The following interview is the result of a three-way conversation between the artist, Monica Bock, and the two curators, Erin Valentino and Kerrie Bellisario Mileski. [This interview originally appeared in the catalog for the Maternal Exposure exhibit at ARTWORKS, April 13-June 3, 2000.]

EV: What does Maternal Exposure, the title of your exhibition, refer to?
each bag before lunch. So I became self conscious of everything I put in ...you know, bologna is not something perhaps that you are supposed to feed your kids. But then as an artist, I became really interested in my own sense of being watched as a mother. This lunch issue was sort of a symptom of a larger set of impossible expectations that is always hovering over a parent, particularly mothers, in terms of how they take care of their kids. How they are supposed to feel about taking care of their kids. What they are supposed to notice. What they are supposed to not notice. How close they are supposed to get or not get. How relentless it basically all is.

So I wanted to create a large piece that would document the whole year's effort and reveal that relentless labor and also the relentless exposure that being a mother entails. Also, there is something about the ritual of sending my children out into the world and hoping they might be protected by this little bit of nourishment contained in the lunchbag. But ultimately knowingg tension between my need for order and my belief in and desire to nurture freedom and creativity in my household. There's a need for ritual to help my children function; they need to know that bath is followed by book is followed by bed after dinner every evening in order not to just go insane trying to move through to sleep. So, there is a way in which I've learned a lot about daily ritual just to keep my children comfortable.

KBM: How do these two roles, you as artist, you as mother, overlap?

MB: Simply as a human being in whatever I'm doing, I'm looking for understanding. I'm always one step behind myself watching and thinking about what's going on, crafting and re-crafting my existence, ordering and re-ordering, creating and recreating. Whether I'm making art or constructing family, I'm analyzing and processing my experience. Because my children and our relationship is so demanding and so interesting to me in the way they reflect reality, I've focused on them in my art practice.

EV: So I want to make a bridge between the idea of ritualistic practice and your choice of materials. How are these things connected in your art?

MB: They are veralso because of its color-this kind of fleshy golden glow that it emits when light is cast through it. It looks like flesh, but also like gold. Basically I'm drawn to materials rooted in mundane reality, in the sense of earthly and bodily reality. As an installation artist, I'm informed by an early engagement in the theater as a high-school and college student. I'm still really interested in theatrical space and production. But as a sculptor, I'm interested in "real" materials rather than illusionistic props. Materials like soap.

EV: It occurs to me that these materials have to do with the ritual of selfhood, one of which is cleanliness. One of the things about cleanliness in Western culture is that it is based on maintaining boundaries. Like you wouldn't want to go to the store and buy a pot roast and throw it on your bed. You're preserving yourself from death when you are cleaning, but you are also preserving yourself as yourself.

MB: Yes, and the art involves these rituals in establishing a difference between my children and myself. And the materials reflect the physical intensity of that process.

KBM: I want to talk about "Domestic Provocation" and "Sibling y children being real participants in the work. This feels more dynamic to me as a way of making art about us.

KBM: I also want to talk about your work with the UConn Child Development Laboratories. Can you connect this work with the art?

MB: Yes, the UConn project involved Pre-K and Kindergarten children in the conception and creation of a ceramic-tiled playground structure. As a parallel practice to my studio practice, I've been interested in community-based art, specifically in work that engages the community in the production of a project. In this respect I become a facilitator rather than the sole artistic agent. Really it's consistent with my preference for collaborative production. I like the energy and honesty of this kind of work.