The Aguilar Family on Open Engagement 2014, Part I

Open Engagement is an annual conference exploring diverse perspectives in social practice. This year's theme was Life/Work, with keynote speeches by amazing artist-mothers Mierle Laderman Ukeles and J. Morgan Puett. The conference also featured Human Hotel, an evolving project by the Danish group Wooloo, providing free housing and on-site childcare for conference attendees traveling with families. Needless to say we wanted to include a full report on Cultural ReProducers. We got a great one thanks to the incredible Aguilar family, who between the six of them managed to participate in just about every aspect of the conference, from child care and housing to a group performance and conversation for the conference itself. We’re presenting their review in two parts. Here, Part I:

On the steps of the Louis Armstrong House Museum,
Queens, New York.

Joaquin Aguilar, 10

New York was the best trip ever. When we first came to New York City I was so excited to see everything there. Especially the Louis Armstrong Museum. After seeing everything we stayed at a hotel in New Jersey. The next day we went to the house we were staying at. The two people that hosted us were married. Their names were Joel and Avi. After that we went to Queens, NY and saw the Louis Armstrong museum. And we went on a tour. I learned a lot that I needed for my part of the presentation. I finished writing my speech and the next day was the presentation. We got there early and went to the daycare. We had a lot of fun there. We played tag, four square, built a city and got a redwood tree so that we could plant them for the future. And then we had to give our family presentation. For the presentation my mom sat on the stage in the corner finger knitting. My dad did a one-minute song about the moment. Then my brother drove a remote control car with a white lunch box on top of it while my sister was talking about my dad’s photos. Then I did the speech about Louis Armstrong and played the trumpet. Next was my sister. She sang and played the banjo while I played the trumpet. That was the end of the conference. We still had more time to see New York. It was one of the best trips I ever took.


Isabella Aguilar, 12

Our family was invited to be part of a conference called Open Engagement in Queens, New York. Our family had to do a presentation about integrating family and art. I presented a power point, which I made on the timeline of my dad’s art. There was another project

Madeleine and Isabella discussing daycare polls with conference attendees

going on called Human Hotel. It was a project that provided homes for families that were part of the conference. Our human hotel family was Joel and Avi Koepel. They were wonderful hosts. At the Queens Museum there was a daycare, where my siblings and I stayed most of the time, and what we did at the daycare was play games, go outside, see a diorama of New York City, and we had a small picnic. At the end of the daycare we had this paper asking 1 question: how can you make the conference less boring. Many people gave in answers. My sister and I read these aloud to strangers and conference people and we would just talk about it with them. We had a great time in New York. We went and explored as much as we can. This was the most impactful and favored trip we ever took.


Sonia Aguilar (mother)

When Alberto first told me we were invited to present at the Queens Museum I wasn’t too excited. I didn’t understand what that was or what it meant. One thing I did know was that through the conference and an organization called Wooloo they were providing housing for all 6 of us during our stay in New York. It was a huge relief and I was amazed that they would do that. 



We arrived in New Brunswick, New Jersey late evening. I remember all of us being nervous to meet the strangers who graciously opened their home to us. When we pulled up we saw a man sitting on the front lawn awaiting our arrival. We all got out of the van to introduce ourselves and extended our hands to him -- and Joel said, “Give me a hug!” That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Avi gave us a warm welcome as soon as we walked into the house.

It was urgent that we visit the Louis Armstrong museum that also happened to be in Queens, just a few blocks away from the Queens Art Museum. Joaquin’s part of the presentation was reciting a biography on Louis Armstrong inspired by a recent project he did

Open Engagement Daycare organized by Wooloo. Each child was given a
redwood tree to take home and plant and imagine it in 3014.

for school. Joaquin was really excited to learn even more about Louis Armstrong’s life and influences. I think we all left the museum transformed and inspired. There were even times during the tour I wanted to cry. 




