Arts & Life, Events, Features, Fine & Performing Arts

Motherhood and ‘Sacrifice’

As people enter the West Gatov gallery on campus, large ceramic works of “Sacrifice “along the wall are visible that show both the images of an artist’s life and the hauntingly beautiful vision of a woman in them.  

Andrea Williams is a Cal State Long Beach junior art major focusing in ceramics.

Williams’s piece, “Sacrifice,” draws many parallels from her life, family and faith as well as her  new role as a mother. These subjects are noticeable when viewing the pieces. One piece holds an image of a woman with a child in an almost similar iconic piece from Christianity, the Madonna.

At the beginning of her art career, Williams did not know that she would fall into this path.

“I didn’t know what to do and it was only in my early 20s that I decided I wanted to be an artist. It took me a while to realize I wanted to be an artist,” Williams said.

Once Williams was able to find her calling as an artist, she found that ceramics was the way she would want to express herself.

“I fell in love with the material when I worked with it and felt like it was the right path for me personally and I wanted to pursue it. Whether or not it was going to work for [me] in the end I still wanted to pursue it,” Williams said.

The image directly parallels her new role and love for her daughter as well as her strong faith.

“I was reworking old images that I had done and also taking iconic images from Christianity. I drew a lot of inspiration from that while some are just images of me,” Williams said.

It was the inspiration of her past and the present that helped Williams rework and create her piece.

“My work is trying to convey this new life that is transforming as I live through it, with this new body that I am experiencing daily,” Williams writes in her introduction for her pieces.

Williams is both a full-time student and a mother, so finishing these pieces was a challenge with all her responsibilities.

“It was very difficult. What motivated me to finish this was really to choose images that would speak more about the parallels between me, myself, and my faith in regards to motherhood, Jesus Christ, Mary and her role as a mother,” Williams said.

Williams felt like she needed to finish these pieces and further explain her feelings during its completion. Her new sense of motherhood and views on her life and family have helped her greatly in the process.

“Finishing them was very therapeutic for me and it really gave me the chance to reflect on motherhood, since I was away from my daughter most of time when I was making these pieces,” Williams explained.

“As I work, these things are on my mind, and when I am assembling these pieces I am exploring the instincts that come and, just like my work, my life has been put together by different moments, reactions, feelings and choices,” William said.

Williams’s artwork is currently being showcased in the student art galleries on upper campus for the remainder of the week.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

Daily 49er newsletter

Instagram