We invited LaToya to feature Birth of a Mother in both Issues 1 and 2 of MILKED. I found her work through an interview with BmoreArt, Baltimore’s contemporary art magazine, and absolutely fell in love. She has since only excelled, most recently and notably exhibiting a monumental series of woodcuts, hanging at 60ft in its entirety, at the Baltimore Museum of Art, titled Carving Out Time. It takes you through an entire day in her life as an artist and mother, and the detail is. just. inexplicably exquisite! I wanted to just sit and listen to LaToya talk, and this is what transcribed…

Lee: I would love to hear you talk about your piece at the BMA somewhat candidly – what was it like to create such a large piece about your daily life as a mother, while you are very much still in it simultaneously? You’re not reflecting on this time, your kids are not 25 and moved out… so what was it like to be making this work about “carving out time” while you’re literally trying to carve out time?

LaToya: Yea, I honestly think that’s the beauty and power of the work. It is so true and authentic and is literally my life on display. I think with all of my work in general, and the fact that I try to use people I know and self-portraits, comes from a very honest and authentic place and people are able to sense that – not only through the imagery but also through the care of the work. 

I call [Carving Out Time] literally a labor of love. Emphasis on the labor! Trying to give a very authentic sense of what it is like to be in the shoes of an artist-mother. And there are so many layers to the work – you could talk about it in so many different ways… from an art history standpoint, in terms of the artists that I’m referencing throughout the work. You could talk about it from the standpoint of printmaking itself as a genre… from the actual theme of the work, in terms of the family, in particular the black family – which you know, sadly you don’t see a lot of images like that in museum spaces. I even had a person come to visit the show while I was there, and she said to me, I’ve gone to lots of museums and I never see images of the black family. This is just so nice and refreshing to see this work. 

So yeah there’s a lot of different ways that you can talk about it, and in terms of the idea of interior space, that’s something I’m thinking about in a couple of different ways. One, through my practice as a portrait artist. A lot of my work is primarily simple backgrounds, or patterns backgrounds, kind of flat spaces… Here in the last couple years, I started including things like couches or a chair or something that alludes to the environment. That's something I am personally challenging myself to do — to expand on this idea of portraiture and what I like to call narrative portraiture.

I’m not just showing you what this person looks like or what they’re wearing or what jewelry they have on, but I’m also expanding it so you can see the type of environment this person exists in. Which [communicates] more about who they are, and just more to experience throughout the work — but it’s always in support of ‘the figure’ for me. 

So that’s been a personal challenge I’m having. You know I still do those kinda basic — well not “basic” because I don’t consider my work basic *laughs* — but the standard portrait format with the bust or three quarters or the full figure… I’ve still knocked a few of those out in between…

Lee: *laughs* Knocked out a few of those out inbetween! I love how casual you just said that! 

LaToya: *laughs* …yea those are kinda like the ‘go-to-meals’ for me. You know what I’m saying, like as a mom you have your go to meal. Something you generally have all the ingredients for, you know it tastes good, you know you can make it in a pinch, everybody likes it… So that’s what those standard portraits are becoming for me.

Lee: You know that’s actually a really great metaphor!

LaToya: Yea like, if I need to get some pieces done, I know I can do those and knock ‘em out and they’ll be great. 

Lee: Man everyone reading this is now going to start doing that for their practice, thank you LaToya! *laughs*

LaToya: *laughs* Yea! …but then you also have these opportunities to do what I call ‘the Thanksgiving meal’, and that’s what Carving Out Time was for me. It was the whole shabang – entrees, side dishes, 15 desserts!

Obviously that is really dependent on time and the time of year it is — and so with that work, I was able to produce it 1) because of the generosity of my husband, and his support — you know we have this running joke that we trade off being single parents depending on who has the most going on. *laughs* So of course he was completely on board when I came up with the idea and told him about it. And 2) I was also on sabbatical from teaching. 

Lee: Oh I didn’t know that element of it! Yea ok!

LaToya: Yea so for a good portion of that time – Spring 2021 – I was on sabbatical from teaching, for that entire semester. So that obviously helped and [my] schedule was: I did a couple of hours of Homeschool with the boys, making sure they were on track and then my husband would say ‘go! Leave! Get outta here!’ And I would try to be like ‘let me just start this load of laundry real quick!’ You know, you gotta just leave or you start seeing stuff and think ‘oh I forgot to do this!’

Lee: Yea right? *laughs* yes! My husband sometimes jokingly kicks me out of the house like ‘get outta here before the baby wants you!’

LaToya: Yea exactly *laughs* so that really allowed me the time to focus. And obviously was the only thing I worked on for that time.

Lee: right! Ha! No ‘go-to-meals’ in the midst of fixing Thanksgiving! 

(Brief pause to make sure my son is chewing almonds properly)

LaToya: …So it’s all this idea of expanding and creating more spaces and challenging myself conceptually. I also really like that scale, so each of those scenes were… 5 scenes, for those who are not familiar with the work. Five scenes total that take you through five phases of the day from start to finish… but each of those individual scenes were 8’ tall, 12’ wide (composed of three 8’ x 4’ panels put together to make one scene).

So all the [panels]… I consider it one work – it’s one work, in five parts. Because the whole gist is you have to experience the whole thing. But all together, if you line it all up, it’s 60 feet. 

(My kids interrupted yet again, because, naturally, they found the treats.) 

Lee: I really love that it is all one day – I didn’t realize that at first. I thought maybe it was seasonal, but I love even more that the work is portraying just one, full day – how did you break that up in your mind? 