Saturday we arrived to the Queens museum early so we could meet Martin of Wooloo and set up for the workshops we were leading at the daycare. Martin was so nice; we all talked a little bit about what we were going to do and then started setting up and making things. I remember at one point he said “I love how your kids just work so well together.” It’s funny how I don’t even notice, I’m so used to them making stuff together all the time I’ve become immune to it — but I realized at that moment that I am truly amazed by them. We spent the entire morning at the daycare. There were very few kids (most of them were our kids) but we had a great time just creating with them. Martin had bought little Redwood trees, about 30 of them spread out in this beautiful space. We all went outside to eat our boxed lunches by the empty fountain in the back of the museum. We took our Redwood trees outside with us, too.



After lunch it was time to prepare for our presentation. We sort of had an idea of what we

Integrating Family Life and Art Making: Sonia finger knitting and Joaquin
playing trumpet as Louis Armstrong

were going to do, but nothing is ever certain and decisions are made as we’re going along. Paolo was the last one to figure out what his contribution to the presentation would be. He put one of the empty lunch boxes over his remote control car and drove it around the stage during the performance. That was perfect for him because he loves his remote control car. You couldn’t tell there was a car under the box so it was funny seeing everyone’s reaction to a moving lunch box. 



During the Q&A people responded so positively. One woman said she was almost moved to
tears by Joaquin’s speech on Louis Armstrong, another asked us how we managed to make it feel so incredibly fluid, and I realized the power of what we’d just made as a family. Our trip and experience overall was incredible. We met some amazing people and got to explore New York City. What I was most surprised by was how much our kids loved NYC. They didn’t want to leave. 


Read Part II

The Art of Not Leaving the House

The Day Sondra Bird Was Born, The
Cicada Sang, performed by Vicki Fowler
photo: Ryan Bach

The day before Mother’s Day 2014 Christa and I met up on Chicago’s Southside, in the Bridgeport neighborhood, to take a guided tour of the exhibition / salon Left the House. This invitation-only event was curated and organized by Vicki Fowler, and works by twenty four artists were presented in situ amongst the furniture, toys, pets, kitchen sink and shower curtains of the home that she shares with her partner and their infant daughter.

Christina Cosio's Sticky Rice
photo: Ryan Bach

Printed materials interspersed throughout the show, such as hand written letters or photocopied zines, were available to handle and viewers were encouraged to read them aloud. These pseudo–performative moments worked in contrast to the hospitality performances featuring mixed drinks on hand-written coasters (Trevor Martin) and sticky rice cooked up from a family recipe (Christina Cosio). Similarly, one might duck into a darkened office space and listen to an intensely raw audio recording by Anne-Marie Lindquist or step out onto the back porch and participate in Rebecca Parker’s graceful laundry-folding dance using sweet smelling, just-out-of-the-dryer bedsheets.

I Leave You In Good Hands, folding warm sheets
with Rebecca Parker. photo: Ryan Bach

With apartment galleries a perpetual hot topic in the city, it’s interesting to note that Fowler’s home functioned as one, going by the name Mutherland coincidentally, from 2007-2009. Although oftentimes apartment galleries end up mimicking the white cube of commercial galleries or contemporary art spaces, there was no such pretense here. It was interesting to experience an exhibition so deeply and unapologetically enmeshed within a domestic dwelling that also featured work that depicted or engaged with issues surrounding domesticity, the role of the

Kelli Connel's My Head
Under Her Shirt hung over
the sleeping baby's crib.
photo: Ryan Bach

caregiver, the agency of the child, and the grisly and euphoric mixture of emotions that embody parenthood.


Admittedly, some of the works on view were alienating in their specificity, while others blended so well with the pre-existing stuff of living that guides periodically leaned in to explain a piece we’d just walked by. Overall, the project’s premise was an extremely earnest one, and a profoundly intimate gesture of creative generosity. Left the House illustrated that you don’t have to miss much by being homebound if — as Fowler did — you bring the outside in.

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Thea Liberty Nichols is a curator and writer from Chicago.

Residency Report: TJinCHINA, Mexico

Corrie Slawson, Hecho en EUA/Made in USA

Residency Report is an ongoing series of posts from artists undertaking creative residencies with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience. 

Here writer Marc Lefkowitz writes about a residency program he undertook with his family at TJinCHINA, a cross-cultural program that got its start in Bejing and has found a new home base in Tijuana, Mexico.

