{"id":2911,"date":"2016-04-30T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T06:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=2911"},"modified":"2016-04-30T00:01:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T06:01:45","slug":"show-up-make-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/show-up-make-marks\/","title":{"rendered":"Show Up, Make Marks: An Interview With Skyler McGee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artist and mama of three littles, Skyler McGee<\/a>, has a mantra: Show up, make marks. It means showing up for yourself, showing up for the work that makes your heart beat, and making marks. Sometimes they\u2019re lovely, sometimes they just are. She opens up about how she balances motherhood with making art, and it\u2019s pretty inspiring.<\/p>\n

What does a typical day in your home look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The kids love to get up early. The rule is they have to wait until 6 AM to wake us up. And there they are \u2013 at 6 o\u2019clock on the money \u2013 crawling into our bed. So, we get up early and make breakfast. My oldest is in kindergarten so we take her to school, then I just spend the morning with Cedar, my 2-year-old, cleaning or grocery shopping or baking. What I\u2019ve found works best for me is when I put Cedar down for her nap \u2013 I\u2019ll actually take a nap at the same time. Then we go get Hayden from school and spend the afternoon together making crafts and doing homework and breaking up fights \u2013 you know, all of that unglamorous, important parenting.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually not until after we put the kids down that I\u2019ll do my art. I\u2019ll pour myself a glass of wine and be in my studio until about 11 PM. I\u2019m more of a night owl and it\u2019s better for me to grab that nap in the middle of the day and stay up later at night. 11 o\u2019clock comes and I still need take a shower, so I\u2019m only getting like 6 hours of sleep a night, but that\u2019s why I take my little afternoon power nap. This way, those hours in the studio are completely mine. I can turn off my mommy brain and I can turn on my artist brain. On a rare occasion I\u2019ll look up and it\u2019ll be like 1 or 2 o\u2019clock in the morning and I\u2019ll be like, \u201cI really need to go to bed!\u201d It\u2019s amazing how much work I can get done when I can get fully immersed in it.<\/p>\n

Do you ever bring your kids into your studio?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My kids are very familiar with my studio space. I love showing them what I\u2019m working on and asking their opinions. When I have a show and I take them to an exhibition space, they remember me working on it in the studio. It\u2019s really fun for them to see what I do at home translated into something out there in the world. To watch them make the connections that when I am in my studio, I am making something that\u2019s going to be shared in the world … it\u2019s special. They get really proud and they talk about when they\u2019re going to have their work out in the world, too. To have them watch me be empowered, in turn empowers them. And that feels cool.<\/p>\n

\"show-up-1\"<\/p>\n

What is it about your studio time that breathes life into your soul?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I\u2019m working on my art, there\u2019s this really special place of self-forgetfulness where I\u2019m not thinking about myself at all. I\u2019m not thinking about the laundry or my parenting or my friendships or if I\u2019m doing okay, especially as a human being. I\u2019m literally just making marks. And that feels liberating to be involved in this process that fuels me, but is also a lot bigger than me.<\/p>\n

To be in a school of discipline that we\u2019ve been in for thousands of years, expressing our humanity, and to be part of big, long line of showing up on time to express what it is for you to be human in this time and place \u2013 that feels really special.<\/p>\n

You have your hashtag on Instagram that\u2019s #showupmakemarks. What does that mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s my phrase. I think in marriage, in parenting, in work and art \u2013 so much of it is literally showing up. Showing up for yourself. Showing up for your work. And then, making marks. This is my expectation of myself. Sometimes they are amazing and sometimes they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a repetition of showing up for yourself and making marks that is so empowering as a human being. To say \u201cI was here and I matter, and I might not have anything important to say at this moment, but it doesn\u2019t mean my presence is wasted.\u201d I am here, showing up and making marks.<\/p>\n

You can make marks in a million different ways: for me, it\u2019s in art; for some people it\u2019s in their community; for some people it\u2019s in friendships; for some people it\u2019s the pursuit of health; for some people it\u2019s learning to cook.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something important, especially as a parent, in knowing that your identity is not consumed by taking care of these precious little ones. One day, it\u2019s going to be their<\/em> job to show up and make their own marks. And it\u2019s my job to show up and make my own. And to teach them how do that. As much as I love my kids, they are not the mark I make in the world.<\/p>\n