LaToya: So in the planning stage, I just started writing, you know, what do you do if this is about people experiencing your day from start to finish? That idea of ‘from start to finish’ came from this book Please Baby Please, by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee (illustrated by Kadir Nelson). It used to be one of my boys’ favorite books when they were little. So, I came across the book one day… all the sentences end with ‘please baby please’ and it just kinda goes through [a child’s] whole day and different scenarios… like waking up too early… then pouring cereal on her head… then going to the park and she doesn’t want to leave… just all these different scenes until she ends up going to bed! And I thought, moms need a book like this! To show all the things that we do…that’s the best idea for this work! So that’s where the concept came. 

Then the scale is inspired by Kerry James Marshall and his large scale woodcuts. I recently saw [his work] in Miami for the second time, and was just in love and infatuated with it all over again. You know it’s woodcut, which is my thing, so I was like alright I’m gonna do something that big! By the time I got home, I was set on doing something that big and then I saw that book [Please Baby Please], and everything just kinda came together. 

And then I just wrote out a list of everything I do throughout the day. I questioned how many scenes do I do, how many parts of the day do I show, and just all these different formats in my head — and eventually I came up with all the scenes being [formatted] the same, having 5 scenes, and I knew I wanted to have 15 because Kerry James Marshall’s was 12 and my husband was like “you gotta do it bigger.”

Lee: *laughs!* psh YEA GIRL! Just be like Imma blow you outta the water and do three more!

LaToya: *laughs!*… So yea 15 made sense. Then I just wrote out what those phases would be: the morning, the homeschool and housework and everything I can get done before dinner, and then dinner is the next phase, and then get the boys to bed. Then after that, what am I gonna do before I pass out? *laughs*

Lee: haha right, right!

LaToya: Usually it’s Let’s try to get into the studio! That doesn’t happen every night, but I try. So in this work, I wanted to illustrate that part of myself — especially when talking about what’s specific to me, and me as a mother-artist. I think we don’t always hear that perspective of women artists… and ending in the studio was the experience of so many other friends of mine who are artist-mothers.

It also goes with the theme of a larger body of work that this piece goes into, called Salt of the Earth – just thinking about our roles as preservers and how much we do to preserve our families and our culture… The labor that we do on a regular basis and how we have to take care of so many people before we get to take inventory of ourselves. So I really wanted to express that, and that’s how the order came for what each of the phases would be. 

The next thing was to decide, what specific image I wanted to represent that part of the day? As if there’s a film rolling of the day, where would I click the camera to stop to represent ‘morning’ or ‘bedtime’. Then, having variety and not repeating scenes. 

(I then proceeded to drool and fangirl over this laundry basket LaToya carved in Homeschool and Housework, the second scene of her piece. Somehow (somehow!) Hobbs masters capturing the texture of plastic *and* the texture of fabric through woodcut! It’s simply breathtaking.)

LaToya: …so that laundry basket was one of the first things I carved in that scene, it took me 7 hours, which I remember because I kept a log, and yea, I’m so proud of that laundry basket *laughs*

Lee: Ah! You should be! Take a photo of that laundry basket and hang it as a piece in and of itself in your studio!

LaToya: And another thing — the textures are really important and a particular challenge for myself. So specifically in that scene, it has the most variety of objects included. [Texture] was part of making the objects believable in the space so it can feel like an actual, lived in space. I was really thinking about not only the people as characters, but each of the spaces as characters as well… So [I was] really specific about the people in the scene, what this space is, what’s happening and then making sure all the objects that are included supported that. 

Lee: The last thing I wanted to hear you talk about is, you were saying there are many different lenses through which you can view the work, one of them being art history through the referenced art pieces you put on the walls in each scene. I just wanted to hear if you put certain historical pieces in certain rooms for a reason? 

LaToya: I kinda did that scene by scene. After I constructed the space to see how much wall space there would be, I said, ok if I was decorating this room, where would the art pieces go? So for example, in the bedroom scene there was the most wall space above the bed — we don’t have space there in our actual bedroom but it made sense for that particular scene of the work — I wanted each art piece to be close to its real life size… and I knew I wanted to work with Elizabeth Catlett because she’s one of my art sheroes. Then, just thinking, who else could I put beside her that would make sense? 

I knew I wanted art in every room, but the room dictated what made sense. So in the boys’ room, obviously, their work would make sense to be up because they’re artisan boys… but then, what else would make sense? My husband’s work is referenced there too because he has some pieces that he’s allowed them to have. Then in the dining room scene — you know, dining rooms, you got your nice dining room table, your nice stuff that you want everybody to see *laughs*, so again what would that be? I have the Kerry James Marshall piece there…and in that piece in particular there is a couple. So my husband and I are standing in the middle, I’m walking to the table with a dish, he’s pouring a glass of water, and I wanted that piece to go there to represent us as a couple because in every scene, we’re serving the children and not doing anything with each other *laughs*…

Lee: *laughs** oh gosh isn’t that how it feels so often?!

LaToya: right *laughs* and I acknowledged that and thought oh man, I’ve already planned everything out and we’re not doing anything with each other! Which is so telling! As a married couple sometimes it’s like, get the kids, get the things done…

Lee: Right! Get the kids set and we’ll high five each other on the way!

Latoya: So that [artwork] was specially put in that scene to represent our relationship — it’s not just about the kids. And then that other piece, the Valerie Maynard piece that I put in the center, I felt like it worked because it matched my silhouette. 

We wrapped it up from there, and I left wishing that every “coffee hour” or “play date” could be like this. LaToya’s work references motherhood, legacy, family, connection to space & place, and she herself is filled with insightful thoughts on process and storytelling. It was an honor to sit and listen.