"I THINK IT'S SO IMPORTANT AS WOMEN THAT WE SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER AND HOLD OURSELVES TO A HIGHER BAR FOR TREATING EACH OTHER BETTER [...] IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO STEP UP ON THINGS LIKE THAT. I'VE HAD TOO MANY SITUATIONS WHERE WOMEN HAVE TREATED ME HOW I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED A MALE ART DIRECTOR OR MALE ART INSTITUTE TO TREAT ME AND IT'S BEYOND FRUSTRATING. IT'S LIKE, THERE'S ENOUGH GOOD TO GO AROUND - LET'S NOT GET TIGHT-LIPPED ABOUT THIS STUFF AND ACTUALLY HELP EACH OTHER OUT!"
Abigail Gray Swartz is a fine artist and freelance illustrator whose clients include The New Yorker, The New York Times, Lenny Letter, and Taproot Magazine. You may be familiar with her widely shared cover of The New Yorker for the 2017 Women’s March Issue, featuring an African-American version of Rosie the Riveter wearing one of the infamous pink pussy hats from the march.
I had the opportunity to meet Abigail at the United State of Women Summit last spring, where she was exhibiting some of her artwork and promoting her new City of Hidden Figures initiative. I was drawn to her portraits of strong female figures and their accompanying quotes; the images felt like kindred spirits to my interviews and I immediately wanted to know more about Abigail and her inspiration and motivation.
In this interview we discuss how Abigail has managed to navigate self-employment and success in her field while also discussing self-care and how to stay physically and mentally sane through it all. Whether you’re single or have a family of your own, I think you’ll find much relatable content here along with many helpful tips to navigate the work/life balance struggle we all face. I hope this interview reminds you that you are not alone in your challenges, and that the more we support one another as women the further we all go!
I had the opportunity to meet Abigail at the United State of Women Summit last spring, where she was exhibiting some of her artwork and promoting her new City of Hidden Figures initiative. I was drawn to her portraits of strong female figures and their accompanying quotes; the images felt like kindred spirits to my interviews and I immediately wanted to know more about Abigail and her inspiration and motivation.
In this interview we discuss how Abigail has managed to navigate self-employment and success in her field while also discussing self-care and how to stay physically and mentally sane through it all. Whether you’re single or have a family of your own, I think you’ll find much relatable content here along with many helpful tips to navigate the work/life balance struggle we all face. I hope this interview reminds you that you are not alone in your challenges, and that the more we support one another as women the further we all go!
● I’d like to start off discussing how you’ve been able to achieve what so many view as a difficult and even idealistic dream – that of the artist as a viable career path. I think we’re all familiar with the term “starving artist.” I’m curious to know how you confronted that view and achieved success despite the odds being against you?
Well, even after other people perceive that you’ve “made it,” you never really get rid of that feeling of doubt, you’re never totally carefree. For me, it feels like a long time coming, but then not at the same time. I worked freelance for so long and then suddenly I got the cover of The New Yorker and it went viral so quickly, and I realized that now was the time to capitalize on that success and to build. The year after The New Yorker was really great with that momentum, but also not easy.
I needed extra help, so instead of hiring an assistant and a babysitter, my husband came to work for me. It allows us to work together as a family and also spend more time together when there are slow days. That’s been really great – I’ve been able to do a lot more and have been able to say yes to a lot more things. But in all honesty, it’s still very stressful and I’m realizing it takes a real leap of faith to even make these decisions. It’s hard to say, “Oh cool, I made that really difficult decision, now it’s going to be fine!” ... It’s like almost every day, some more than others, you have to recommit to that decision. That’s the trickier part.
But there are great resources out there now. I think that’s always been the separation between my generation and my mom’s generation. She’s always felt that my being an artist isn’t really the best decision. About a month before I got the cover of The New Yorker she was asking me when I was going to get a real job. I was like, “Well this is a real job, it’s just not consistent right now.” I basically had two jobs: full time mom and then artist. Once I had help in the parenting department, I was able to make more strides in the other.
I’ve been trying to explain to my mom how the internet and especially Instagram have allowed people to reach a much broader audience than was possible before. I definitely had a boost myself after The New Yorker cover because I had a HuffPost review on it that went viral, and consequently I sold more in two weeks through my online shop then I had the year before. It wasn’t a huge accomplishment, but it showed me that if I’m smart about it, maybe I can repeat that every quarter or something.
There really are so many more resources available today to help guide you on this career path as well. I always share with people the book by Lisa Congdon, Art Inc.: The Essential Guide for Building Your Career as an Artist. That book is really great. She also teaches online classes and lots of other folks teach too, so there are ways to do it. I think the biggest thing is to diversify your career as an artist, that’s what I’m working on. The only problem is that when I’m doing four different things at once it feels like it’s going a bit slower, but then when something gets quiet I have something else going on.
● I think a lot of people can relate to what you’re saying with your parents, or really any member of your family or friends, looking at you like you’re crazy when you choose an unusual, and maybe in their eyes “unstable,” career path. Where did you find the inner courage to move forward anyways? Was it a case of, “I just know this is my thing?” Or was it more about proving them wrong?