I blog about sustainable urbanism for a living, and my wife Corrie Slawson, is a visual artist, and, with our three-and-half-year-old son, Ira, in tow, we participated in a creative residency at the TJinCHINA Project Space in Tijuana, Mexico this past March.

We had to confront prejudices about Tijuana before we even boarded the plane, formed mostly from people’s reactions when we told them where our family was going, and from what we read in blogs, travel books and the like. Many stoked fears of gang violence and ugly partying. If that Tijuana still exists, we never found it. We were inspired by Tijuana’s resiliency, its amazing food, light, and creative community. There’s a lot of creative capital in Tijuana, as in our own city - Cleveland - that tends to be undervalued by civic leaders and overshadowed by other concerns. Like many cities of the West, Tijuana was built around the needs of the car, so our walks in the main areas -- zonas Rio and Centro and our wonderful little neighborhood, Cacho -- became an important ‘minority report’ on how the city operates for the pedestrian, in particular, the family pushing a stroller.

TJinCHINA invited us to make work opening new borders. And we found plenty of moments where Cleveland and Tijuana are on or crossing similar “borders.” I found that our cities have in common small groups trying to deal creatively with the environmental damage of sprawl. For example, environmental groups are trying to reclaim rivers and restore the green space in the center. Tijuana native and Director of Woodbury University (San Diego) Graduate School of Architecture, Landscape + Urbanism, Rene Peralta, whom I interviewed, calls it “a set of green lungs” for the city. I wrote about this and other pioneers in “urban ecology,” like Oscar Romo, professor of urban planning at the University of California-San Diego and founder of Alter Terra, which is turning Tijuana’s trash problem into infrastructure like roads, walls, and stormwater containers.

Three weeks is a short deadline while juggling family life, trying to learn about the region,

making meaningful connections with other artists / urban planners and bringing a new energy related to our family life as working artists home with us. Without irony, I say being together 24/7 in one room pushed us together. And while it sounds like cramped quarters, it was a nice break from how we operate at home, where I report to an office and Corrie holds together a complex web of jobs, family ties and her own studio practice. The residency drove home how relatively easy it is for the parent who reports to an office every day (me) to schedule creative time, versus the daily struggle of the artist/parent who works from home and manages studio time along with part-time jobs and preschool carpools (Corrie). What a family residency provided was more life-work balance and more time of discovery together.

Corrie Slawson, proof wall

Since my work consists of interviews and field trips followed by creative time in front of the computer, I could count on writing time at night after Ira went to bed. Corrie found many ways of adapting her work to available materials, early on, she worked in the hotel room to render parts of drawings on the computer at night, prepping source material for her work in the studio the next day. Stroller trips to Office Max to make copies for paper lithography and the Comex (Mexico’s Sherwin Williams) store on the route down Boulevard Agua Caliente to purchase paint for her mixed media work meant that no moment was “wasted”.

On days when I had to write and Corrie was in the middle of a piece, we took turns walking Ira to a city park like Parque Teniente Guerrero, which had a big playground and an open mike area (where you could catch an abuelita singing or, if you’re lucky, a spine-tingling set from performance artist, El Muerto). Part of the experience was pushing ourselves to places that we might not otherwise have visited. It provided a window into another side of the city, namely what it offers families. For example, we got our day started walking and talking while Ira played at CECUT, Tijuana’s massive and free art, botanical garden, performance, kids activity complex. We appreciated it, but also grew to understand the need in Tijuana for more green space. It brought this into frame even before interviews, like my conversation with landscape designer Armando Ramos, who is fighting for a central park in Tijuana.

One of the greatest lessons learned from this experience was to see how adaptable our son is to new experiences. When we were moved to tears from the border fence ripping through the beach at Playas de Tijuana, Ira might have registered some of that but he also just enjoyed the crashing surf like the rest of the kids there. We also discovered how willing we are to support each other’s practice when the pressure is on. We gave ourselves license to go out at night a few times when we might not push ourselves in the same way at home. He would fall asleep in his

Border Fence w. Mely Barragan & Daniel Ruanova

stroller at restaurants where even the loudest norteña band and the best ceviche in the world couldn’t rouse him. Ira was really comfortable in the project space, and got to see a lot more of what mommy and daddy “do” in their work.