They are beautiful people and I get to help them live in the world because I want them to be mark makers, I want them to be change-makers, and they\u2019re going to do that best watching me do that for myself. Watching me make my own mark.<\/p>\n

\"show-up-2\"<\/p>\n

Was it difficult to come to this understanding of the importance of showing up and making marks?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was difficult. I\u2019m a compassionate person and for a long time I really thought my art was a kind of luxury. In college I kept a double-major of art and social work because I thought I needed to be doing something more community-oriented with my work. I seriously thought I needed to be out there changing the world outside of my art. And when I became a mother, that got translated to my kids \u2013 giving every ounce of who I am children. But eventually I started to realize that the world doesn\u2019t need more people who want to change the world. The world needs more people who are living fully into themselves and into their story, and in love with life. And that changes the world.<\/p>\n

Having small children who are completely dependent on me for every physical thing \u2013 it\u2019s a short but very consuming time of life. But I\u2019m starting to realize that if my kids are all that I gave to, I\u2019m actually putting a whole lot of pressure on that poor little person to hold up the weight of my own contribution to this world with their little bodies. And I never wanted to do that to them. I never wanted them to become the vehicle through which I self-express. Because then both of our identities are in crisis. If they succeed, then both of us are elated. But it\u2019s hard enough for a child to figure out who they are as a person without your mom riding on your coattails.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve learned that I needed to occupy a space in my world independent of anyone else but me. It didn\u2019t have anything to do with my marriage; it had nothing to do with my children; it has nothing to do with me saving the world. It just has to do with me finding my voice. And in that, that my voice has gotten stronger over the years, I\u2019m more secure and I feel more comfortable checking boundaries. It was super nerve-racking at first \u2013 trying to set up these boundaries with my babies. And now I think I have enough experience, and seen the fruit of that to realize that being away from the baby for two hours and making art is in service to everybody, including her.<\/p>\n

And I want to teach them that their voice matters. I don\u2019t want to teach them that their voice matters until they become parents and then they\u2019ll lose themselves. That\u2019s silly. It\u2019s important that I teach them by showing them \u2013 they\u2019re a priceless, powerful, essential part of a whole, but they are not the whole. They shouldn\u2019t feel the pressure of being my whole world \u2013 they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3593\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How has having this time set aside for yourself affected your marriage?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It certainly requires a mutual commitment and understanding. My husband believes in my work and wants me to succeed, so he\u2019s willing to carry the extra hours or move his schedule around if he needs to. So he has to be committed to that and make sacrifices for that.<\/p>\n

Also, my husband is in a PhD program where he does a lot of writing, so he has his own relationship with creativity. And it\u2019s a lot of give and take. If he has a big deadline on a paper coming up, there\u2019s a time where weeks will go by and I don\u2019t get in the studio, but I\u2019m on board with him to living his dream. And he\u2019s on board with me living mine. And so we kind of catch each other in those moments. He loves to see me thrive and vice versa.<\/p>\n

Now, the trick is that even if he weren\u2019t totally on-board with it, I\u2019d do it anyway. Again, it\u2019s for me. And I have agency in my life. Even if I didn\u2019t make art, I don\u2019t know, maybe I made rugs and he didn\u2019t understand why I made rugs. Even if he didn\u2019t get it, I would learn to carve out time for it \u2013 because no one\u2019s going to respect your work if you don\u2019t respect it first. And so, he\u2019s my greatest champion and yet I need to not<\/em> need him to like my work.<\/p>\n

\"show-up-3\"<\/p>\n

You say you paint to \u2018locate yourself\u2019. Could you explain that more?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s literal and figurative. For me, there is a physical component to making art: I have to be physically present and literally move my hand across the paper or across the painting. But there\u2019s also a non-physical component I\u2019m interested in \u2013 sometimes this looks like something familiar that you can\u2019t quite put your finger on, or an animal you can picture touching with your hands, but is wild or mythical.<\/p>\n

So much of my work is a conversation between the concrete \u2013 here I am in my studio, creating specific work, and in this house where I grow this literal garden \u2013 and the fluid, bigger-than-me-realm of what is not right in front of me. It\u2019s this tension between what I can physically touch with my hands and all the stuff I keep in my head. It\u2019s a dialogue between those spaces. It\u2019s a way for me to make peace with not only what I can<\/em> inhabit, but also what I can\u2019t<\/em> because both of these are worth exploring.<\/p>\n

