Ellen McMahon

Boxed set of twenty six alphabet cards on Rives BFK  (edition of 20)

6" × 4"  2001

The body is inevitable. No matter how much our emotions are intellectualized, theorized, and rationalized, they still persist as physical experience and expression. A is for Autonomy pokes fun at the effort to understand love and reflects the tension between opposites like: adulthood and childhood, love and hate, thinking and feeling, mechanical and handmade, and intimacy and autonomy. Things that actually blend and fuse and overlap and need each other to even exist. 

Instaled

Installed detail

Letterpress on Rives BFK, Cranes Cover and Fabriano Ingres, Platinum /Palladium print 14.75" × 10.25" 2004

One day my daughter asked me to write words and phrases on her body and take photographs of her. During a break I looked up and saw us reflected in the mirror. I was holding the camera so I took the shot. She took the film and developed the pictures. Six months later, for Christmas, she gave me a framed print of the picture I had taken of us in the mirror. After looking at it on my bedroom dresser for another six months I decided to make this book with my version of what happened that day. 

Detail

Graphite on wood, 5" × 12.5", opening to 29"  2003

TEXT: Della is five, following me around as I gather dirty laundry from the floor of every room in the house. “Mom, play with me. You never play with me. If you loved me you’d play with me. You don’t love me.” Alice is ten. She is in her room moaning that she forgot to pack for her overnight field trip. She needs my help. She’s trying on “looks” in the mirror. Glassy-eyed, she can’t seem to focus on the packing.  Della is still asking me to play with her. Alice buries her head in her knees. “No one listens to me.” Della settles down with her feet on the TV. I ask her to move back and take her feet down. She ignores me and I’m too tired to argue. I walk into the kitchen to make dinner. I see the sink full of dirty breakfast dishes, bowls covered with hardened oatmeal. I throw the metal can opener hard against the kitchen floor. I want to make a dent in the wood. I get a moment of pleasure as I discover the mark I’ve made. I go into the bathroom and lay on the floor. Hot tears roll into my ears. I notice the black mildew on the bottom of the shower curtain and the giant clumps of dust in the corner by my head.

Detail

Boxed sets of 5” x 3” flash cards, inkjet prints

1998, reprinted in 2007

Boxed set of 12 cards, inkjet prints

Your baby is making the same demanding sound over and over again, getting more upset by the minute. Each request gets louder and more shrill as you frantically try to determine what baby wants. You end up rushing around the house offering everything you can think of — drinks, toys, food, bedding, and clothes — all to no avail. Now with the help of Baby Talk Flash Cards you can learn baby's language, figure out what she's asking for, and talk back too.

Baby Talk Flash Cards features 12 full-color cards each with a scan-o-gram and descriptive baby talk word on the front and English translation on the flip side.

Authenticity guaranteed! Every word uttered by a real baby.

Boxed set of 8 flash cards, inkjet prints

TEXT: Pre-verbal Flash Cards introduce the adult to the world of the pre-speaking infant. This set features eight full-color cards each with a scan-o-gram of common baby care objects on the front and a corresponding non-verbal alphabetic symbol on the flip side. Each device pictured extends the reach of the caretaker into the baby's body. They block to clear, hurt to help and stifle to protect.

Weary of the demands of rationality? The Step Back Series offers a comprehensive assortment of products for adults who feel the need to recover those useful lost skills of infancy.

Look for these additional Step Back products: Guide to Having your Own Temper Tantrums, How To Fall Asleep Anywhere, Getting Your Needs Met Instantly, The Sensual Pleasures of Food and Everything Else.

Boxed set of eight 5.5” x 4” cards, Indigo prints, 2000

TEXT: Maternal Queens represents one mother’s reflections on four myths about motherhood. With the eight cards in this package you can build your own precarious House of Cards. Maternal myths can be revealing but they can also mask the social realities of mothers and interfere with the development of real social and economic support for women and their families.

Four myths about mothers:

Club: Occupation: Once a woman becomes a mother her motherhood is always her top priority. Good mothers don’t feel ambivalent about this.

Heart: Passion: Once a woman becomes a mother all of her passion is channeled into her family. Other passion is always potentially dangerous.

Spade: Misfortune: Once a woman becomes a mother a force known as maternal instinct allows her to miraculously transcend the deficits of her own childhood and meet all of the emotional needs of her children.

Diamond: Finances: Once a woman becomes a mother she can manage it all by herself.

Letterpress on paper hand made out of cloth diapers, palladium prints  on vellum. Each page 17” x 11”  1993

Unbound book installed on a 14-foot counter with an internal light source under each page.

Pages installed on a 14-foot counter with a light source under each page.

The light under each page illuminates the photographs, which are palladium prints on vellum, and reveals the fibrous traces of the cloth diapers. It was made as a site-specific piece for the University of Arizona Faculty Exhibition when I was an Assistant Professor with young children.

Inkjet on vellum each panel 7" × 4.5" (opens to 45")  1998

This book version of a large instllation focuses on the politics of intimacy and the tension between the desire to merge and the struggle to separate, which has been central to my experience as a mother and as a daughter. Like much of my work it is informed by my daily experience of mothering in relation to the social category of Mother, constructed as natural, thus simultaneously romanticized and undervalued.

Detail, self portrait

24’ x 24’ installation with sound, wood, plaster, baby bottle nipples 1997

Detail, plaster

Detail, wood and baby bottle nipples

Detail, wood and baby bottle nipples