This Extraordinary Thing

Raising a Family THIS EXTRAORDINARY THING

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SARAH Women of an older generation frequently had to make a choice between being artists and being mothers—the struggle was so difficult. Around the time I started working there were a few women who decided to have children—women slightly older than myself. Elizabeth Murray had two children; or Pat Steir. These are women that I turned to to find an anchor … how can I be a woman, how can I be an artist, how can I make this work? I remember calling Pat Steir up in the night around 1981. I didn’t even know her. I said, “Help! How can this be done?” But, you know, our generation is borderline. We’re the first generation out there being able to make these choices and these calls. Women make different choices for themselves and juggle different issues, but the possibility of having a family and children and a career and an income, an independent income, and being fulfilled in a multitude of different ways, is now a possibility for women. And we’re really, really lucky.

ROSELEE GOLDBERG We were rigorous in our work and had no doubts about our place in the world, and in the art world, but I don’t think we went in very deeply to the total wonder of having children. I thought it was the most radical thing one could do as a woman. Our art community still found it rather odd, though. The two of us went through our pregnancies together—her first, my second—pre-natal exercise classes, on our backs between leg lifts catching each other’s eye, disbelieving that here we were, doing this extraordinary thing.

LAURIE SIMMONS I don’t fight a lot with friends, but she and I would spar a lot. We had this expectation of each other that we were going to be fierce, however that fierceness manifested itself. We were all trying to do something that was really tough.

KATE LINKER These young women artists went through having their children, and raising their families, with a sense of community and commonality. They wanted motherhood and their relationships with their children on their own terms. As a group of women who were making and writing about new forms of art, all of us shared an intimacy and a sense of the promise of motherhood that were quite unique. Sarah approached her two children with the same seriousness and love with which she approached her art. This is the key to Sarah: she did everything with passion, integrity, thoroughness. That fact and the idea of having a family were so important to her that she was able to handle incredibly tough times and experiences. Her relationship with Amos, however dark at times, was one of great passion and love, and her deep desire for children grew out of that relationship.

ANNE TIMPSON She surmounted any difficulty that she ran into, or she ignored it and moved forward. I call it prioritizing. You can be taken down by something or you can just climb over it and keep going. We wanted perfection. And it’s possible that our childhoods were so magical that we created perfect families in our minds. That’s why Sukie put family so high on the list. That’s why she valued it so highly.

Great Jones Street; January, 1996.

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