Clare dorber
Clare is an Artist, Teacher and (m)other. Clare studied Printmaking at Winchester school of Art before completing her PGCE in Art teaching at the University of Cambridge.
Clare moved to London in 2015 and started teaching in an all-girls school. During this time, Clare became interested in the way pupils respond to female teachers and their expectations of them. The roles of artist and teacher lead Clare to begin studying at Goldsmiths College for an MA in ‘Artist teacher’. As part of Clare’s final major project, Clare researched and made work about the multiple roles of being an artist/teacher and (m)other. Clare says “This was such an interesting time to be working as it was the summer term of 2021, my lectures and tutorials were online, I created work, heavily pregnant out of everyday waste and things I gathered in our flat at the kitchen table’. The series of mixed media print collages were abstract self-portraits of Clare in her classroom with her students.
In August 2021, Clare became a mother to daughter Pearl.
“I am now really interested in documenting the to and fro, the fleeting moments and the ephemera that motherhood brings with it and my relationship with myself and of course, my daughter. I am currently reading Anne Enright’s ‘making babies’. Enright refers to women being separated by a ‘glass wall’ splitting women with babies and women without. The glass wall allows both sets of women to acknowledge each other. However, the party without children have no idea what it’s like to be the other side of that wall and the women with children find it hard to transition back to how they were pre-children. I am currently working on a series of photos, collages, drawings and mixed media called ‘through the glass’. I hope that this will turn allow my practice to pick up momentum and give it a focus after the birth of Pearl.”
