Wellspring: A Mother Artist Project
Dappled Things is excited to share about this new project for women creatives:
Wellspring: A Mother Artist Project seeks to support women as they answer their callings as mothers and creatives, offering a community where where one’s creative life and spiritual life can intertwine; a welcoming source of rejuvenation for the whole mother artist: hand, heart, mind, and soul.
The Wellspring Project believes that to flourish creatively, mother artists need moments of rest, contemplation, community, and freedom, supported within their process. Wellspring’s desire is to make these things possible for women of any age and stage who are taking their unique call seriously and into the wider world, whether they have newborns, toddlers, teenagers, or grandchildren, and whether their medium be words, paint, musical notes, or clay, as well as for those women who have a desire to integrate a creative practice into their rhythm as mothers but haven’t found a way to do so.
The project was cofounded in May 2022 by Jess Sweeney, a Philadelphia based painter, writer, and mother of two toddler girls, and Mia Eckes, Minnesota based fiber artist, creativity coach, and mother of six. “It was just very life-giving to make room in my life for creativity, but to do so as a mom, realizing it didn't have to look like it used to look. To create a rhythm, to engage the spiritual life while making, to rest and find support with other women with these similar goals,” says Jess Sweeney. With these goals in mind, Mia and Jess have sought to build a project and community to support and elevate the work of creative women of faith through nurturing retreats, annual art exhibitions, workshops, and a community in which we can share and support one another’s artistic process, spiritual life, and motherhood journey. Ultimately the hope is that Wellspring can make space for and share the stories of these women, offering a rhythm of life & work to tap into and a community of fellow makers to share their struggles and frustrations, as well as their joys and triumphs.
The project is inspired by an ecumenically Christian vision and sees itself in line with a tradition of mother artists throughout the ages; from Dorothy Day to Artemisia Gentileschi, Sigrid Undset, Lavinia Fontana and Madeleine L’Engle to Rachel Ruysch and Julia Warhola. All these women and more, as well as so many living examples, offer inspiration for mothers and artists of all ages and stages, creating one word, one brushstroke, one stitch, one note at a time, amidst the beauty and messiness of the motherhood journey. And ultimately, these women exemplify the reminder that we hope Wellspring will also offer, the encouragement that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
To kick off this yearly rhythm, Wellspring is hosting two exciting pop-up retreats for women this Fall. Make sure to use our promo code DAPPLEDTHINGS10 for a discount on either retreat!
The Spirituality of (Mother)Making: Exploring Rest, Rhythm, & Reverence, October 22 in Philadelphia, PA
Riding the Wind: A Release into Rest & Creativity, November 5-6 at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN
Visit the Wellspring website for all of the details, and follow them on Instagram and Facebook.