This sort of connection and cultural exchange is a rare gift, and we’re thankful to artists and project space founders Mely Barragan and Daniel Ruanova for their great efforts to make us feel welcome in their home and in their city, and for funding from the Mexican Government that made the residency possible. Corrie created an entirely new body of work in response to the city, and I wrote a series of articles based on interviews and research conducted over three weeks. Our work is currently in the exhibition “Urbanscape from a Bizarre Present” at the TJinCHINA Project Space, along with work by three other artists based in Baja and southern California.

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Writer Marc Lefkowitz merges reporting and activism with a focus on sustainable resource use, compact settlement patterns and low-carbon transportation as an equity issue. Marc is the editor of Green City Blue Lake at the Nonprofit Sustainability Center within the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He also works collaboratively with his wife, visual artist Corrie Slawson, who interweaves realism and abstraction to examine development patterns, population loss and land use. Her work is exhibited widely, including recent projects for the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the Rockford Art Museum, Galerie Module Drei in Dresden, Germany and TJinCHINA Project Space in Tijuana, Mexico.

Interview: Andrew Simonet

Andrew Simonet is a choreographer, a writer, and an advocate for artists based in Philadelphia. In 2006 he founded Artists U, a grassroots, artist-run platform for changing the working conditions of artists. We at CR were introduced to his work through the Artists Raising Kids project he recently initiated through Artists U, but Andrew is perhaps best known for his work from 1993 to 2013 as a founding co-director and choreographer of the award-winning Headlong Dance Theater with collaborators Amy Smith and David Brick. His projects include CELL, a performance journey for one audience member at a time guided by your cell phone, and This Town is a Mystery, performances by four Philadelphia households in their homes, followed by a potluck dinner. With Headlong, Andrew also helped found Dance Theater Camp, annual festival of workshops and collaboration for professional artists that is entirely artist-run and free for all participants, and the Headlong Performance Institute, a school for experimental performance with full college credit. As someone whose own work is so grounded in helping fellow artists identify and achieve their goals, he's got plenty to say on the topic of raising kids while sustaining a creative practice.

CR: Briefly describe your kids: ages, names, general temperaments…

Andrew: Jesse Tiger, 8, collector of unusual facts, inventor of trading card games, devoted reader. Nico Wolf, 6, keeper of our family traditions, sword fighter, tree climber.

Andrew + the boys (photo: Pierce Backes)

CR: You’ve just put together the crowd-sourced Artists Raising Kids Compendium through Artists U… so of course I have to ask one of the questions from that project: What are three things about raising kids you’d go back and tell yourself?

Andrew: “Slow down at the beginning, Andrew!” I did too much following the birth of our first (including starting Artists U). Having two little ones beautifully and ruthlessly made me simplify.

Be adventurous. Having an intensely colicky infant made us careful early on, maybe too careful. We were a bit more adventurous with the second, but overall too cautious, I think.

It’s ridiculously interesting and beautiful.

CR: Your wife is involved in the performing arts too. How do you two negotiate the demands of family versus rehearsal and performance schedules, and how has that changed as your kids have gotten older? 

Andrew: That was hardest in the early years. We used a ton of childcare. At first, it was

babysitters, and we have been blessed to have some remarkable, beautiful people as babysitters, which really helped. They were a big part of raising our kids, and their love and spiritual depth really affected us all.

performing in Headlong's You Are So Beautiful
(photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

There was a lot of trading off: one person gets home and the other can go work. My wife had started teaching at a college, so between us, we had a fair amount of flexibility (work that could be done at whatever time was available, time off, the ability to determine a large part of our schedules). And we would try to stagger the intensive production periods: I get busy opening a show and she steps more with the kids, then we switch. It takes a lot of

mercy and forgiveness and advocating for what you need. I leaned on things I learned from my collaboration:

- Constantly choose not to resent.

- If everyone feels they are doing more than their share, the work gets done.
- No project or opportunity is worth the well being of the people involved.