Probably a little of both. It was definitely hard in the beginning. After my daughter was born, my husband and I moved back to the Delaware area to have some help from my parents. My husband was going to medical school and my mom was like, “Look, I’ll watch your daughter, but I’ll only watch her if you go get a job as a bank teller or bag groceries or something. I’m not going to watch her if you just putter about on Etsy all day.” I had my MFA at that point, so I was just like, Okay, well?? That’s just sort of the general dynamic with my parents, we just view life totally differently and so I have to find a way we can meet in the middle.
I also acknowledge that I’ve been privileged in a lot of ways, I was able to go to grad school, I didn’t have student debt to worry about. So I think some of it is definitely self-reflected to make me work harder, but I was also the kind of kid who that came naturally to – growing up I would sweep the barn while everyone else was playing around. I’ve always been a really hard worker.
Motherhood has taught me a lot too, especially about time management. I’ve really had to make the effort to carve out time for myself, whether that’s self-care or actually painting and getting work done. That has really influenced my career path in that I’ve been able to get a lot more done than I ever would have before kids. So I think both the motherhood journey and the challenge of proving my parents wrong has kept me motivated!
● I read an interview about how happy and surprised you were when you landed your artwork on the cover of The New Yorker, particularly as this had been a personal goal that you had written down in your 3 to 5-year career plan. It made me think of the movie The Secret, with the idea being that our visualizations have the power to create our reality. Do you think that this kind of goal setting has some real magic in it, or for you is it more about making a plan and working towards that logistically?
Well, my motivation for that plan came from Lisa Congdon. After her book Art, Inc. came out she followed it with an online continuum course, and part of it was writing a 3 to 5-year plan. It’s actually really funny you asked me this, because it’s right here in front of me now – I actually just found it in my drawer! She had us draw a circle in the middle and write our names in it and then draw all these rays coming out of the circle and label what those were. I did this back when my youngest was a baby - he’s now five - so some of it was just related to being in the throes of having really young kids and goals in that area. But for the work goals, it’s fun to see what I’ve accomplished, things like art as primary income, the cover of The New Yorker, selling prints on Etsy. I think it might be time to come up with some new ones!
I also think it’s about accountability. I listen to a lot of podcasts and there are a lot of really good ones out there for creatives. They often talk about working backwards, coming up with your big goal – whether it’s a yearly goal or something longer – and writing down when you want to accomplish it. For example, you might say that by the end of 2019 you want to have a book proposal. Then you work backwards and break it down into bigger goals and then into smaller goals and then into even smaller goals from there, and you keep yourself accountable to reach those goals. That’s sort-of how the SELF Journal works, something else I use that was written by entrepreneurs. I also like the advice someone once gave me to ask yourself what you want to say you’ve dealt with by the end of the year. That’s not so black and white, but it’s a bit more fun I think.
I think it’s also just a matter of keeping your senses open and aware to opportunities. Like when I decided The New Yorker was on my goal list, I started following Francoise Mouly (Art Editor of The New Yorker) on Facebook. She posted something about needing artwork for her Resist! Publication, and I submitted and got a portrait in that. And then this idea came to me (for the cover of The New Yorker) and I just followed it and decided to email her, and I thought maybe she’d remember the previous artwork I did. So, I referenced it by writing, “I’m the one who did the Rosa Parks portrait for Resist!, here’s my idea for a Women’s March cover.” I really wasn’t expecting much, I didn’t even think she’d write back, but I figured it was worth a shot. And obviously it paid off!
However, now it’s been really hard to get a second cover. I’ve heard through the grapevine from other artists that they’ve had similar experiences – they’ll get a cover and then it will be four years later until they get another one. I’d like to become more of a cover artist, I don’t know if that’s even possible, but it’s a good challenge.
I do think truly it is a little of both logic and magic though, and I think maybe I need to get back to a little more of the magical side right now. I’m in a bit of a career rut at the moment, things that I had planned on wrapping up by the first quarter of the year just haven’t happened for whatever reason and some unexpected things have come up that I’ve chosen to do instead. I was actually just joking to my husband the other day that I need some kind of career sage or crystals or something to get out of this funk! So, I don’t know what the answer is yet, but most of the time I’m prone to just keep working. As Lisa Congdon says, the natural law of the universe is the more work you do, the more work you get!
● How do you strike a balance between following a plan and a certain vision while also staying open to unexpected opportunities or detours that come up along the way? How do you navigate the fine line between having a plan versus limiting yourself by trying to stick to it too closely?
I think as you go along you learn what’s worked and what hasn’t. It’s like anything in life where you think, I’m not making that mistake again! You start to see red flags and then you start to see patterns, so you know when to stop. Although it’s not always clear. A lot has happened this year where I’m sort of like, Ehh, did I make the best decision there? It means that sometimes stuff gets put on hold and then you wonder later if you should have sacrificed that thing in order to move the other thing forward. For example, I’m trying to do children’s books, so my agent helped me get some meetings set up with a few publishers in New York last March. I went down and met with a group of publishers, showed them my portfolio, got feedback, etc. But the preparation and time for that trip put the fundraising I wanted to do for my mural on hold. Then in April, I was invited out to the United State of Women Summit, which I was very excited about and wanted to do, but at the same time I had to put off four other things to do it. And then you come home and have to catch up on everything.
