still life 365

As most of you know, I have explored a lot of creative outlets since Lucy died this year. Art and poetry sometimes gave me the voice I lost in my sadness. Other days painting gave me a moment of peace and calm. As I have shared my work, other women have shared their work with me. And I have been so inspired by your poetry, your paintings, your crafts, and all of your art. I have been kicking this idea around for the past month or so, envisioning a 2010 project extraordinaire. So, I am asking you to participate and contribute as well, because this is a project for all of us. It involves a new blog/website, though this one is not going anywhere. I am still writing here about my journey. My new website is called still life 365.

Still life 365 is a unique art project for, about and by mothers and fathers who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death. Still life 365 posts a piece of art every day by a poet, artist, photographer, crafter, musician, collagist, paper artist, filmmaker, painter, sculptor, fabric artist and ordinary person exploring grief through creativity. Each piece is an expression of grief, survival, sadness, love and hope. Still life 365 is intended to be a safe space for creative expression, to explore the conflicted and varied emotions after the lost of our babies. Most of us are not professional artists, but simply grieving parents searching for some grounding.

This project will start January 1, 2010, and will continue, hopefully for a year and beyond, but it really depends on you! I need your artwork, your poetry, your music, your films to show on still life 365. It is a great way to showcase your blog, your Etsy site and your work. It is also a great way to remember your baby(ies). 

How to submit

Still life 365 accepts all forms of art and expression including poetry, haiku, photography, paintings, fabric art, paper art, sculpture, collage, printmaking, drawing, music, video/filmmaking and craft. Still life 365 does not want your originals. We are not in the business of "accepting" your art. All work is welcome here without judgment or change*. We do not mind pieces that have been published or shown elsewhere, but please get all rights and permissions before submitting to still life 365. If rights and permissions are not needed, please still give us the link to where it was originally published. We accept only digital copies of your artwork along with title, description, medium and materials used. If we receive photographs that are not easily reproduced, we may ask you to rephotograph, or rescan. Along with your piece, we also love hearing about your inspiration and ways in which this piece of art came to be. Also, if you feel comfortable, include your baby's or babies names. To showcase as many different artists as possible, we will publish multiple submissions from the same artists at different times. For example, if you send me three pieces, we might spread them out and show one in January, one in February, and one in March. We also welcome crafts that seem to be unrelated to babyloss, like knitting for example, but hearing how it soothed you, or helped deal with loss, can make it related.

Please submit your work to stilllife365days (at) gmail (dot) come. Please put SUBMISSION in the subject line. To submit your blog to the blogroll, email your link to the same email address putting BLOGROLL subject. And to submit art-related blogs to our blogroll, put ART BLOG in the subject.

I hope you all will consider submitting something to this project. I am very open to any critical analysis or ideas you might have. You can either leave them in the comment section, or email me at uberangie (at) gmail (dot) com, or stilllife365days (at) gmail (dot) com. I also have a button you can grab, if you are so inclined.

* We will spellcheck and check for major grammatical errors in poetry and writing, though all changes will be sent back before publication.