Good morning,

One of the chapters I most love in the home as a care studio project (see image below) I’ve been noodling on is home as a site of creative work.

Perhaps it is because in this chapter of life, it’s something I’m leaning so heavily into. Making art at home, integrated into the rhythms of care, is its own kind of practice.

In addition to my own creative work, for the past year+ I’ve been spending time in the company of so many people who identify as mother-artists. (Join us if you are in SF! https://www.mothersinartanddesign.com)

I never would have imagined identifying as an artist, but in the slow road from journalism to writing to motherhood, it feels most right to me at this moment.

Art, for me, is the act of metabolizing life. Writing is not always that. Writing can be art but sometimes it just describes life, documents life, communicates life. To metabolize life means to make something new from it, to use our experiences to allow life’s lessons to reach the deeper places in our bodies, or, sometimes, access the lessons that our brains alone can’t fathom. In this sense, writing as art is alchemy, metamorphosis, craft.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed alongside Christie George on the podcast Mother of It All (Substack / Spotify) about how motherhood and creativity fuel and/or constrain each other and it helped me articulate, for the first time, what it is I’m doing.

And as you know, to be able to name what it is you are doing can be difficult, if your role in the market and your role in your life don’t feel like the same thing.

This past weekend, MAD (Mothers in Art & Design SF) held our first retreat, and what a delight it was to be in the company of mothers and children in nature for a weekend. We cooked for each other, talked and talked and made art and reflected.

I also facilitated a workshop to help us articulate what it means to be artist-parents. Together, we wrote about and discussed 7 questions that aren’t about art or parenting separately, but what happens at the intersection.

For anyone who feels like they are an artist-parent and would like to name more clearly what that means, I include the questions below. I deeply believe in writing a statement for your work, particularly if you’re doing work that doesn’t fit neat categories—like being both artist and parent. While most writing and art about parenthood can alienate non-parents, I actually feel like art can build bridges between them if we are clear about our work.

So here are 7 questions about art + motherhood (or parenthood!) that can help you write that statement.

We opened the retreat with the poem “Don’t Hesitate” by Mary Oliver, so before you dig into reflection, I want to share it with you:

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

7 Questions about Art + Motherhood

About Your Art

1. Why do you create?
   What drives you to make things? What questions, desires, or obsessions pull you toward your practice?

2. What is your relationship to process?

   What does your process look like now—in this season of life? Is it slow, fragmented, urgent, hidden, joyful, devotional?

3. Why this medium?
   Why do you work in the form you’ve chosen—visual, written, material, performance, sound? What draws you to it?

About your Mothering/Parenting

1. What do you hope your children take from you?
   Not just artistically—but in how you live, make choices, hold time.

2. How has parenthood changed your art (or how you see art?)
   Has it sharpened anything? Softened anything? Broken something open?

About Your Children Witnessing Your Art

1. How do you hope your children will understand your creative work?
   What do you want them to feel when they see you in process? When they see what you’ve made?

2. What do you want your children to believe about art?
   About who gets to make it, what it can be for, what it’s worth in the world?

I think what I’ve learned in the last year is that art is something that is rich, immense, limitless fuel for caregiving. And at the same time, it is the one of the more effective ways to understand what it is we are doing as parents.

Whether you identify as an artist or not, I hope you’ll find a small pocket of time to make something—even just for yourself. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Happy Friday,

Jihii

P.S. For those who are newer here, this is the project I’m referring to. Home is powerful! I’ve compiled all of this thinking—plus additional exercises and resources from past essays—into a full module on Home as a Site of Creative Work. You can find it on my library alongside other modules in the Home as a Care Studio series.