I'm over the moon that Ashley asked me to be part of this. I've admired her work for many years and essentially feel like a vandal putting my words on her paintings. But our words and experiences are deeply kindred ones, and I think that's why this works. It's been such a pleasure to walk through motherhood with Ashley, who has helped me learn to be unafraid of words of restlessness and struggle. Because we are richly human, and those words of chaos and uncertainty and exasperation do not negate the fierceness of our love, loyalty, and thanksgiving for the delightful little humans we have borne.
Mary Ann Watkins
Rabbit Wife Pen and Ink
And from me:
For this series I've teamed up with hand-letterer and fellow mother, Mary Ann Watkins to explore the intricacies of caregiving. I am interested in the ways that bearing my children transformed my very being and the ways that nurturing their growth is a continued reverberation of that soul-shaking delivery.
Thinking about the course of language as it collides with the raw experience of living and how we pass that method of shaping our world to our children was my motivation in asking Mary Ann to be a part of this project. I am totally intrigued with the forms of her own intimate experience of motherhood entangle themselves into my ideas and the ways this plays out in the dailyness of life as our families live alongside one another.