Right now, I feel like I’m in a weird holding pattern, like … Okay, once I finally get my children’s book published then I’ll get more opportunities to do more children’s books, and once I finally get this mural done then more opportunities will open up to do other murals … It’s just getting all those first things done that feels a bit daunting. So at night when I start to feel like maybe I need to breathe into a brown paper bag, I try to remind myself, No, no, it’ll work!
● As an Artist Activist I’d like to know more about when and how those two worlds merged for you. Have you always used your art as a platform for social justice? If not, what caused you to lean in that direction?
I’ve always been involved with things like volunteering and community service since high school, but I don’t feel like I was really woken up until college. I had a sort of typical sheltered white upbringing. In college, we took a field trip to Nashville and that’s when I got to see for the first time what you would call environmental racism. I saw how the power plants and other air and water pollution-generating sites were mainly put in minority neighborhoods. It was experiences like that that started to wake me up. I was also involved with Amnesty International in college and would do art for different groups on campus.
After college I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and took a year of studio classes before getting my MFA. I took a printmaking class and did a series of prints after Hurricane Katrina, and then a series about the Iraq war. The series featured [Dick] Cheney juxtaposed with a silk screen of all the soldiers that had died in the war. It ended up winning an award, a student-voted award with the qualification being that it had to be a political active/social conscious piece of art.
So that sort of stuff has always been there. Then when I got married, my art took a little bit of a backseat … it was like Oh gosh, got to pay the bills! But then as my daughter got a little older, I got back into it and that’s when I started the notable women series. At first it was just a way to keep myself accountable on Instagram. Then it also became a way for me to brush up on my watercolor skills. I really loved and preferred oils, but due to time constraints and usually where I was working, I knew I needed something that would dry faster.
So, I just kind of gave myself the challenge to become more familiar and a little bit better with watercolor, while also getting better at portraits and sharing about these women. I gave it the hashtag #graydaystudiowomenwednesday and started doing at least one portrait a week of a notable woman. Sometimes they were less known women with a quote, and I would do a giveaway of the portrait. Then, slowly it dawned on me … Oh wow! I could probably sell prints of these! It then became more of a series and that’s how I got work with Lenny Letter, because they needed portraits of people.
● Can you talk more about how all this lead up to your new initiative with City of Hidden Figures and how you are using your art to affect social change?
The inspiration for City of Hidden Figures came from reading a Rebecca Solnit article where she talks about how every subway stop in New York is named after a man and what would it be like to have those be women. Then I talked to my cousin about it, who’s English, and she was saying that in London there’s more statues named John – not George, not any other male names, JUST JOHN – than all the other female statues put together! So I started collecting some of those articles and created the City of Hidden Figures website. It all stemmed from thinking about how I could make an impact in this area with public art. The idea is to have communities nominate local “hidden figures,” meaning women who aren’t well-known but should be, and then have them featured in either a mural or a statue, or even by renaming a street. The figure doesn’t necessarily have to be someone unknown, it could also be a well-known woman that’s hasn’t really been celebrated yet in a public way.
The emphasis is also on giving female-identifying artists the same opportunities as male artists to make public art in and around town – and to give more of a voice to unheard artists as well, so that it’s not just all these white women painting them. Pay equity is another huge focus of this project, to make sure the artists get paid fairly and to give them opportunities as well. Right now I’m working with a bunch of other work groups in Maine to figure this out. We’re looking at designating a local wall where we can give artists the opportunity to paint the wall and then every following year a new artist gets to paint the wall. They’ll get paid for it and it’s a portfolio builder as well. Then when they apply to other public art programs that are outside the state, they’ll have material in their portfolio that shows that they did something local. That’s really where I’m at myself right now – I want to do murals, but I don’t have anything of note to show for it yet, so I’m creating this opportunity for myself while also trying to bring everyone along with me.
I pitched City of Hidden Figures to Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls and they were going to help me launch it last fall at the United State Of Women Summit, but then it got pushed back a couple months, and then they went quiet on me, and when I finally managed to hunt them down they told me that they didn’t have the man hours they thought they did. But they still want to help how they can, they’ve offered to make a video after my mural is done and give me some space on their website. I also got to do some advertising for it at the United State of Women Summit - when the event organizers asked me to sell my posters, I requested additional space for City of Hidden Figures and they gave it to me, which was great.
Right now I’m working on the fundraising piece for the first mural wall, which will be in Portland, Maine. It’s going to be on the side of a building called Running with Scissors, which is a collective of a bunch of artist’s studios with a little gallery inside. The mural is going to feature three female artists from Maine. I’m working on that now, and then in March the plan is to do five sister cities – maybe either on International Women’s Day or just to celebrate Women’s Month for the whole of March. That’s one of the next pieces I’m working on now, contacting cities. But we’re also going to need more of a public open call – there’s already one on the website – where we’re asking cities to come forward to nominate themselves, and then we’ll help them find the funding and work to figure out who their hidden figures will be.
