"what parenthood has given me is a push back into a creative self that spent years on the backburner"
cartoonist and writer Emily Zilber on using diary comics to jumpstart creativity, raising twins, and seeking out support, camaraderie, and accountability in virtual community spaces
Hello there! This is a good creatures interview, a series that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. I’m so excited to showcase people doing lots of kinds of caregiving—people caring for kids or pets or other family members and/or caring for space through gardening or community work or activism—and lots of kinds of creative work.
If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.
Today’s interview is with Emily Zilber, a Philadelphia-based cartoonist, writer, and illustrator. As someone whose creative practice has always been pretty much exclusively in words, I’m so awed by people who are able to move from visual- to text-based art forms, or to combine the two the way Emily does. When Emily reached out to me, she shared her piece Marigold, published in Mutha Magazine, and I was so moved by her story of the long process of healing from a miscarriage. Along with that more narrative work, she also has a process of daily diary comics (in the spirit of Lynda Barry), which I just love as a way of practicing attention. Below, we talk about how becoming a parent pushed Emily back into making art, the wonder of raising twins, and making it as easy as possible to do your creative work anywhere you find yourself.
Who do you care for?
My immediate family includes my 7-year-old identical twin daughters, my partner of twenty years, and two obscenely furry cats. I care for a bigger network of family, both birth and chosen, and friends.
I also work very hard to care for myself, with inconsistent but mostly upward-trending results. Each day, I learn new things about how to care for myself and others based on actual needs, rather than shoulds and expectations.
What kind of creative work do you do?
My personal creative work is as a cartoonist, writer, and illustrator. I make comics and visual essays that draw on autobiography and largely focus on care, artistic and creative labor, living in a body, parenting, and mental health. I’m working towards a longer graphic novel project. I make my work using a mix of traditional and digital tools, but I especially love drawing and painting with ink.
Professionally, I’ve spent two decades working in art museums. My creative energy goes towards things like research, writing essays and catalogs, developing content and structures for exhibitions, organizing programs, and supporting artists as they realize ambitious projects. I also consult 1:1 with artists and teach when I can squeeze it in. Care and creativity are essential when I’m with a client or developing resources for my students.
this time has allowed me to see that I am a better parent and person when I actively pursue what brings me closest to myself, and that’s making art
What’s changed in your creative life since becoming a caregiver?
I’m doubtful that I would have a personal creative life right now if I hadn’t become a caregiver.
The expectation of parenthood is that you’ll be less able to devote yourself to creative work. Instead, what parenthood has given me is a push back into a creative self that spent years on the backburner. As a kid, my primary identity was “artist.” I consumed art voraciously, soaking up every bit of creative instruction and opportunity. I was voted “best artist” for my high school yearbook superlatives; my purpose was clear and my fate had been sealed. By 21, I had stopped making my own creative work (a fact I’ve spent many hours unpacking with patient friends and skilled mental health professionals). Even as I was detaching from my own sense of self as an artist, I pursued undergrad and graduate degrees in art and design history. Right after grad school I got my first full-time curatorial role at an academic museum, and by my late 20s I was a curator at a major encyclopedic museum. I worked with emerging and established artists who had made art a career. I also spent a lot of time gatekeeping which art was “worth” being shown or collected or written about. The more time I spent in this version of the art world, the more I began to see my own artistic voice as unworthy of revival.
It was only in my late 30s, after my children were born, that I came back to my own creative practice. I’d left my “big” job and relocated to raise my daughters closer to family, entering a period of upheaval on numerous fronts. The pieces haven’t all settled yet. Even so, this time has allowed me to see that I am a better parent and person when I actively pursue what brings me closest to myself, and that’s making art. This realization has required me to rethink my professional identity, adjust how I spend my time, and decline things that would have seemed impossible to pass up just a few years ago. All of this was accelerated by having two kids at once. My dreams of curatorial motherhood saw my life largely the same as it was pre-baby, just with an easygoing, well-behaved kid strapped to me. I’d get points at openings and art fairs and donor events for not letting my baby get in the way. The first time I got rigged up into the dual carrier, that idea died swiftly. I tried to accept that while this approach worked for some people I knew, I wouldn’t be one of them. And if I wasn’t, who could I get to be?
Watching my daughters learn the world around them, and each other, was the best part of my maternity leave. After spending so much time playing the expert, it was something of a paradigm shift watching them find delight, rather than shame, in not knowing things. While I spent many overwhelmed hours worried I wasn’t up to the task of parenting, I also spent much of that early time more comfortable with being a novice caregiver than I might have assumed. My ability to sit with uncertainty increased, my grip was forced to relax. I’m sure this time is part of what helped me find my way back to art and writing classes when my girls were toddlers. In those spaces, I rediscovered long dormant abilities and inspirations and experimented with new creative routines, supports, and communities. I was able to reframe the meaning of my time away from artmaking and develop ideas for the creative life I want to have moving forward.
Learning to care for my daughters – which requires learning to care for each one individually, them as a unit, and the relationship between them – sparks ideas and creative frameworks that I can’t imagine being able to access otherwise.
What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?
Caregiving is hard and dirty and exhausting. As a result, it asks me to live outside of my own head and in the world. Caregiving forces me to look closely at parts of myself that don’t feel comfortable, and to ask myself if the way I see things needs to be reconsidered. It shifts the way I understand my own past. Caregiving demands that I invite risk when all I want is certainty. These can all be prompts towards creative action.