  
CR: Thinking as big or small as you like, what changes or alternative structures would make the performing arts more accessible to artists with families?

Andrew: I’m gonna quote myself in the “Artists raising Kids Compendium” here:

For me, this is part of my broader advocacy around sustainability. Artists who raise kids challenge a lot of the unsustainable assumptions in our field about money, time, and how to live as an artist. Those assumptions are bad for all artists, not just the ones with kids. I don’t advocate for the special needs of artist parents over the needs of others. I advocate for artistic lives that are balanced, sustainable, and professional, and supporting artist parents is part of that.

I think we as artists need to keep pushing to change the working culture of our sector. It’s dysfunctional for everybody: it’s workaholic, under-resourced (with most of the resources going to administrators, not artists), under-planned, needlessly competitive. We use as our model the 23-year-old, single, childless, healthy, frenetic artist living in a cheap warehouse. We need to include the whole arc of our lives, and parenting is part of that.

On a smaller, practical level, I think every organization should have a decent budget line for childcare. It immediately changes the conversation to one of possibility: what could we do to make this event/residency/festival/touring gig parent- and kid-friendly? I’ve seen a lot of growth over the past two decades in art institutions including kids in their programming, so they understand that this important to their mission and their future. When organizations have a roster of childcare providers on call and a budget to pay them (often true in activist and religious organizations), all kinds of things become easier. 

CR:  How has parenthood impacted your own creative work … as a writer, as a choreographer, as an advocate for other artists?

Andrew: My mission got bigger. Or maybe: simpler. When I started off as a choreographer, I really wanted to put my work out in the world (or rather our work since I worked in collaboration). Very early in my career, that broadened to include my community of like-minded performing artists. But when I had a kid, it got much bigger: I want more strong art in the world. So I can make my own work, and push to be rigorous and reckless, but really that’s how many dances? 50 in a lifetime? 70? I can have a lot of impact by helping other artists to survive and thrive.

Artist U's 5-year reunion, 2011 (photo: Jeffrey Fehder)

So, I started Artists U when we had our first child. (Again, not a great balanced parent choice, but definitely one inspired by becoming a father and seeing the world differently.) I’ve really been digging in to this curious question: exactly why is it so hard for artists in America? Artists are so ridiculously skilled and hard-working, why are we so often exhausted, overwhelmed, and broke? And why do so many of us lose touch with our deeper mission and still end up in unsustainable lives? There are lots of practical tools and strategies I’ve picked up, but the big thoughts are clarity and community. When artists are clear about what they are doing and when they don’t do it alone, they can make it work.

Artistically, I made a so-so dance about kids early on: the dancers, both moms, had to do the piece with their kids in tow, and whatever happened (nursing breaks, diaper changes, temper tantrums) was part of the piece. But I also found my artistic interests simplifying and getting deeper. I started to make a lot of intimate, immersive pieces, focused more on the bodies of the viewers than the bodies of the performers. CELL was a performance journey for one audience member at a time guided by your cell phone, You move through the city encountering performers (and non-performers), and you end up inside a dance, dancing as part of an immersive quartet. That really worked for me. I wanted everyone to have the embodied experience that dancers have: you are part of connected group, moving as one, responding and inventing, singing with your body.

This Town is a Mystery (photo: Kevin Monko)

Eventually I got rid of the professional dancers completely. This Town is a Mystery brought audiences to four Philadelphia households (very different neighborhoods, economics, cultural backgrounds). The members of the households perform a piece right their in the home, a dance theater show built from the stories and bodies and music of their world. And then everybody shares a potluck dinner. That was my last project with Headlong Dance Theater, the company I helped found 20 years ago, and it was incredible and overwhelming. I couldn’t imagine going back into the studio after that, working with the trained and fit bodies of dancers to make a piece for the stage. My artistic world had gotten so much bigger and stranger and more dangerous. And kids were a big part of that project. Two of the households had children in them who performed. And the traditions and bonds and ruptures of families were huge forces in that project.

Residency Report: Can Serrat, Spain

Residency Report is an ongoing series of posts from artists undertaking creative residencies with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience.

