A family that makes art together...
how to create conditions for a culture of creativity in your family's home
I’ve got a new piece on non-nuclear housing up over at Greater Good Science Center—check it out!
This post, and seeing Ruth Asawa’s work this last weekend at SFMOMA (I’m about to dig into a biography on her! Join me?), makes me think a lot about what it takes to support an artist who is also a mother—namely, a village! Namely, you! Thank you for supporting this space for so many years by subscribing, sharing Examined Family with friends and loved ones, commenting, and especially, by becoming a paid subscriber. Your contributions—insights, feedback, and financial investment—mean so much to me and my ability to continue to write while raising kids and caring for elders.
One of my friends—a recovering hard-driving activist lawyer superstar—has been pursuing a quieter, more art-filled life for the last couple of years. She’s also a mother to a tenaciously curious and emotional boy. She has asked me, over and over, how it is that I weave art-making into my life, and the lives of my kids, so organically.
I’m touched by her inquiry—until she pointed out how much she admired this aspect of my life and my parenting, I actually didn’t give much thought to it. The girls and I make art together because that is how I know how to be a person in the world, like breathing. But the more I’ve thought about her question, the more I’ve realized that it does require some intentionality.
Make a little family studio, no matter how small.
In our 1,000 square foot home, the kitchen table was also the art studio. It wasn’t always super convenient, but it was what we had to work with. I would cover it with newspaper in between meals and we would go to town. The nice thing about the limited spaces was that we really had to clean up after ourselves. Now we have a lot more space and a whole office/studio space, and it is heaven, but it’s also a messy heaven. Sometimes I miss the multi-purpose table. Eating where you splatter paint has its upsides.
This is Bay Area artist Ruth Asawa’s living room, where she made art and raised six kids. I was so inspired by the way in which this image was not only featured, but the feeling of the living room was recreated, in the retrospective of Asawa’s art at SFMOMA.
I guess the point is this: if you want your kids to make art, you have to make art around your kids—not have, or at least not only have, a separate studio.
Have supplies on hand.
This might be insanely obvious, but you have to have supplies on hand to make art so that the second the muse visits or you get a snow day, you’re ready to put pen or paint or whatever to paper. If you have to hold on to an idea until you can get to an art store to get the paint, you simply won’t, and neither will your mile-a-minute kids.
Ruth Asawa drew and painted ordinary things a lot, because that’s what she had on hand and she liked the idea of making people see them with new eyes. I do that, too. I think it’s the great constraint and freedom of family life—that there are beautiful things everywhere—fruit and flowers and children’s faces and all kinds of detritus—and any of it can become a piece if you just go for it. Asawa said, “An artist is not special. An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.”
I often draw and paint flowers that I’ve picked in our yard, or that people give me. I also press flowers. Sometimes I get inspired by something—like the teenage deer that’s been hanging out near our house recently—and then look up an image online to draw from that or take one myself. I gave this guy to my mom for Mother’s Day.
Depending on the age of your kids, you can all do different things. Maya, my 11-year-old, and I have been parallel playing at a table for a decade now, so she will often just ask, “Hey Mom, want to make art?” and this means that we will both be making what we want to make and listening to Taylor Swift music for about an hour.
When my kids were younger, we did all kinds of random things—painted rocks, arranged things in old egg cartons, made sock puppets. Our origami collage phase got us through a lot of the pandemic, as did our drawing scenes from movies we’d watched together. Kids give you plenty of material and lots of inspiration; make sure you’ve got some supplies on hand to meet the moment.
Let go of perfection or completion.
Family life is chaotic. You and your kids might start a project and then someone will come ring the doorbell and next thing you know, your kid is at the neighbor’s house meeting the new chicken and you have to make rice for Mexican bowl night, and now the art will be half-finished. No matter. It’s the making that creates the culture of art in your family, not the finishing.
This isn’t an easy thing for me—a Capricorn who loves two feet on the ground and all the projects wrapped up long before deadline—so I consider it a spiritual practice these days. Maya is also starting to work on projects over time, which I find very satisfying to witness and support.
The best thing is that kids are usually pretty good at modeling for us adults what it looks like to make art with less ego attachment. If you haven’t considered yourself an artist, now’s the time to let your kids lead. They are closer to their native knowing about noticing, making, and letting go. It doesn’t matter if your art is good. It’s fun if it gets better over time, but the point is really to reconnect with the physical world, to slow down, to play together. Or as my friend
reminds us all, to look differently, because “Looking is loving.”Appreciate the power of art.
Go to museums. Give your kid your phone so they can take pictures of their favorite stuff. Flip through art books—either at your own home (it’s so silly how those of us who own art books never look at them, right?) and/or go to libraries and do so. Read about artists or listen to podcasts that teach you about artists’ lives. Read artists’ biographies (Sally Mann’s is a delight, for adults, and Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos is a perfect book for kids).
’s DrawTogether is amazing for kids and her GUT (Grown-Ups Table) is like part art history class, part workshop, but actually fun.
This is about more than just being inspired, though of course there’s that. This is also about understanding and honoring the role of the artist in our society, and at a time like this, that is a radical and necessary exploration. What have artists in other times of political and environmental crises made that shook the world awake? How might you and your kids play some small role in shaking someone awake now with your art? Or are there local artists you want to support or collaborate with?
And this brings me to the most important thing: the goal of creating a family culture where you make art is not to influence your children to become famous artists. Far from it. The goal of creating a family culture where you make art is to help your kids develop the muscle to create, not just consume, to see and love the world, to open the portal to the sacred mystery of inspiration and see what weird beauty emerges, to take risks that sometimes work out and sometimes don’t, to problem solve, to develop their own aesthetic taste, to play and make and give them an outlet for their feelings. In a world that is ever more consumeristic, algorithmic, and artificial, creating a family culture of making, surprising ourselves and each other, and getting messy seems life-saving. Or as Asawa put it, “Art is doing. Art deals directly with life.”
So tell me, what about you? How have you created a culture of art making in your family?
In my experience, the most powerful result of me turning my entire home into one big workshop and my entire family developing into artist/makers is that is makes is possible for my family to understand (and practice) that we create the world. We are art-ing and making our way into the world we want. This feeling of ownership in the creation of the world starts at home and extends ever outward. It has NOTHING to do with being a professional, paid artist, and everything to do with having a mindset in the larger world of being actively participating and making and interacting as a way of creation.
Love this love Ruth love you