以孕妇肚皮为画布的另类艺术

A Bellyful of Memories Mothers-to-Be Commemorate Their Pregnancies with Unique Art Now, mothers-to-be are looking for a way to celebrate their months of pregnancy. They have a new option, one that takes them past the traditional photos.

It's offered by a company called Original Belly Works. Now what they've done is to hit upon a way to combine new life with three-dimensional art.

I just was always one of those people who wished that I had something from my great-great grandmother, whether it 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 the same. First of all, working on a three-dimensional canvas, as opposed to a two-dimensional flat 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, remarkably positive. Women over the past few years have been taking pride in being pregnant. You see it everywhere. For years ago, women were. . . they were wearing tent dresses and hiding, and, you know, they were ashamed, or just it wasn't a pleasant experience for them and that's what society had dictated at that time.

But we're living in a different age, in a different time, and women are just proud to show the world that they're pregnant. It's very different . You don't usually see people. . . usually they have photographs, but now you actually get a visual, a 3-D image of your actual belly.

It's an expression of you, yet it's memorable. It's something. . . it's a keepsake item. I have lots and lots of memories, memoirs and stuff for the kids that I'm constantly showing them now.

So something like this for a lifetime to have, to share it with my daughter right now would be something so unique. My all-time favorite is the pineapple. This one particular customer of ours, she craved pineapple through her whole pregnancy, and she wanted her belly to look like a pineapple.

It was just a matter of trying to figure out how to make it look like the actual pineapple, which was for me pretty easy because of the rounded shape of the belly, which is, it's, you know, kind of the rounded shape of the fruit. Ultimately it's a blank canvas, and so the possibilities are endless. We have some bellies that look like bathing suits.

We have some bellies that have morphed into other things, like butterflies and ladybugs and, you know, faeries and ballerinas. We've got angels. The possibilities are endless. For me, it's art. Art is art, so no matter what I'm doing, whether it's printmaking or photography or painting, it's still my artistic experience that I have, that I've built up over these past. . . over 30 years.