Christa Donner shares the experience of a dual residency with her husband, accompanied by their young daughter, at Can Serrat in Spain.

This fall my husband and I undertook a dual artist residency with our two-year-old daughter in tow at Can Serrat, one of a handful of international programs that supports artists with families. Unlike the residencies I'd participated in before, Can Serrat is not free: there is a modest residency fee for each person - half off for children - and travel is not covered,  so we had to seek outside funding. Our work there was supported by Faculty Enrichment Grants awarded through the college where we both teach, as well as a Support Stipend through Can Serrat itself.

Can Serrat is located in El Bruc, a tiny Catalonian village that’s about an hour’s bus ride from Barcelona, which we visited several times. The living areas, studio space, piano/performance space, and a basic printshop are all situated in a former sixteenth-century farmhouse. So it's an old building, and previous Can Serrat artists we knew described the place to us as "rustic." To parents with small children, it's important to note that this term encompasses many things, some of which are wonderful (stone arches, decorative frescos, hanging grapevines), and some of which mean keeping a close eye on the kids (crumbling masonry, stinky and loosely-covered sewer holes, clouds of mosquitoes). That said, the staff made every effort to make our time there comfortable, setting us up in the largest bedroom and even a good crib with plenty of bedding.

communal meals served outdoors in warmer weather

a shared studio space overlooking the courtyard

Residency at Can Serrat includes breakfast and a big home-cooked dinner shared with all the residents six nights a week. Lunches and Sunday dinners offered time to try out local foods on our own. It can be a relief for any focused artist not to have to think about what to make for dinner every night. For us it was even more so, as we arrived during the height of our allergy-prone two year old’s picky toddler phase, and Karine managed to work with that challenge, along with everyone else's culinary needs, amazingly well. 

Since both of us needed studio time, we took turns watching our daughter during the day, getting in four-hour shifts on either side of her midday nap and then coming together for dinner and conversation with our fellow residents. This wound up being more complicated than we'd anticipated: even after jet lag the time difference really changed the usual sleep schedule, but after about a week we finally sorted out a system that worked for us. The large shared studio space is divided up between residents, and everyone meets to stake out table/wall space during the first few days. The studio walls are all plaster, so bring a good staple gun or plenty of removable sticky stuff if you want to hang anything on the walls.

The unique geography around Can Serrat is part of what makes it so attractive to artists: the residency is halfway up the Montserrat mountains, which are fascinatingly lumpy and tubular and magical to explore. You can get dramatic views of them from anywhere in town, or make a day trip to visit the monastery and a really great little art museum at the very top. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of hiking involved in El Bruc, even if you just need to get something at the grocery store. We hadn’t thought to bring along a baby carrier for our active two-year-old, but later wished we had: the lightweight stroller we brought wasn’t so useful on steep gravel roads. Our daughter loved the excuse to explore and climb the hills on foot, even if it was sometimes verrrry slow.

Christa Donner, 'Colony', gouache, ink and cut paper in two locations

The end of the residency felt like a beginning more than a conclusion: without the pressure to exhibit finished work, I was able to treat my time in Spain as an exploratory research mission. I left Can Serrat with stacks of small drawings, and a suitcase packed with field recordings,  video footage, reference images, fresh ideas and new information. This rich archive of material is now feeding much larger multimedia projects in my Chicago studio.

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Christa Donner reimagines the human / animal body through a range of media including large-scale drawing, printmaking, digital animation, and small-press publication. Her process often incorporates public projects and collaborations around narratives of bodily experience. Donner's work is exhibited internationally, including projects for the Museum Bellerive (Zurich, Switzerland); Horst-Janssen Museum (Oldenberg, Germany); Kravets-Wehby Gallery (New York, USA); BankART NYK (Yokohama, Japan); Chiaki Kamikawa Contemporary Art (Paphos, Cyprus); the ANTI Festival of Contemporary Art (Kuopio, Finland); and the Centro Columbo Americano (Medellin, Colombia).

Sharing a Family Residency Between Two Artist-Parents

a shared studio table at a previous residency

Residency Report is an ongoing series of posts from artists who've undertaken creative residencies with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience.

