Melanie Mowinski.  Marking Time

2021. Artists Book. 3X13X7in open.

Right before my 50th birthday, my mother gave me the cotton diapers she used on me as a baby. Bright white, heavily bleached cotton. Perfect for paper making. I cut each diaper into tiny squares, considering the hours of labor my mother spent washing and cleaning them to maintain their whiteness in preparation for making them into paper. The year I was born, 1969, Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote “The Manifesto for Maintenance Art”, a manifesto that celebrates the acts of care and maintenance as art. What have we as women inherited related to care and maintenance? How might we as 21st century people consider the actions of care and maintenance in a different way? As you page through this book, I ask you to consider this question.