How does one capture the feeling of feeding your child during their first months of life? Record their development as they learn to count, read, and write? Navigate virtual kindergarten during a global pandemic? These are some of the questions that Richmond-based artist Sarah Irvin has explored through her practice as a mother and mark-maker. Since 2014, Irvin has created artwork about her experience having and raising a child. She uses her work to challenge societal and personal narratives that art making and motherhood are incompatible. Through this process, Irvin founded the Artist Parent Index to connect and share work by artists exploring themes of reproduction and child-rearing.

        “Unstable Propositions” at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) is a solo exhibition featuring Irvin’s work completed over the last ten years—the first decade of her daughter’s life. The gallery occupies a hallway on the first floor of the Signature apartment building in Reston, Virginia–one of Tephra ICA’s local exhibition partners and satellite galleries. Signature provides a small, semi-public venue where artwork can be enjoyed by visitors and residents alike. The homey yet slightly chaotic nature of this space ties perfectly into the themes of this exhibition as the rumble of luggage carts, bustle of commuters returning home, and laughter of children creates a warm, if unusual, gallery atmosphere. 

        On August 15, Tephra ICA hosted an opening reception and artist talk to share Irvin’s work and stories with the general public. Her conversation with Associate Curator Hannah Barco added important context and depth to the works on display as she outlined her inspirations, materials, and techniques. . Irvin typically produces work in series, using her experiences as mother and interactions with her child as a tool for her art. Once an idea takes holds, she explores it repetitively, almost obsessively, to investigate and analyze any inherent structures or meanings. Many of the series are ongoing and continue to develop as her role as mother and care-giver changes. 

        Irvin’s Breastfeeding Series explores some of the earliest moments of her child’s life and serves as the launching point for the exhibition. While breastfeeding in the months after giving birth, Irvin translated her daughter’s swallowing motions into line drawings on sheets of handmade paper (created from Irvin’s own bedsheets). In looking at the drawings, one can see the swirls that represent each gulp, with occasional lulls that break up the otherwise continuous movements. Of the series, Irvin noted that the experience of breastfeeding changed over time and was captured by the drawings, starting as small, cautious lines when her daughter was young to larger, more intentional swirls as her daughter’s jaw muscles developed and she grew in size and strength. The works on display represent three of 23 drawings done between 2014 and 2015 reflecting the experience of breastfeeding over time.

 

        Later series address language and brain development, exploring the role of caregiving as relates to education and learning devices. Connect-the-dots activities are popular tools to help children develop hand-eye coordination and counting skills. On a traditional connect-the-dots sheet, participants draw lines along a sequence of numbers. If done correctly, the lines will reveal a hidden image like an animal or building. In her Connect the Dots Series, Irvin destabilizes this notion of a “right” way to create an image, instead filling pages with randomized clusters of numbered dots. While Irvin intentionally works to avoid creating specific images on each paper sheet, visitors may find themselves trying to find something recognizable in the chaos. For instance, in Connect the Dots 11011 (2023), I see a soft, plumped pillow that beckons me to sleep…

 

        Similarly, the Paratext Series mimics the rigid structure of a grade school penmanship practice sheet but removes the functionality. The horizontal blues and reds of the lines and dashes no longer provide an even, parallel surface to practice lettering—instead the lines are skewed and bleed into each other. From a distance, the works appear more like a stylized, abstract design than a functional tool to teach writing. Irvin also plays with color proportions, varying the presence of reds and blues in some paintings to imply hidden meanings and structures for the viewers to examine. 

        These blues and reds feature prominently throughout the otherwise monochromatic gallery. During her talk, Irvin produced a pair of 3D glasses that she carries with her, noting that they help to further confuse and complicate the lines and words featured in reds and blues throughout her work. Her series Public/Private embraces this color scheme, with PRIVATE in blue and PUBLIC in red. Created using text stamps, Public/Private was inspired by the stay-at-home orders in effect in Richmond during Covid-19. The pandemic meant that parents had to quickly develop answers to new questions about how to socialize and/or isolate one’s child. Irvin found it difficult to set hard boundaries between public and private spaces, noting that these socially constructed zones are incredibly porous. In Private/Public, the words and their meanings become blurred as they are layered on top of each other until it becomes impossible to tell which came first or last. 

 

        While many of these works are deeply personal and reflect intimate experiences between a mother and her daughter, Irvin is careful to protect her child’s privacy. The nature of Irvin’s mark-making removes identifiable information from the works, distancing the subject from the product. That is intentional. Irvin says, “You can look at the works but not know anything about my daughter.” While the works are autobiographical for Irvin in many ways, they are also connected to much larger, human themes of language, education, and value systems, to name a few. 

        As her daughter has grown, Irvin’s practice as a caregiver has shifted and her work helps to document how her experience with motherhood has changed over time. “Caregiving is now less physical and more emotional,” she says. She is teaching her daughter how to advocate for herself and be a good friend. It may be a few years yet before Irvin decides how to process this period of her life with her daughter and translate it into artwork, although she thinks that the works will probably be more text-based moving forward. Either way, she notes that her daughter expects to be a collaborator in the next phase. She laughs and says, “We will see…”

Emelia Lehmann is a DC-based writer and cultural heritage professional. When she is not looking at art, you can find her looking at buildings.