I’m also trying to figure out the legal side of things by talking to a lawyer about turning my own business into an LLC and then maybe turning City of Hidden Figures into a non-profit so that people can have a tax write-off when they give donations. As well, I’m trying to figure out who can be a fiscal sponsor for City of Hidden Figures. So there’s a lot of that kind of stuff, just really learning as I go!
● What has been your experience in how this type of work relates to personal happiness? Do you feel a greater sense of fulfillment because your work is positively impacting society?
Yes, that piece of the equation is really nice and that’s the piece my husband has to remind me about when I’m worried about money or things like that! We recently met a woman at the United State of Women Summit who was so excited to meet me. She had just written a college paper on me. That felt pretty wild but also really, really nice too!
I really think it’s important as women that we support one another and hold ourselves to a higher bar for treating each other better. There’s this subtle code within the patriarchal system where you don’t help others. Before my New Yorker cover, I reached out to male artists to ask if they could give me any advice on writing a children’s book, if there was an agent I needed to know or any tips they could recommend, and they never got back to me. I understand that people are busy, I’m not perfect either. But it’s a small town here and it’s happened several times. And then when I got the cover of The New Yorker, they publicly congratulated me on my Facebook page.
I had someone ask me recently if I could connect them with someone through an email introduction, and I was like, No, I can’t. Then I thought about it later and I was like, this is ridiculous – you need to be just as open or more so because you know what that’s like! So I think it’s really important to just step-up on things like that. I’ve had too many situations where women have treated me how I would have expected a male art director or a male art institute to treat me, and it’s beyond frustrating. It’s like, there’s enough good to go around – let’s not get tight-lipped on each other about this stuff and let’s actually help each other out!
That’s one of the things I’ve definitely been more conscious of. Also, holding myself accountable to make sure the projects I do have equal access and opportunity. For example, I was asked recently to do art for a fundraising campaign, and when I asked them about the ultimate goal of the project and how they were going to get low income people to come upstate, it was something they hadn’t even considered. So now before I engage with projects I consider and check into the civil long-term effect first.
● I think one of the hardest things women struggle with is balancing our work life and personal life. As the primary earner for your household and mother of two, what tips can you share with other women who are struggling to find balance?
I’m definitely still a work in progress in that area! There are some months where I feel like I’m doing everything in balance … but then I’ll take a couple weeks off and won’t work out, or drink enough water, or things like that. It’s been a big adjustment for me this year to become a public person, to have my art along with criticism or praise out in public like that - I’m used to being more of a hermit and just doing my own thing. It’s been really important for me to find moments to get back to myself, and remember who I am and my goals.
In the early days, I was in full-time mom mode. My husband would leave before the kids woke up, and come home at dinner, so I would make the lunches and get the kids to school, and try to fit my own work in while they were at preschool. After I picked them up, I would try to squeeze in another hour or two before dinner. A lot of times, I would work at night and quickly realized it was better for me to sketch at night and paint during the day. So I would make all these sketches at night, and then during the day when the light was better and I was more awake I would paint all those sketches. And I still do that. I’m working on my 2019 calendar now and I still sketch them all out at night and paint during the day. It’s definitely a bit easier now that my kids are older – they’re 5 and 7 now – which is still pretty little, but we’re getting out of the trickier age, now it’s more about emotional support.
This year I started meditating as well and that has helped a lot. I grew up a little religious, but I don’t consider myself that religious anymore. However, I knew that I needed a spiritual practice because I was missing that in my life. In this last year everything has accelerated so quickly, and a lot of stress came with that, and with being the family’s primary income source, I knew I needed something to help me relax. I use an App called Insight Timer, it’s all about meditating and creating a daily practice. It also helps me understand the amount of time I use and how I spend it each day. And for the times I can’t settle down at night, I use it to help me fall asleep.
I’ve also been using something I mentioned earlier called the SELF Journal that’s really helped me with time management. The premise is to help you create better habits and it’s set-up in three month periods, so you write your goals for three months and then you break it down by week, and then break each week down by day. It gets really specific, so I need to have a good 10 to 15 minutes dedicated to it in the morning. That plus meditating in the morning has been really helpful. Of course I don’t consistently do either of those things, but I definitely try to as often as possible!
My therapist has helped me a lot as well. I’ve been going to therapy for about three years, which has been great, and one of the things my therapist and I often talk about is daily habits. The idea of daily habits can feel overwhelming to me, like there’s SO many things I need to be doing every day, but she reminds me that it’s just about starting with one. Whether that is meditating or working out, start with one and then over time, after a month or so, add a second one.
For instance, I used to really hate working out – it didn’t help that I’d reasoned that in order to work out I’d have to get up at 5am, and for me that was too extreme, it was never going to happen. But luckily I work from home, so I was able to re-assess and say, okay, at like 10:30 in the morning I’ll take a break and I’ll just work out for 20 minutes or so. Giving myself that little moment of 20 minutes doesn’t feel like a huge time commitment, so it makes it more doable for me. It also helps me justify the mental aspect of taking away time from my family. So for me, the 20 minute goal is really helpful because I can fit it in whenever and it makes it more doable.
● Yes, I think that’s what women need to hear – that every little bit helps. Whether it’s a half hour of painting, or 20 minutes of exercise, or 10 minutes of meditation, they all add up and it’s worth it.
