After her baby girl was born in 2025, art student Makenna Pack Durfee (’26) wondered whether she would ever make art again.
She immediately related when she learned that flamingo mothers are drained of their iconic coloring because of all the energy and nutrients required to produce and raise a new chick. Durfee felt like she had lost her own pink. But just as a flamingo’s color returns as the chick grows, Durfee’s desire to create also returned as she adjusted to motherhood. Her new pink “was not the same shade, but it was even more beautiful,” she says.
Durfee’s experience as a new mom is captured in her nine-panel piece Losing and Reclaiming My “Pink,” which was selected for the Art Department’s 2026 Annual Student Exhibition. Drawing on memories of making eggshell art with her own mother, Durfee created the mixed-media piece with acrylic paint, epoxy resin, and eggshells.
As she crafted each clay panel, the symbolism of eggshells took on deeper meaning. “I pondered how eggshells represented new life,” Durfee says. “They were delicate and fragile, but when covered with resin, became sharp and strong. I thought about how birds keep their young warm and safe under their wings and how the Lord promises to protect us similarly.”
The panels reflect both abstract and direct themes of motherhood through flower, wing, and womb imagery.
“I hope that mothers who see it will be able to relate and think about their own grief and joy in motherhood,” says Durfee. “And I hope that others who see it will be able to ponder the sacrifices and devotion of their mothers or mother figures in their life.”
