Anne and I have corresponded over social media for 3 years now – ever since I had my second child and she was one of the only other artists I knew at the time who had multiple kids and was willing to “go there”. Her late night DM’s saved me. What’s ironic is that she’s local to Baltimore and yet we never met in person. Then the pandemic hit, and well… we all know. When she applied to our open call for submissions, I thought, YES! This is it! MILK HOUR is meant for local artist-mamas and I can finally meet the lovely Anne! Well ironically enough, deadlines were tight and calendars were complicated, so we met via zoom. It somewhat felt fitting though, this instagram-initiated-relationship and “meeting” virtually… One day though, Anne, one day we shall share a table (*says every person, substituting “Anne”, longing to be in-person*).

Lee: So you were saying that the interior space has become intriguing to you since Teddy was born. Were you alluding to the fact of it being more than after your girls were born?

Anne: Oh yea. 

L: Why do you think that is? Maybe because of the pandemic, or because of Teddy specifically or because of what?

A: Um, so when [both the girls] were born we were living in this tiny apartment in Charles Village, where we had been living since before we were even married – so we never moved in there thinking ok we’re going to be here and have kids here. It didn't really fit everybody, it wasn’t our… you know, we were renting, we didn’t want to make too many permanent changes, and there was just no permanency there.

We lived there until our middle one was a few months old… I mean, she didn’t have a room. There were no major plans. It was just kind of whatever *laughs*. But then, [we had] a huge sewage flood in the basement. 

L: Oh nooo! Oh man I’m sorry.

A: Yea it was terrible – I mean just the smell… and when you have a 2 month old… plus the landlord wasn’t on top of cleaning it up… so we just decided that was it for us.

So we moved in with my husband’s parents [for a bit]. And now we’re here in our house and as we were mentioning before, it’s this kind of a work in progress, always doing projects, “de-popcorning”...

L: *laughs* De-popcorning! I just loved when you mentioned that [in our past DM]. I just thought oh man *laughs* the popcorn! She’s de-popcorning! We can all relate to that decision of: do I de-popcorn [the ceiling] or do I not..? 

Anne and I continued with horror stories, funny stories and “owning it” stories of DIY house projects. Kids join the video, correct said stories, joking statements of geesh get it right mom. A key transitional point in the conversation was when Anne admitted to historically not feeling creatively inspired during the winter time, as well as during the newborn stage of all 3 of her children…

A: …That combination of a newborn in the winter was a challenge for me, but since I know he’s our last, I really wanted to pull out my camera even when I didn’t feel like it. Although, I have slid off a little bit. I mean, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve picked up my camera… and it becomes one of those things where, the longer it goes, the longer it goes…

L: Yeah, almost like a snowball effect.

A: Exactly. So yea… overall the interior space has always been a challenge for me to feel inspired within, honestly. Having to stretch myself like that was fun, even though I wasn’t always happy with what I did.

L: Yea even that challenge of not just giving in, and saying ‘oh right, ok, this just confirms that I’m not inspired by this. And this is not a good time…’ In other words, I think when you’re not inspired from the beginning, but you say you’re going to push through, and then it STILL doesn’t work out, it’s so easy to lean back on the excuse of ‘right, this is just NOT the time…’

A: *laughs* right. Like, ‘clearly I should just give up…’

L: Right! *imitates voice in one’s head* ‘Clearly this is just not where I thrive…’

But I think there’s an element of just pure commitment. Sometimes you just need to commit regardless of how it makes you feel or the end result. The meat and substance is in the commitment, rather than in the idea that you’re making masterpieces each time. What’s funny is, that commitment often comes back around full circle in the long run – when you look back and reflect on the work you made – after a few years – you see and think ‘oh, there actually was something there!’

The rest of the MILK HOUR date is kinda hard to transcribe… but that’s somewhat the point of these interviews. Broken tidbits of conversation, recorded, seemingly unwoven but illustrating the nuggets of gold that come from gathering together even when it’s chaotic.

We pushed more into Anne’s recent work surrounding her son. Within the day to day… she’s taken Time out of the pressure cooker… simultaneously capturing… essence and rhythm. Time contributes to seasons. Seasons contribute to exteriors and interiors.How funny to mentally think in the summer time ‘oh I should be outside’, but emotionally feel ‘...but I’m so newly postpartum. It’s time to go inward.’ And that brings us back. The interior space.

L: I needed [different] spaces to be quite literally separated. As if the space influenced how I could relate to each person – thinking in the bedroom, this space is my nest with my baby, I’m a mother here, a nursing one, a healing one, tender together. And then I’d go into the kitchen or somewhere with my husband, and I don’t even know what I necessarily ‘became’ with him, I can only think of describing it as putty. As if saying, can you build my legs back again? Can you help reshape my arms because they feel kinda all over the place and I don’t know how to keep going.

A: Ah I love that analogy! It’s so true.

The last recorded comment was a laughing note of, I also love that you’re in your pjs and I’m in mine.