In her 2014 novel , Jenny Offill coined the phrase “art monster,” writing: “My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things,” those mundane things including motherhood and caring for a child.
The idea has since spawned numerous conversations about the intersection of art, gender, and parenthood, providing the foundation for recent books by and who discuss the ways women are often asked to choose between being an artist and being a mother. Undergirding their arguments is the belief that there’s no need to leave one identity behind for the other. In a new short film, exemplifies this point as she discusses how her daughter’s birth led to a new phase of her practice and helped her to find her voice.
Detweiler’s series depicts women shrouded in fabrics in the style of , and her children frequently appear in her multi-media works, sometimes similarly cloaked in a bedsheet. Directed by for the Making Art film series, “” visits Detweiler’s home near Philadelphia. As she squirts paint onto a palette and brushes it across the canvas, she discusses the bifurcated experience of being an artist and a parent, that for her, is always intertwined. “Artist Sarah is haunting mother Sarah during the day,” she jokes. “It’s like, I’m here! I’m here!”
Watch the film along with others in the Making Art series on , and find more from Detweiler on .
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