there was a bear in her belly

Artist Bio:

Martha O’Connell (also known as Martolao) is a visual artist, educator, and community organizer. She holds a BFA in Sculpture from Cornell University and received formal training through the Teaching Artist Project in New York City. Initially inspired by her teenage years working with Boston's Mural Crew, her background spans public art, mural painting, and youth advocacy across Massachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia. In her independent studio practice, she blends large-scale drawing, medical illustration, and natural motifs to explore how anatomy, memory, and lived experiences shape our emotional landscapes.

Artist Statement

  What death doesn’t claim for itself, our stomachs and inner systems hold onto.  Our memories have bodies all their own and often grow limbs, arms, legs, and start talking back to us.  My images contain wings, permafrost, ancient symbolism, and psychic birds that help explain the far reaches and shortcomings of memory. I create imagined worlds for us to enter and install them in communal spaces where I invite people to perform and share.  I investigate connections between anatomy and elements of mapping, home, and our built environment: how we reflect what we need on the inside, on the outside. I am interested in the connections between our lived experiences, our physical bodies, and our imaginative spirits. Drawing is an age-old method of communication;  in creating large scale drawings, I hope to involve our own physical sense of scale and being. My ongoing series of drawings, the nighttime has so much to say, is obsessed with themes of overthinking, excess energy, inner turmoil, porous membranes, emotional outbursts, the nervous system, our animal sides, and the (simple) pain of just loving deeply. I create community events and arts-based workshops with Amber Art & Design, a collective of artists working to leverage resources from the art world for social change. Our work is hyper local and ranges from public art & beautification to community engagement processes/events. -Martha O'Connell

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