I met with Mandy Cooper in her studio the other week, feeling lucky and blessed that it is just down the hall from my own studio. Her baby was bouncing… my baby was sitting… watching… exponentially getting louder as we talked. We sat, we stood, we bounced, we moved coffee cups out of reach, we transferred toys, we moderated little hands of one reaching to pull little hairs of the other… all while talking. Of course, rabbit trail prevailed, but deep ones at that, and the whole heart behind MILK HOUR is to capture that essence through transcribing conversation. Finally, after 30 minutes of chatter…

Mandy: Ok let’s talk about interior space

Lee: *laughs* Yes! This next [issue of MILKED] surrounds interior space. It is a theme that I am personally interested in through a very traditional, kinda fundamental sense, but also more deeply interested in the WHY? Why are we constantly depicting these spaces that we… *mumbles, formulates thought, recalibrates, thinks*… to say it very simply: these spaces that we live in and occupy? 

*I went on to tell an elaborate story of my over awareness of walls as a kid, and a hyper awareness of the air, my living room being a box and the bizarreness of arbitrary lines. And then we questioned, as we pushed the conversation towards the maternal nature, the idea of nesting.

M: Yes, exactly, it’s about creating an environment that’s about safety and comfort…

L: Right, and when we relate the interior space to a holistic mindset – the idea that our mind [is] connected to our heart, and our heart to our bodies – how does it start to relate to an emotional sense and then a metaphorical or symbolic sense?

*pause* babies coo / interrupt / distract / you are so cute / one says / how many months / the other says / 9… on April 6th.

M: *laughs* So yea, I can tell you what is exciting to me, or makes me really excited about what you were talking about and what I connect to. I feel like I’ve always had a deep relationship with my interior space. As a kid, yea… I mean… I think something as a kid that really stood out to me is that there wasn’t intentionality within the creation of home in the space where I lived..

L: Interesting

M: …so the idea of temporary bandaids, and the way that [space] was organized, like even in a very traditional sense, I could interpret as a kid that there was this sort of lack of commitment to building a safe, intimate, happy space. And it had an impact on me. I definitely sought safety in different spaces and I have a pretty… I dunno… deep relationship to how I feel in those different spaces now. For example, closets or bathrooms are very safe, positive, reflective spaces for me. Small, enclosed spaces are sort of like “womb rooms” …

L: *laughs* yes! Womb rooms! Yes! *laughs* I want to now just label everything with a piece of tape WOMB ROOM!

*laughing / we talk over each other / talking together* 

M: Womb Room 1 … Womb Room 2 …

L: So how old were you when you started recognizing all of this?

M: Um, I dunno, I mean I really started utilizing rooms and creating spaces of my own early on because I think it was a need for me… so I just started, like in my closet, with things like glow in the dark stars and other certain objects. And spaces like bathrooms became my feelings room – you know, sitting in the corner near the shower, surrounded by tile – felt very structured. And I still do the same thing when I’m having feelings – I think a lot of moms do – we retreat to the bathroom…

L: Right?! Always the bathroom!

M: It’s our private space for feelings.

L: I’ve actually been thinking about having an issue of MILKED revolve around the bathroom because…

M: Oh you should! 

L: …it’s also not only a mom thing – I mean MILKED obviously comes at it through the mom thing – but it’s just so funny to look at art history and see all the bathrooms and sinks depicted. So it’s so interesting to me to hear you specifically talk about tiling.

M: Yea the space becomes a meditative thing – a control room – there’s no stimuli, just tile – and I can feel not so overwhelmed, but rather like I can hold my feelings. But I’m also interested in Sacred spaces, Reflective spaces and what elements those have. I like to ask how those relate to the sacred spaces we make for ourselves.

M: And I’m definitely interested in how people historically have used architecture and light and smell and sound to create atmosphere – inviting this reflective experience and solemness, and I seek that [in my own work].

L: I wonder if this is the case for almost every human, but to be consciously aware of what space physically contributes to our state of being is a different matter…

M: …Well I think it does relate specifically to motherhood too, the nesting idea and the intentionality in creating a space that is whatever you value within your humanity… a protective space that holds room for all the most important things, connections and experiences in your life. It’s where we make love, where we create life, where we eat together, where we fight together, our worst moments, our darkest feelings – it holds life. So it makes sense that we have this biological drive to be very intentional about our spaces. And what does that mean to different people – what are the different drives when it comes to “nesting”?

*I tell a story here about nesting and how it changed for me from pregnancy to pregnancy. I confess to an obsession with plants while pregnant with our third child – how out of left field that felt for my non-green-thumb-self, my husband laughing at the random gardener that showed up in his relationship. 

M: …I’m also interested in the idea of looking at people’s wardrobe and homes – and the idea that we’ve always felt [the need to ask ourselves] what colors, textures, patterns and whatever, feel like an expression of us. And like, why? WHY? That “why” has always felt important to me. …the need to create spaces that reflect us and embody something about us.

*Baby coos… blabs… blobs…* *Coffee moves… blabs… blobs…* Mandy picks it up again.

M: I think the overarching idea of a lot of my work is “seeing and being seen.” Really what I find joy in is finding people and seeing them, and so then seeing [the] reflected variations of them… like when I meet people I’m like, ah fuck I wish I knew what they were like at like 12!

L: *laughs* oh man, you would’ve known “knobby-kneed Lee”, that’s what I call myself at 12!

M: *laughs* I just wanna know every. version. of a person!… and I kinda get obsessed about it. It really goes back to this obsession I had as a kid with my own mother – I desperately wanted to understand every stage of her. So fabrics and things from her childhood… I mean, my family members are collectors and story tellers and they keep everything, and I intimately know all of our family’s “STUFF”. So I dunno – I think that some people are really drawn to objects, and thinking about objects and meaning and the power these objects hold in storytelling, and other people have a deep aversion to that.

M: … and it’s been really important for me to understand the trauma that’s passed down generationally – and there’s a lot of trauma in my family – and I think that’s why it feels pertinent – because I don’t think any of us can understand ourselves without the relation to the trauma of the parent right before us, and the trauma right before them. Which leads into the land art piece I did… those spaces of the generational transfer of trauma… and even THAT to me is about interior space because I was thinking about the dimensions of the car that my grandfather was in [when he died], and I wanted to inhabit that space with him so he wasn’t alone in that decision and moment. And that felt important for my mom and I to share in that space of the car. 

(Mandy’s land art performance piece in Galveston, Texas: ​​https://www.instagram.com/p/CScka8Fl9Mv/ )

L: To me, that relates to how this idea of “the interior space” is coming through symbolically, emotionally and literally. 

*Many lines are muttered that feel impossible to transcribe, as the spoken word translates through body language and movement.* Until this one line from Mandy speaks clearly on the recording…

M: I think our first homes are truly the scaffolding of how we relate to and inhabit every other space we enter in the world and determines how we feel in… life, really.

Our conversation trailed off from there, between more tidbits, more rabbit trails, more gurgling children and mental shifts. We continued talking about interior space as exterior space, the self in relation to space, and laughing at the cyclical nature of that relationship. We questioned the dance between space and identity branding – did people of history’s past “try on” identities like we did when we were kids in the ‘90s? Has it always been the same, but just through different lenses of cultural rhythms and expectations and spaces? We finished with laughing at “just being fucking historians” that clearly have it all figured out.