Ten Tips for Young Womxn Artists
1. Find your coven
Being a womxn artist sometimes feels to me like climbing a sheer cliff without hand or foot holds: I face a patriarchal world while I pull my ideas inside out, take risks, try to make something from nothing, etc. Over the years I have amassed what I call my coven: colleagues, mentors, and friends who help me find my footing as I ascend. Giving and receiving aid fortifies me and allows me to soar.
2. It must change
“All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth
is change. God is change.”-- Octavia E. Butler
3. Say “no” early and often
This tip is self-explanatory, but I just want to emphasize here that the unpaid labor of womxn runs the world, including the artworld. This can end if we want it.
4. Nurture patience
I spent my teens and twenties frustrated, confused, and struggling with my artistic output. I felt like I was moving at a sloth’s pace; ideas were not coming together quickly enough. It wasn’t until I was well into my thirties that I finally started feeling satisfied with the artwork I was making. I still struggle with my impatience, but now that I am middle aged, I remind myself (daily) that art and ideas unfold over time.
5. Guard over your studio time zealously
As Mary Oliver writes: “It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.”
6. You are not a cow
Shortly after I graduated from art school, I was sharing a celebratory meal with my mentors, all prominent Second-wave Feminist artists. They soon spied my engagement ring and began admonishing me for choosing a life path they perceived to be like a poisoned apple. One of my colleagues had a famous Feminist artist tell her that womxn who have kids are like cows who are constantly being milked/sucked dry. I know that these elders just wanted to best for me (for us) and I can’t say that being a working mom-artist is easy. But I have never regretted marrying and having children, nor have I ever felt any likeness to bovines.
7. Welcome fallow times
It is a challenge to brace against the pull of hustle culture and consumer capitalism. There is a little taskmaster inside my head that commands me to always be working, that if I am not making art, I am not doing anything worthwhile. Still, when I look back over my career, some of my favorite artworks arose after fallow times when I was making very little. Quieter moments that seem inactive serve to cultivate creativity and germinate new ideas.
8. Mother earth cares for us and we must care for her in return
We all have been fed, clothed, and housed with materials provided by our earth mother Gaia. Now we face an existential climate emergency. It is imperative that womxn artists and all sentient beings care for, preserve, and protect mother earth or else all will be lost.
9. Look within, not without
One of my close friends and role models is a Feminist artist in her 70s. She has had a long and admirable career, but like many womxn artists, it wasn’t until she was a septuagenarian that she had her first solo museum show. I once asked her what keeps her going and drives her artmaking. She answered simply: “It makes me happy!”. She doesn’t worry about whether people will buy her work, or how it will be received, or whether it will further her career. She simply strives every day to make the best artwork she can.
10 You are not alone.
Know that I am fighting for you, that others before me fought for you, that you are part of a lineage of ancestors on whose shoulders you are standing. You are not alone.
My love,
Elana Mann, July 2023