Vol. 1, No. 13: The Mother Lode
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Dear Soft Labor,
I am an artist. About a decade ago, I won a significant award—one that has helped launch and foster the careers of many in my thimble of a world. Shortly thereafter, I became a solo parent in a sudden way. I don't resent my circumstances at all—in fact, I feel very fortunate—but I do still think about that moment in my professional life and wonder if it was an apex of sorts.
Time has marched forward and my child has gained independence; I have slowly and privately begun making work again. As I feel long-dormant aspects of my selfhood re-emerge, I realize that they were never gone to begin with. The ideas are there, as are the skills, the mindset, and the tenacity to bring them to light.
And yet, I am re-orienting myself in a city—yes, I’m talking about New York—that has shifted since the years when my career felt so ascendant and my own self, so invincible. Moreover, I’m struggling to care about certain aspects of the art world that once felt crucially important to me. These feelings become exceptionally difficult to manage when I see my own cohort, some of whom have seemingly forgotten about me altogether, racking up awards and grant money—accolades that tend to follow one another at a fast clip.
How do I maintain my composure and regain visibility after so many seemingly-stagnant years while remaining true to my (changed) self and my new work?
From the living room-slash-studio,
The Mother Lode
Dear Mother,
Welcome back.
Sometimes our life circumstances shift so suddenly as to cause a cognitive whiplash of sorts. Our first piece of advice: Go easy on yourself. It’s been a long road, we trust.
“I am an artist,” you say, which demonstrates that yours isn’t a crisis of confidence. You know who you are, Mother, and no major life event can shake your sense of identity.
We do, however, sense a hint of resentment in your comparison of your own career to those of others. New York City makes notoriously brutal professional demands on people in general and particularly on the already-precarious creative class. Nothing feels like it’s good enough and everything feels like it’s moving at once too fast and too slowly—one can easily feel as though they’ve tumbled out of time and out of place. As you’ve likely gleaned from recent experience, your real people have already revealed themselves to you and the rest don’t matter at all. It’s funny how folks fall away.
What, then, about time? We’re going to bypass continental philosophy here—too much!—and skip to a casual aphorism about parenting that goes something like this: “The days go by so slowly and the years, so fast.” Just as a child seemingly reaches adulthood too suddenly, you, Mother, have been growing all along. Perhaps you’ve finally arrived, after all? Arrived, yet again? Yes.
As for visibility, well, hustle culture hasn’t died its rightful death yet, unfortunately. The difference between your former and current self is that you now understand what patience is and what priorities are—what’s worth your investment and what isn’t. Strategy is planning for the unexpected in unpredictable circumstances. You’ve been here already.
Keep the faith.
Yours,
Soft Labor
Search Results
“Search Results” points toward Soft Labor’s ongoing research interests.
🔗 Follow Soft Labor’s ever-evolving and highly visual research channel on are.na.
🔗 California College of the Arts's Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts just announced a year-long research series of expansive, experimental exhibitions and public programs with a focus on labor, LABOR is on our mind: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of what you will. CCA is our graduate alma mater, we love the Wattis, and though we wish that we could snap back to San Francisco for this one, we'll follow it from afar.
🔗 "It feels like I'm just trying to make my robots to talk to their robots." The Cut's Sarah Thankam Mathews writes about the sense of humiliation that AI-enabled job searching now confers.
🔗 In honor of Ruth Asawa's retrospective opening at the Museum of Modern Art this week, we revisited Hyperallergic writer Christian Clifford’s review of Jordan Troeller’s book on Asawa’s Bay Area artist-mother community. Motherhood-as-medium! It's a thing.
🔗 Mother, give Lauren O’Neill-Butler’s essay on Alice Neel, “Futility of Effort: Alice Neel and Motherhood, 1930–46” a read. It was published back in 2021 in Broadcast, the publication produced by Pioneer Works. O’Neill-Butler writes: “Of her choice in men, Neel once remarked to an audience in St. Louis in 1976: ‘When I picked men, I picked them the way rich businessmen pick ladies. I picked ones who are beautiful. One reason I liked far out people is that boring childhood in that small town. You know, people think I’m a bohemian, just jumping from one thing to another, but I went through hell each time’ And then she offered one of the greatest artist statements of all time: ‘I have so much history. If I didn’t unload it, I wouldn’t have any present.’” O'Neill-Butler's new book, The War of Art: A History of Artists' Protest in America, was recently published by Verso.
🔗 One of our greatest comrades recently gifted us a truly incredible book, Mother Myths: An ABC of Art, Birth and Care, edited by Laurie Cluitmans & Heske ten Cate and published by Valiz with a slew of contributors including the editors, bell hooks, Camille Henrot, and many others. It’s a gorgeous, full-color physical specimen that seeks to “unravel clichés, stigmas, and myths, through the lens of art, and a transhistorical and intersectional perspective.” The same pal also once gave us the (totally related) Milkyways, again by the great Camille Henrot.
🔗 During recent travels, we picked up a copy of Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Women and Design, Cheryl Buckely's 1986 design essay, republished by Bikini Books and Club do Livro do Design in 2025 alongside her 2020 revisitation "Made in Patriarchy II: Researching (or Re-Searching) Women and Design." A subversive little book.
Dress Code
“Dress Code” spotlights workplace looks of all forms and kinds.
