Amanda van Scoyoc

In early October I had pneumonia and was out of work for a week and a half. In that time I was very frustrated because I felt I had just started forming relationships and getting into the swing of things at Roca, and then I was stuck at home with a high fever and a stack of movies.

I found out that the Massachusets Arts Grants applications were due on the 15th, so from my home I helped Roca write a grant asking for money to create a program based on Wendy Ewalds book *I Wanna Take Me a Picture*. Although writing grants is not my favorite past time, we got the grant in on time and it was a great way for me to distill my ideas and have lots of conversations at Roca about the kinds of interactive photography programs that I want to be a part of. Since sending in that grant, we have picked out the students who will be involved, and as soon as I get together lesson plans, a list of supplies, and hopefully access to a dark room, we should be on our way.

I also wrote a personal grant to the Somerville Arts Council for creating paintings based on the writings of the pregnant teenagers and young mothers that I am working with at Roca. I am excited about the possibilities of this project- these women stand apart in their youth and maturity. These women confide in each other about topics most teenagers don’t think about. At times they make me feel very young. I took a walk with one of them the other day and we talked about boyfriends. After she found out I had been in a relationship for a year, she asked me if I was going to have children soon. I told her I was not ready yet and then wondered at my answer. She is a teenager and completely ready to have her baby.

Here is a section of the personal grant that explains the painting aspect of the project.

“In Chelsea, I have been visiting with a group of pregnant teens and young mothers through Roca, a nonprofit invested in keeping young people in school and off the streets. The first time I met with the young mothers group, I asked them what message they would want to send to the world outside of Chelsea. They told me that they want people to know motherhood is a common experience no matter if you give birth at 12 or 30. Even though they are young, they have experienced the same changes of pregnancy and motherhood. They listed some of the problems for me: hormones raging, cravings, sickness, pain, growth, birth, never having enough time, stress, aloneness, and daddy problems. They meet together at Roca to relay stories and lend support, but outside of this close group of friends their voices are not heard. Some of them have a difficult time making friends at school. Some of them feel that people label them as too inexperienced and young to be mothers.

“Together we tried to come up with a way to explore the aspects of motherhood that are the same for all mothers. Roca has given them journals, and together we have come up with different writing prompts. For example, after much discussion it became clear that one of the similar experiences they had shared is that each one of them had vivid dreams about their unborn child during their pregnancy. Each of them could remember in detail these dreams filled with hopes and fears. I would like to use their stories as the basis of a series of paintings that explore teen pregnancy through the eyes of the mother. I will create paintings in my Somerville apartment/studio based on their writings and based on working with each girl to design her own unique portrait. I will then pair these paintings with excerpts of their writings about the things that are common to all mothers. The only identifying information will be their age and the age of their child. The girls are excited to be a part of the creative process of designing paintings, and they like the idea of having a painting of them that will not reveal their physical identity the way a photograph would.”

I like the idea of being accountable to them each week. I tend to be very secretive about my paintings- this year I want to bring my work to a new level and I have decided that to do that I need their help. I like that they will bring something to the meetings and I will have to bring something as well. I like that we each have something very different to offer the other. I hope that combining different kinds of artwork based around the same topic will allow us to feed off of each others creativity.

Liisa recomended the book *The Youngest Parents* by Robert Coles. I have been reading it on my way to and from work and am very impressed by it. My one worry is that by expanding this young mothers project beyond a photography and writing project into something more like a collection of written, drawn, painted or photographed information, I may lose the power of the information.