Yes, and I think that self-care can also feel like a little treat for ourselves instead of an obligation. Once you start to show up for yourself, you realize you have a tool that does make you feel better. I know those moments help me to not feel as bogged down or easily depressed about a work rejection or something like that.
● Who are some of the women who have inspired you in your own life and what are your thoughts on the importance of having these kind of inspirational figures or role models to look up to?
There’s a lot! I have a little bit of a mushy brain sometimes when it comes to names, but I will say that I recently watched a show about the Bronte Sisters on BBC and I also just watched the Hidden Figures movie, and all those women are incredibly inspiring. The interesting thing is that even though they take place maybe 100 years apart, there’s still many similarities in the struggles they faced. It does feel encouraging comparing that to today, that so much progress has been made. Of course there’s still a lot of work to do, but just seeing those success stories and how they paved the way for the rest of us is really encouraging.
Watching those women was like a career pep talk for me, to know that whatever setbacks we’re facing right now as women, what we do today is going to help the future, just like what they did has helped us. And that’s really encouraging, just thinking about the bigger picture and doing it for the greater good.
SUPPORT: TO LEARN MORE AND PURCHASE ARTWORK CHECK OUT ABIGAIL'S WEBSITE HERE. TO GET INVOLVED WITH THE CITY OF HIDDEN FIGURES MOVEMENT IN YOUR TOWN CLICK HERE. STAY INSPIRED: FOLLOW ABIGAIL ON INSTAGRAM TO STAY INSPIRED!
Well, even after other people perceive that you’ve “made it,” you never really get rid of that feeling of doubt, you’re never totally carefree. For me, it feels like a long time coming, but then not at the same time. I worked freelance for so long and then suddenly I got the cover of The New Yorker and it went viral so quickly, and I realized that now was the time to capitalize on that success and to build. The year after The New Yorker was really great with that momentum, but also not easy.
I needed extra help, so instead of hiring an assistant and a babysitter, my husband came to work for me. It allows us to work together as a family and also spend more time together when there are slow days. That’s been really great – I’ve been able to do a lot more and have been able to say yes to a lot more things. But in all honesty, it’s still very stressful and I’m realizing it takes a real leap of faith to even make these decisions. It’s hard to say, “Oh cool, I made that really difficult decision, now it’s going to be fine!” ... It’s like almost every day, some more than others, you have to recommit to that decision. That’s the trickier part.
But there are great resources out there now. I think that’s always been the separation between my generation and my mom’s generation. She’s always felt that my being an artist isn’t really the best decision. About a month before I got the cover of The New Yorker she was asking me when I was going to get a real job. I was like, “Well this is a real job, it’s just not consistent right now.” I basically had two jobs: full time mom and then artist. Once I had help in the parenting department, I was able to make more strides in the other.
I’ve been trying to explain to my mom how the internet and especially Instagram have allowed people to reach a much broader audience than was possible before. I definitely had a boost myself after The New Yorker cover because I had a HuffPost review on it that went viral, and consequently I sold more in two weeks through my online shop then I had the year before. It wasn’t a huge accomplishment, but it showed me that if I’m smart about it, maybe I can repeat that every quarter or something.
There really are so many more resources available today to help guide you on this career path as well. I always share with people the book by Lisa Congdon, Art Inc.: The Essential Guide for Building Your Career as an Artist. That book is really great. She also teaches online classes and lots of other folks teach too, so there are ways to do it. I think the biggest thing is to diversify your career as an artist, that’s what I’m working on. The only problem is that when I’m doing four different things at once it feels like it’s going a bit slower, but then when something gets quiet I have something else going on.
● I think a lot of people can relate to what you’re saying with your parents, or really any member of your family or friends, looking at you like you’re crazy when you choose an unusual, and maybe in their eyes “unstable,” career path. Where did you find the inner courage to move forward anyways? Was it a case of, “I just know this is my thing?” Or was it more about proving them wrong?
Probably a little of both. It was definitely hard in the beginning. After my daughter was born, my husband and I moved back to the Delaware area to have some help from my parents. My husband was going to medical school and my mom was like, “Look, I’ll watch your daughter, but I’ll only watch her if you go get a job as a bank teller or bag groceries or something. I’m not going to watch her if you just putter about on Etsy all day.” I had my MFA at that point, so I was just like, Okay, well?? That’s just sort of the general dynamic with my parents, we just view life totally differently and so I have to find a way we can meet in the middle.
I also acknowledge that I’ve been privileged in a lot of ways, I was able to go to grad school, I didn’t have student debt to worry about. So I think some of it is definitely self-reflected to make me work harder, but I was also the kind of kid who that came naturally to – growing up I would sweep the barn while everyone else was playing around. I’ve always been a really hard worker.
Motherhood has taught me a lot too, especially about time management. I’ve really had to make the effort to carve out time for myself, whether that’s self-care or actually painting and getting work done. That has really influenced my career path in that I’ve been able to get a lot more done than I ever would have before kids. So I think both the motherhood journey and the challenge of proving my parents wrong has kept me motivated!
