Belly art

An Atlanta woman creates a unique artform with pregnant women's bellies.

I just always wanna those people who wish that I had something from my great great grandmother, whether they be a broach or just a note, just something from her. So I wanted to create something that my kids would be able to have from me and something very /personal. No bellies are * thing, feasible / to working on a 3-dimentional canvas that is supposed to a 2-dimentional flag canvas or wood. This makes it much more interesting, gives you a challenge as well as the interest of working with different media. The responses have been positive, um, remarkably positive. Women over the past 4 years, I have been taken pride in being pregnant, um, you see it everywhere.

4 years ago, women were, well they were wearing tint dresses, and hiding and you know they were shamed or just it wasn’t a pleasant experience for them, and that’s what the society had dictated / at that time. But we are living in a different age, in a different time, and women are just proud to show the world that they are pregnant.

It’s very different, you don’t usually see people, usually you have photographs but now you actually / get a visual, a 3-D image of your actual belly. Isn’t it expression of you yet, it’s memorable, it’s something, it’s a keep stake I know. You have lots and lots of memories, memoires and stuff about the kids that I am constantly showing them now. So something like this for a lifetime to share with my daughter right now would be something so unique.

My all-time / favorite is the pineapple, this one particular customer of ours, she created pineapple through her whole pregnancy and she wanted her belly to be like a pineapple. It was just a matter of trying to figure out how to make it look like but actual a pineapple, which was for me pretty easy because of the rounded shape of the belly, which is , is, you know, kind of a rounded / shape of the fruit. Ultimately, it’s a blank canvas, and sort of a possible leaser endless we have some bellies that look like basin suits, we have some bellies that have more into other things like butterflies, and ladybirds, and you know fairies, and ballerinas, you’ve got angels, the possibilities are endless. For me, it’s art, art is art, so no matter what I am doing, whether it’s print making or photography or / painting, it’s still / my * experience that I have but I built up over this path, over 30 years, so you’re still getting in original piece of art whether it’s on the belly or on the canvas.