Art display focus is midwives

By Dave Hart, Staff Writer

Jennifer Newall wasn’t expecting much, either in the way of submissions or audience, when she began putting together an art exhibit dedicated to midwifery.

It’s not exactly your standard landscape/portrait/still-life exhibit category, after all.

So she was astonished at the response — twice. Once by the quality, diversity and volume of the art work she received, and then by the response of viewers to the show. “Birth Choices, Birth Voices: Labor & Birth in the Presence of Midwives” is on display in The ArtsCenter’s East End Gallery through Sunday.

“I had never been a curator before,” Newall said. “I just started putting up fliers and talking to people, and pretty soon word got around. I was honestly expecting to get some belly casts and maybe a few photographs.

“So when pieces started coming in, I was floored. We have oil paintings, watercolors, sculptures, photos and more. It’s been wonderful.”

When the show opened earlier this month in the tiny gallery, more than 150 people crowded in. Midwives, mothers who have given birth with midwives, mothers-to-be who were curious about midwives — and more than a few art lovers who were simply intrigued by the subject and the work.

“Very often people will walk by and just sort of glance in the windows, and they’re so taken with it they turn the corner and come in,” Newall said.

Although, as she mentioned, she’s not a professional curator — and wasn’t even an amateur one until this show — she was inspired to put the exhibit together by her personal experiences with midwives. She delivered all three of her children at home with the aid of midwives, she said, and she found the experience so profound she wanted to share it with others.

The arts, she decided, might be an effective way to do that.

“The arts are a way to show the beauty of birth and to honor the work that midwives do,” Newall said. “I wanted to raise awareness and let women know about this option. Midwives believe that childbirth is not an illness but an opportunity to allow our bodies to do what they are meant to do. It’s a very positive, powerful experience.”

The multimedia art show features a selection of ‘birth inspired artwork” created by North Carolina mothers and fathers in response to the experience of giving birth with a midwife at home, in a birthing center or hospital.

Artist Judith Kuegler said she was eager to participate in the show from the moment she heard about. She has several works in the exhibit, photographs and encaustic works using beeswax and pigment.

“I’m passionate about the option of giving birth at home,” she said. “As an artist, it’s impossible not to express my feelings about my own experience with childbirth, and this is a wonderful opportunity to do that.”

Newall said she hopes that after the exhibit closes at The ArtsCenter she can find other venues for it throughout the state.