● I read an interview about how happy and surprised you were when you landed your artwork on the cover of The New Yorker, particularly as this had been a personal goal that you had written down in your 3 to 5-year career plan. It made me think of the movie The Secret, with the idea being that our visualizations have the power to create our reality. Do you think that this kind of goal setting has some real magic in it, or for you is it more about making a plan and working towards that logistically?
Well, my motivation for that plan came from Lisa Congdon. After her book Art, Inc. came out she followed it with an online continuum course, and part of it was writing a 3 to 5-year plan. It’s actually really funny you asked me this, because it’s right here in front of me now – I actually just found it in my drawer! She had us draw a circle in the middle and write our names in it and then draw all these rays coming out of the circle and label what those were. I did this back when my youngest was a baby - he’s now five - so some of it was just related to being in the throes of having really young kids and goals in that area. But for the work goals, it’s fun to see what I’ve accomplished, things like art as primary income, the cover of The New Yorker, selling prints on Etsy. I think it might be time to come up with some new ones!
I also think it’s about accountability. I listen to a lot of podcasts and there are a lot of really good ones out there for creatives. They often talk about working backwards, coming up with your big goal – whether it’s a yearly goal or something longer – and writing down when you want to accomplish it. For example, you might say that by the end of 2019 you want to have a book proposal. Then you work backwards and break it down into bigger goals and then into smaller goals and then into even smaller goals from there, and you keep yourself accountable to reach those goals. That’s sort-of how the SELF Journal works, something else I use that was written by entrepreneurs. I also like the advice someone once gave me to ask yourself what you want to say you’ve dealt with by the end of the year. That’s not so black and white, but it’s a bit more fun I think.
I think it’s also just a matter of keeping your senses open and aware to opportunities. Like when I decided The New Yorker was on my goal list, I started following Francoise Mouly (Art Editor of The New Yorker) on Facebook. She posted something about needing artwork for her Resist! Publication, and I submitted and got a portrait in that. And then this idea came to me (for the cover of The New Yorker) and I just followed it and decided to email her, and I thought maybe she’d remember the previous artwork I did. So, I referenced it by writing, “I’m the one who did the Rosa Parks portrait for Resist!, here’s my idea for a Women’s March cover.” I really wasn’t expecting much, I didn’t even think she’d write back, but I figured it was worth a shot. And obviously it paid off!
However, now it’s been really hard to get a second cover. I’ve heard through the grapevine from other artists that they’ve had similar experiences – they’ll get a cover and then it will be four years later until they get another one. I’d like to become more of a cover artist, I don’t know if that’s even possible, but it’s a good challenge.
I do think truly it is a little of both logic and magic though, and I think maybe I need to get back to a little more of the magical side right now. I’m in a bit of a career rut at the moment, things that I had planned on wrapping up by the first quarter of the year just haven’t happened for whatever reason and some unexpected things have come up that I’ve chosen to do instead. I was actually just joking to my husband the other day that I need some kind of career sage or crystals or something to get out of this funk! So, I don’t know what the answer is yet, but most of the time I’m prone to just keep working. As Lisa Congdon says, the natural law of the universe is the more work you do, the more work you get!
● How do you strike a balance between following a plan and a certain vision while also staying open to unexpected opportunities or detours that come up along the way? How do you navigate the fine line between having a plan versus limiting yourself by trying to stick to it too closely?
I think as you go along you learn what’s worked and what hasn’t. It’s like anything in life where you think, I’m not making that mistake again! You start to see red flags and then you start to see patterns, so you know when to stop. Although it’s not always clear. A lot has happened this year where I’m sort of like, Ehh, did I make the best decision there? It means that sometimes stuff gets put on hold and then you wonder later if you should have sacrificed that thing in order to move the other thing forward. For example, I’m trying to do children’s books, so my agent helped me get some meetings set up with a few publishers in New York last March. I went down and met with a group of publishers, showed them my portfolio, got feedback, etc. But the preparation and time for that trip put the fundraising I wanted to do for my mural on hold. Then in April, I was invited out to the United State of Women Summit, which I was very excited about and wanted to do, but at the same time I had to put off four other things to do it. And then you come home and have to catch up on everything.
Right now, I feel like I’m in a weird holding pattern, like … Okay, once I finally get my children’s book published then I’ll get more opportunities to do more children’s books, and once I finally get this mural done then more opportunities will open up to do other murals … It’s just getting all those first things done that feels a bit daunting. So at night when I start to feel like maybe I need to breathe into a brown paper bag, I try to remind myself, No, no, it’ll work!
● As an Artist Activist I’d like to know more about when and how those two worlds merged for you. Have you always used your art as a platform for social justice? If not, what caused you to lean in that direction?
I’ve always been involved with things like volunteering and community service since high school, but I don’t feel like I was really woken up until college. I had a sort of typical sheltered white upbringing. In college, we took a field trip to Nashville and that’s when I got to see for the first time what you would call environmental racism. I saw how the power plants and other air and water pollution-generating sites were mainly put in minority neighborhoods. It was experiences like that that started to wake me up. I was also involved with Amnesty International in college and would do art for different groups on campus.
