
But for the one with the nude woman, it definitely is related to the woman’s cycle.
Miller: AJ, we’ve been focusing on paintings, but one of the first things that folks will see if they go to Oregon Contemporary, it’s a basket of baby blankets. What’s the idea behind that?
McCreary: I am excited to sort of dabble and experiment with my own art craft and practice. The baby blankets, I collected those from moms from across Portland. I’m in a lot of mom groups. I am a mom activist, both food justice, education, domestic violence, and so on. I’m one of the co-founders of MomBloc. So I collected these baby blankets from moms from all over town. If it wasn’t for COVID and monkeypox and whatever else is brewing out there, I would encourage people to touch them, but please do not touch the blankets, it’s not safe for everybody.
But they all smell like babies still because they’re fresh from infants that are small people. There’s a baby blanket in there for my own kid’s infancy. He is about to be 16 next month. I wanted to bring this one interactive thing together, but also baby blankets are a thing that ties us all together. Everybody was swaddled in some kind of blanket. People save their blankets. We see baby blankets, and it’s this thing about babies and mothering that is universal. And so I just wanted to have that there to anchor the show.
And above it are flowers, because give moms flowers now, celebrate moms in the now, not when something happens and they’re no longer with us, when things are in crisis and they’re no longer well, but celebrate and work on those relationships and healing in the now. And so that’s kind of what the basket of baby blankets and the flowers represents.
Plus, I just love flowers.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.