As a mother of identical twins, I have a first row seat to a human experience fundamentally unlike my own. I’m a caregiver to kids who have a doppelgӓnger, playmate, and sparring partner from birth. They share everything with someone else, from toys and a bedroom to a face. My daughters are rarely on their own, while feeling alone and isolated is one of my go-to mental grooves (and a creativity killer). Learning to care for my daughters – which requires learning to care for each one individually, them as a unit, and the relationship between them – sparks ideas and creative frameworks that I can’t imagine being able to access otherwise.
What is difficult about being creative and a caregiver?
I daydream about an alternate-world version of myself. This Emily is established, secure, and confident in her creative voice from having made art consistently in her 20s and 30s. She appears with particular intensity when I’m struggling to find time or energy for my own creative practice amidst family life, professional obligations, burnout, and fluctuations in mood, capacity, and focus. I’m well aware that romanticizing my pre-kid years and their lost potential is a bad habit; nonetheless, I find it difficult to shake the desire to have had that time. On my better days, I try to reset by noticing how my creative work today is richer for the life I’ve actually lived.
Loneliness is hard. My practices of choice – comics, illustration, writing – are often slow, solitary work. Just as caregiving is easier when you’re not flying solo, I’m infinitely more generative and willing to keep going through the muck with support, camaraderie, and accountability. Without an abundance of untethered free time, I am grateful for how virtual community has made it possible to combat isolation (shout out to the Sequential Artists Workshop Year Long Certificate program and Sarah Shaw’s Crafting Life Stories class at the School of Visual Arts in particular). Even so, I cannot wait to have more opportunities for in-person community as my girls get older and have different care needs.
Is there something specific you do to jumpstart creativity?
Diary comics are an amazing practice for this. When I feel like creativity is lacking, it’s often because I’m not paying attention to – and allowing myself to be inspired by – the small, seemingly mundane parts of my own life. A quick diary comic, hastily scrawled in my sketchbook and perhaps shown to no one, can help me remember how to take creative action when nothing feels worth documenting. Lynda Barry’s “Daily Diary” format is a great way to start (or really, any of the prompts in her books Making Comics and Syllabus).
When I can’t even do that, I try to consume art that makes me feel excited about the world. I read a lot for work before I had my kids, but I’d gotten out of the habit of reading for pleasure. These days I read comics and illustrated books constantly, for both adult audiences and younger readers, with my kids. My daughters are a great excuse to buy all the books. Reading with them, and making art inspired by what we’ve read, has reconnected me to the magic of pairing words and images while also helping me see potential in the stories I want to tell.
The other big one is music, especially seeing live music (which I no longer take for granted after the past few years). It is the quickest way to bring me out of internal ruminating and to-do lists and back into my body. I saw Aimee Mann (who also happens to make wonderful diary comics!) last month and it brought me so much joy.
Notice all parts of your life. Honor them by paying attention. Document them in whatever creative formats speak to you. Your story matters. It’s worth being brought into form.
What advice would you give someone who is a caregiver that wants to start a creative practice?
Neither of these thoughts are groundbreaking, but I find them to be very easily forgotten in the face of internalized perfectionism.
First, notice all parts of your life. Honor them by paying attention. Document them in whatever creative formats speak to you. Your story matters. It’s worth being brought into form.
Second, make it as easy as possible to do something, even if it’s not everything. I’ve learned digital illustration skills so that if capacity allows, I can work anywhere, any time, without judging myself for not being at my drafting table. The ipad comes with me to the waiting room at OT and ballet, and to the couch after bedtime. I began learning it for expediency, but I’ve found new ways of visualizing my ideas marrying handwork with digital tools.
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a question for you
I think lots of us can probably connect with what Emily says about turning to art and music as a way of reminding ourselves what’s exciting about the world. I went to my friend Gina Siepel’s show To Understand a Tree at the Museum of Art in Wood earlier this year, and even though it’s not directly related to anything I’m writing, I just found it so energizing to be with her work. (If you’re in/around Philly, definitely go! It’s in a great gallery in Old City.) And I’ve been reading lots of great books recently, some of which we’ll be featuring here in coming weeks.
What books or art or media have you consumed recently that’s made you excited about your own creative practice?
Emily Zilber is an illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. Her comics and visual essays on caretaking, creative labor, living in a body, parenting, and mental health have been published through MUTHA Magazine and the Sequential Artists Workshop. When she’s not drawing or writing, Emily works as a museum curator, educator, and consultant for artists. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, identical twin daughters, and two obscenely furry cats. She’s on instagram as @emilyzilberdraws, and you can find more of her work at www.emilyzilber.com.
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Shout out to Emily! We were classmates in Hannah Kaplan's diary comics class through Blue Stoop in 2022. May you keep on drawing, writing, painting, and comic-ing! Emily's journey makes me think of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I went through that program (read the book, did the exercises--once in a group) at least 3 times in my 30s, 40s, and 50s. I was stunted artistically. I'm a poet who likes to make comics, but I wasn't doing any of that. I hear and feel Emily's regret about lost time. There's something inherent in paid work, in trying to fit in society's systems that can be so draining! I loved Emily's statement: "I am a better parent and person when I actively pursue what brings me closest to myself." As Emily points out, our artistic efforts can be nurtured by online and in-person community--from classes to exhibits to open mics to accountability groups. I think we need to validate all art that is made in these spaces and that is then shared with others. Being "published" and accepted by what passes for the academy in the various genres cannot be our only measures of success. Emily's beautiful panels (may they be published in multitudes!) are clear examples of this principle!
Yay Emily, thanks so much for so much grace and wisdom! Thanks to everyone out there involved with LIFE and ART both!