After college I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and took a year of studio classes before getting my MFA. I took a printmaking class and did a series of prints after Hurricane Katrina, and then a series about the Iraq war. The series featured [Dick] Cheney juxtaposed with a silk screen of all the soldiers that had died in the war. It ended up winning an award, a student-voted award with the qualification being that it had to be a political active/social conscious piece of art.
So that sort of stuff has always been there. Then when I got married, my art took a little bit of a backseat … it was like Oh gosh, got to pay the bills! But then as my daughter got a little older, I got back into it and that’s when I started the notable women series. At first it was just a way to keep myself accountable on Instagram. Then it also became a way for me to brush up on my watercolor skills. I really loved and preferred oils, but due to time constraints and usually where I was working, I knew I needed something that would dry faster.
So, I just kind of gave myself the challenge to become more familiar and a little bit better with watercolor, while also getting better at portraits and sharing about these women. I gave it the hashtag #graydaystudiowomenwednesday and started doing at least one portrait a week of a notable woman. Sometimes they were less known women with a quote, and I would do a giveaway of the portrait. Then, slowly it dawned on me … Oh wow! I could probably sell prints of these! It then became more of a series and that’s how I got work with Lenny Letter, because they needed portraits of people.
● Can you talk more about how all this lead up to your new initiative with City of Hidden Figures and how you are using your art to affect social change?
The inspiration for City of Hidden Figures came from reading a Rebecca Solnit article where she talks about how every subway stop in New York is named after a man and what would it be like to have those be women. Then I talked to my cousin about it, who’s English, and she was saying that in London there’s more statues named John – not George, not any other male names, JUST JOHN – than all the other female statues put together! So I started collecting some of those articles and created the City of Hidden Figures website. It all stemmed from thinking about how I could make an impact in this area with public art. The idea is to have communities nominate local “hidden figures,” meaning women who aren’t well-known but should be, and then have them featured in either a mural or a statue, or even by renaming a street. The figure doesn’t necessarily have to be someone unknown, it could also be a well-known woman that’s hasn’t really been celebrated yet in a public way.
The emphasis is also on giving female-identifying artists the same opportunities as male artists to make public art in and around town – and to give more of a voice to unheard artists as well, so that it’s not just all these white women painting them. Pay equity is another huge focus of this project, to make sure the artists get paid fairly and to give them opportunities as well. Right now I’m working with a bunch of other work groups in Maine to figure this out. We’re looking at designating a local wall where we can give artists the opportunity to paint the wall and then every following year a new artist gets to paint the wall. They’ll get paid for it and it’s a portfolio builder as well. Then when they apply to other public art programs that are outside the state, they’ll have material in their portfolio that shows that they did something local. That’s really where I’m at myself right now – I want to do murals, but I don’t have anything of note to show for it yet, so I’m creating this opportunity for myself while also trying to bring everyone along with me.
I pitched City of Hidden Figures to Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls and they were going to help me launch it last fall at the United State Of Women Summit, but then it got pushed back a couple months, and then they went quiet on me, and when I finally managed to hunt them down they told me that they didn’t have the man hours they thought they did. But they still want to help how they can, they’ve offered to make a video after my mural is done and give me some space on their website. I also got to do some advertising for it at the United State of Women Summit - when the event organizers asked me to sell my posters, I requested additional space for City of Hidden Figures and they gave it to me, which was great.
Right now I’m working on the fundraising piece for the first mural wall, which will be in Portland, Maine. It’s going to be on the side of a building called Running with Scissors, which is a collective of a bunch of artist’s studios with a little gallery inside. The mural is going to feature three female artists from Maine. I’m working on that now, and then in March the plan is to do five sister cities – maybe either on International Women’s Day or just to celebrate Women’s Month for the whole of March. That’s one of the next pieces I’m working on now, contacting cities. But we’re also going to need more of a public open call – there’s already one on the website – where we’re asking cities to come forward to nominate themselves, and then we’ll help them find the funding and work to figure out who their hidden figures will be.
I’m also trying to figure out the legal side of things by talking to a lawyer about turning my own business into an LLC and then maybe turning City of Hidden Figures into a non-profit so that people can have a tax write-off when they give donations. As well, I’m trying to figure out who can be a fiscal sponsor for City of Hidden Figures. So there’s a lot of that kind of stuff, just really learning as I go!
● What has been your experience in how this type of work relates to personal happiness? Do you feel a greater sense of fulfillment because your work is positively impacting society?
Yes, that piece of the equation is really nice and that’s the piece my husband has to remind me about when I’m worried about money or things like that! We recently met a woman at the United State of Women Summit who was so excited to meet me. She had just written a college paper on me. That felt pretty wild but also really, really nice too!
I really think it’s important as women that we support one another and hold ourselves to a higher bar for treating each other better. There’s this subtle code within the patriarchal system where you don’t help others. Before my New Yorker cover, I reached out to male artists to ask if they could give me any advice on writing a children’s book, if there was an agent I needed to know or any tips they could recommend, and they never got back to me. I understand that people are busy, I’m not perfect either. But it’s a small town here and it’s happened several times. And then when I got the cover of The New Yorker, they publicly congratulated me on my Facebook page.