What is some practical advice you would give other moms who might be struggling to set aside time for themselves to do restful activities?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first thing I would say is start now \u2013 don\u2019t wait until you\u2019re ready. Because there is going to be a million things to do between now and later. Whether it\u2019s a creative practice or a spiritual practice or whatever kind of practice it is \u2013 start now and let it be clumsy, because that\u2019s how most things get started.<\/p>\n

The other thing I would say \u2013 and this is key \u2013 is you cannot wait until all of your \u2018domestic\u2019 duties are finished, to make your work. This will never happen. And so don\u2019t clean the kitchen first. Don\u2019t fold your laundry first. Don\u2019t do those things first. If you do, they will take up your best brain space and then you\u2019ll have nothing to give to your work, or rest, when you show up to it.<\/p>\n

However, let\u2019s say you leave all that other stuff undone, you show up for your work, you go and you work hard for two hours, and you\u2019ve given it everything you have, you are kind of brain dead, you are kind of exhilarated. Forget the mundane tasks \u2013 give your life-giving activities first dibs. And then you can fold the laundry when you are tired or you can clean the kitchen when you want to zone out.<\/p>\n

Make your \u201cart\u201d the main course of your life. And all of the other stuff \u2013 the laundry and all the cleaning \u2013 that will still happen.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3619\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think a lot of moms who are in the early stages of motherhood struggle to find out how to embrace rest. What encouragement would you give a mom who\u2019s like, \u201cI don\u2019t know what that looks like for me.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert has written a great book recently called Big Magic<\/em> that is about the relationship between creativity and the rest of your life. And her suggestion, which would be my suggestion, is to follow your curiosity. Because it\u2019s a heavy weight to try to follow your passion when you\u2019re not quite sure what your passion is. So rather than striving for the thing that you\u2019re going to give to the world, find out what you\u2019re curious about. What do you want to know more about? Do you want to try yoga? Do you want to try cooking? Do you want to join a community group or a book club? Or do you want to write? Just as kids find stuff they\u2019re interested in by playing \u2013 give yourself permission to play. Give yourself permission to have false starts; to try things and hate them or try things and love them. But the important thing to do first is decide that your curiosity matters.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3595\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think it can seem really daunting to look in the mirror and not know what your passion is.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no greater burden than feeling like you are supposed to know how to change the world in that moment and not have any idea how to do it. There\u2019s already a lot of pressure on parents to do the parenting thing perfectly. So take the heavy hand off; take the pressure off and say \u201cyou know what? I matter.\u201d And this space, this restful, playful, curious space is important to become the person I want to be.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s hard, think about how you value your children, and how you want them to live in the world. You never want them to lose themselves so much in service to others that they don\u2019t think they matter anymore. So teach them what it looks like to matter to yourself. They are watching you learn what it means to be a human being, and you get to be the first person who shows them what it looks like to matter to yourself; and to honor yourself.<\/p>\n

\"show-up-5\"<\/p>\n

FIND SKYLER MCGEE\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

@skylermcgee<\/p>\n

skylermcgee.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Emma Turnbull is the Marketing Strategist at MOPS International and a Colorado native. She is continually looking for Chapstick, Monday motivation and compelling ways to speak truth.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"HD_Cover_Sping2016_blog\"<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the Spring\u00a02016 issue of\u00a0Hello, Dearest<\/em>. If you didn\u2019t get a copy and would like your own, you can\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to get\u00a0Hello, Dearest<\/em>\u00a0in your mailbox every season. If you subscribe, forward your receipt to\u00a0magazines@mops.org<\/a>\u00a0and we\u2019ll shoot a copy of the current issue in the mail to you for free \u2026 just because we like you.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist and mama of three littles, Skyler McGee, has a mantra: Show up, make marks. It means showing up for yourself, showing up for the work that makes your heart beat, and making marks. Sometimes they\u2019re lovely, sometimes they just are. She opens up about how she balances motherhood with making art, and it\u2019s pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":2915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,102,117],"tags":[385,347,386,161,387,56],"class_list":["post-2911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-relationships","category-wellness","tag-artist","tag-embrace-rest","tag-inspiration","tag-interview","tag-mom-story","tag-motherhood"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}