Christa Donner shares the experience of a dual residency with her husband, accompanied by their young daughter, at Can Serrat in Spain.

My husband Andrew and I are both working artists. Participating in residency programs is something that has been important in each of our practices, and though our processes are quite different, we gain a lot from the focused conversation and occasional collaboration that happens when we think and make together. Needless to say, that situation got more complicated once we became parents. We set about researching international programs that would allow the three of us to live and work together at the same time, and finally found one that seemed a good fit for our needs. It's not easy to find a residency where you're both invited at the same time, which may mean opting for a fee-based program and seeking outside funding. For a range of residencies that support artists raising kids, visit the CR Resources page.

The special challenge of a two-parent residency, as in everyday life, is how to productively divide up family time versus studio time... and while you’re at it remember to connect as a functioning couple. Having recently returned from just such an endeavor, I humbly share the following thoughts and some useful tips:

Jet Lag? Arrive Early if You Can.

Since we were spending a month abroad, the last thing we wanted was to spend our first week of residency time adjusting to the seven-hour time change with a toddler... especially since we’d be in close quarters with other artists. Instead we flew across the ocean several days early to acclimate to the new situation.

jet lag is easier with someone else's toys

If you happen to have a friend with extra space where you're going, consider a relaxed visit before the residency starts. We didn't know anyone there, but rented a lovely and inexpensive apartment from a family who happened to have a similarly-aged child (bonus: cool toys) and adjusted to the dazed afternoons and midnight wakeup calls that way. Having a kitchen takes a lot of the stress out of mealtimes in a new place, and is so much cheaper than living out of hotels and restaurants. If you’ll be traveling near any major city, there are plenty of apartment rental sites out there: try Air BnB and filter your search for “kid friendly” options, or Children-Friendly Vacation Rentals. This experience also prompted us to consider possibilities for home + studio swapping with artist families in other cities, in lieu of a formal residency structure.

Expect to Reconfigure

Needless to say, if you can find and afford local childcare or an age-appropriate program for your kids during a residency, absolutely do. That wasn't an option for us this time around, but we still found ways to make it work.

Before leaving for the residency, we planned to divide up our day as we often do at home: one of us would get up early with our daughter in the morning and watch her til noon, then the other would take over after her post-lunch nap. Two four-hour blocks seemed pretty straightforward. Done.

Of course that’s not how it worked out: our early-riser daughter miraculously started waking up two hours later in the day and taking much longer naps, which meant some serious reconfiguring to keep things fair. And though I often take the morning shift at home, I worked much better in the afternoons overseas. We wound up taking turns on alternate days, which worked out fine most of the time. Whatever your plan, sit down again to discuss it after the first week there and adjust as needed.

All Together Now

a Barcelona playground surrounded by cafes

For the first week of the residency, as soon as our daughter went to bed my partner and I grabbed our laptops to catch up on email and news. After that our only interaction was the occasional grunt of annoyance at something on the screen. Of course this happens at home, but the urgency to squeeze in productive studio time can make a shared residency tough on relationships. Since we rarely overlapped except for mealtimes, it wasn’t long before we felt completely disconnected and totally irritated with each other.

One of the tradeoffs of doing a residency with your family along is that, well, you need to make some time to be a family. In our particular situation, we decided to adjust our schedules and computer time: we fit in what we could during the day, and in the evening, office hours were over. Just turning off our separate screens of distraction worked wonders. Weekends, which we’d been treating as just more work days, we re-designated for family time. This helped all of us connect beyond stressful meals or bedtime battles, and the break was important for our creative work, too.

Leave the Toys at Home (…most of them anyway)

Packing for any long trip with a small child gets heavy really fast.  For the sake of our backs and our baggage, we brought very few books and toys. This might seem obvious, but bringing less stuff was great for all of us, and made for some natural extensions from family time into creative practice:

• Playground = studio: Every town we were in, no matter how tiny or large, offered

  

  homemade toys inspire new forms in the studio

  interesting public playspaces that made me rethink our relationships to playgrounds. Sometimes they feature adult exercise equipment, too. These proved to be a great place to consider the body, geology and biology, language and motion.