I had someone ask me recently if I could connect them with someone through an email introduction, and I was like, No, I can’t. Then I thought about it later and I was like, this is ridiculous – you need to be just as open or more so because you know what that’s like! So I think it’s really important to just step-up on things like that. I’ve had too many situations where women have treated me how I would have expected a male art director or a male art institute to treat me, and it’s beyond frustrating. It’s like, there’s enough good to go around – let’s not get tight-lipped on each other about this stuff and let’s actually help each other out!
That’s one of the things I’ve definitely been more conscious of. Also, holding myself accountable to make sure the projects I do have equal access and opportunity. For example, I was asked recently to do art for a fundraising campaign, and when I asked them about the ultimate goal of the project and how they were going to get low income people to come upstate, it was something they hadn’t even considered. So now before I engage with projects I consider and check into the civil long-term effect first.
● I think one of the hardest things women struggle with is balancing our work life and personal life. As the primary earner for your household and mother of two, what tips can you share with other women who are struggling to find balance?
I’m definitely still a work in progress in that area! There are some months where I feel like I’m doing everything in balance … but then I’ll take a couple weeks off and won’t work out, or drink enough water, or things like that. It’s been a big adjustment for me this year to become a public person, to have my art along with criticism or praise out in public like that - I’m used to being more of a hermit and just doing my own thing. It’s been really important for me to find moments to get back to myself, and remember who I am and my goals.
In the early days, I was in full-time mom mode. My husband would leave before the kids woke up, and come home at dinner, so I would make the lunches and get the kids to school, and try to fit my own work in while they were at preschool. After I picked them up, I would try to squeeze in another hour or two before dinner. A lot of times, I would work at night and quickly realized it was better for me to sketch at night and paint during the day. So I would make all these sketches at night, and then during the day when the light was better and I was more awake I would paint all those sketches. And I still do that. I’m working on my 2019 calendar now and I still sketch them all out at night and paint during the day. It’s definitely a bit easier now that my kids are older – they’re 5 and 7 now – which is still pretty little, but we’re getting out of the trickier age, now it’s more about emotional support.
This year I started meditating as well and that has helped a lot. I grew up a little religious, but I don’t consider myself that religious anymore. However, I knew that I needed a spiritual practice because I was missing that in my life. In this last year everything has accelerated so quickly, and a lot of stress came with that, and with being the family’s primary income source, I knew I needed something to help me relax. I use an App called Insight Timer, it’s all about meditating and creating a daily practice. It also helps me understand the amount of time I use and how I spend it each day. And for the times I can’t settle down at night, I use it to help me fall asleep.
I’ve also been using something I mentioned earlier called the SELF Journal that’s really helped me with time management. The premise is to help you create better habits and it’s set-up in three month periods, so you write your goals for three months and then you break it down by week, and then break each week down by day. It gets really specific, so I need to have a good 10 to 15 minutes dedicated to it in the morning. That plus meditating in the morning has been really helpful. Of course I don’t consistently do either of those things, but I definitely try to as often as possible!
My therapist has helped me a lot as well. I’ve been going to therapy for about three years, which has been great, and one of the things my therapist and I often talk about is daily habits. The idea of daily habits can feel overwhelming to me, like there’s SO many things I need to be doing every day, but she reminds me that it’s just about starting with one. Whether that is meditating or working out, start with one and then over time, after a month or so, add a second one.
For instance, I used to really hate working out – it didn’t help that I’d reasoned that in order to work out I’d have to get up at 5am, and for me that was too extreme, it was never going to happen. But luckily I work from home, so I was able to re-assess and say, okay, at like 10:30 in the morning I’ll take a break and I’ll just work out for 20 minutes or so. Giving myself that little moment of 20 minutes doesn’t feel like a huge time commitment, so it makes it more doable for me. It also helps me justify the mental aspect of taking away time from my family. So for me, the 20 minute goal is really helpful because I can fit it in whenever and it makes it more doable.
● Yes, I think that’s what women need to hear – that every little bit helps. Whether it’s a half hour of painting, or 20 minutes of exercise, or 10 minutes of meditation, they all add up and it’s worth it.
Yes, and I think that self-care can also feel like a little treat for ourselves instead of an obligation. Once you start to show up for yourself, you realize you have a tool that does make you feel better. I know those moments help me to not feel as bogged down or easily depressed about a work rejection or something like that.
● Who are some of the women who have inspired you in your own life and what are your thoughts on the importance of having these kind of inspirational figures or role models to look up to?
There’s a lot! I have a little bit of a mushy brain sometimes when it comes to names, but I will say that I recently watched a show about the Bronte Sisters on BBC and I also just watched the Hidden Figures movie, and all those women are incredibly inspiring. The interesting thing is that even though they take place maybe 100 years apart, there’s still many similarities in the struggles they faced. It does feel encouraging comparing that to today, that so much progress has been made. Of course there’s still a lot of work to do, but just seeing those success stories and how they paved the way for the rest of us is really encouraging.
Watching those women was like a career pep talk for me, to know that whatever setbacks we’re facing right now as women, what we do today is going to help the future, just like what they did has helped us. And that’s really encouraging, just thinking about the bigger picture and doing it for the greater good.
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