Give and Take: Motherhood and Creative Practice explores the diverse ways contemporary artists navigate the unique tensions of motherhood in all its varied stages. Becoming a mother is a life-changing event that can give mothers greater perspective, drive, and inspiration for making art. But motherhood also takes time and energy from pursuing creative work. This fundamental challenge, this give and take, is explored through this book as it forefronts the art and lives of dancers, playwrights, musicians, visual artists, and creative writers. The book contains thirty-three first person narratives from practicing artists along with written analyses that place these artists’ essays within the broader context of arts writing and scholarship about motherhood. The concluding section of the book includes overarching thoughts about how artist mothers can move forward despite structural inequality and cultural bias and includes a resource guide for practical support.

Tara Carpenter Estrada is an associate professor of art education at Brigham Young University. Her ceramic and mixed-media work explores feminism, domesticity, and relationship. Her writings have been featured in journals that include Visual Inquiry and Art Education. She has presented at the National Art Education Association Convention and the International Society for Education through the Arts Conference. Estrada is the director of Jumpst(ART), a series of community art workshops for K-12 students.

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Katie Palfreyman is a writing teacher, and writer. She taught middle school language arts full-time for eleven years and now teaches freshman writing part-time at Brigham Young University, Utah. She teaches more than she writes, and she is working on changing that.

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Hilary Wolfley, assistant teaching professor in the ballet area at Brigham Young University, is a dancer, a choreographer, an educator, and a mother. She has danced and choreographed for professional and collegiate companies. Hilary attended the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Teacher Training and the Stott Pilates Mat Training and is certified in Progressing Ballet Technique and American Ballet Theatre National Training Curriculum Levels Pre-Primary to Level 5. Her work can be found on Instagram @hilarywolfley.

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