• Investigate:  Like parenting, exploring a new place always reminds me to see, smell, taste, touch and listen with curiosity and attention. Our daughter initiated collections of pebbles and other small found things, and enthusiastically contributed to field recordings of local sounds. Whether you’re in the city or the countryside, you'll spend a lot of time just getting to know the new environment. This tends to feed your practice even while you're caring for your child, in fact especially so: they'll always notice things you won't on your own.


• Make It Up: With less toys, residencies get more creative for kids too. When the weather kept us indoors we followed the example of some fellow artist-friends and made our own awesome little toys out of boxes and food packaging.  A bunch of little blue tiles lying around turned out to be perfect for toddler stacking and building. We  used our imaginations more. Great fun and less waste. These forms have resurfaced at home and in the studio.

Reach Out

If you’re part of a program with other artists it can be all too easy to retreat into a comfortable family island within the larger community… but then you’ll miss out on the studio dialogue, cultural

impromptu concert with artists in the residency kitchen

insights, networking opportunities and friendships that make multi-artist residencies worth doing. Getting to know your colleagues also helps lower the stress level when your kid throws a tantrum at dinner, or when you need to ask for some quiet at bedtime. If you share meals and/or studios in a common space, some of this may happen organically. We sometimes took turns going on field trips with other residents, giving each of us the chance to make friends, hike, and explore the area on a level we just couldn’t pull off with the whole family along.

Working together in the same residency program isn't for everyone, but was worthwhile for us. Some parents opt to take turns doing residencies instead, while others wait it out until the kids are much older. Have you ever done a residency with your family? What other strategies or tips would you recommend? Share your comments below ... and get in touch with Cultural ReProducers if you'd like to contribute a Residency Report of your own.

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Christa Donner reimagines the human / animal body through a range of media including large-scale drawing, printmaking, digital animation, and small-press publication. Her process often incorporates public projects and collaborations around narratives of bodily experience. Donner's work is exhibited internationally, including projects for the Museum Bellerive (Zurich, Switzerland); Horst-Janssen Museum (Oldenberg, Germany); Kravets-Wehby Gallery (New York, USA); BankART NYK (Yokohama, Japan); Chiaki Kamikawa Contemporary Art (Paphos, Cyprus); the ANTI Festival of Contemporary Art (Kuopio, Finland); and the Centro Columbo Americano (Medellin, Colombia).

CR Event Series Report: In Conversation with Ghost Nature

Cultural ReProducers + Gallery 400 = gallery conversation + kid parade!

On March first, Cultural ReProducers officially kicked off our new Event Series, teaming up with Gallery 400 to present a lively dialogue between biologist + artist Andrew Yang and selected artists featured in the exhibition Ghost Nature: Jeremy Bolen, Robert Burnier, Assaf Evron and Heidi Norton.

Despite the freezing weather outside the event drew around 30 participants for a dynamic conversation about growth and decay, creative experimentation, the natural world and the complexities of art-science collaboration, with audience members (and the occasional infant) jumping into the fray to offer their own perspectives and pose questions.

In a nearby room, a great bunch of childcare workers helped kids put together noisemakers and costumes in response to the natural phenomena in the show, and at the end of the hour led them into the gallery for a little parade of imaginary animals, signalling the start of an all-ages reception and more great conversations.

Cultural ReProducers artists Christa Donner and Selina Trepp are currently meeting with arts institutions throughout the city to plan the next events, which has been a creative adventure in itself! Stay tuned for more events very soon, and if there's a particular artist, institution or event you'd like to see us program in the future, please be in touch!

Jeremy Bolen (far left) and Robert Burnier

The Cultural ReProducers Event Series is a roaming series of lectures, performances, and other events designed to allow parents with small children participate more actively in the art community. These curated weekend morning events include free on-site childcare and intergenerational receptions.

Our goal is twofold: to give parents and their kids the chance to participate as critical members of the arts community, and to inspire cultural institutions to better serve artists and audiences, providing positive models for future programming. This project is made possible through support from the Propeller Fund.

Cultural ReProducers + Gallery 400, photos by Dan Bitney