Week 5, Message from Cat

Dear Sparrow,

Thank you for your message, for sharing, for letting me in.
I feel your conflict, and perhaps many of us carry this inner divide. I know I do.

There is a part of me who is an artist, a mother, sensitive and with an open heart, with compassion.
And then, there is the part I must become in order to survive the cold, often unkind, professional world - practical, even calculated at times.

I am one woman when I make the art, and another when I go out to share it.
If I take the sensitive artist with me into that world, she won't survive.
So I separate them. I leave her at home - with the kids, with my husband, or with my parents when I see them.
I become two women.
One who is surviving, making firm decisions.
And the other - she pleads for quiet, for nature, for stillness.

Sounds familiar, dear Sparrow... I know. You know.
But I tell her, No. Not yet. We must keep moving forward.

And yet, reading your words, I feel that you have your own rhythm, your own way, and I believe you must trust that.
New York can offer opportunities, but it also takes a lot from you - financially and emotionally.
Many artists build great careers from diverse places, requiring a different approach to networking, but also connecting with where they want to live their life, where they call home.

You feel like a woman who will, inevitably, live life in truth to herself.
Even if you try not to, you will! This is just who you are.
So follow that voice. It may take longer, but it will be yours.
And your voice - specific and powerful - needs to be heard in exactly your way.

You wrote about being a woman of color without familial support; that is a lot to carry.
The solitude, the forging ahead without a net... and still, you speak with such clarity and depth.
The endurance you mentioned as a part of you, always with you, is a gift.
I can’t pretend to know the specifics of your path, but I hold deep respect for it.

While our experiences are different, they might carry some similarities.
I’m a Jewish-Israeli-American woman of North African and Bukharan descent, and I’ve lived in New York for 30 years now.
These days, within the art world, my identity doesn’t quite belong.
It doesn’t fit into the categories currently being acknowledged, if anything, it seems to stand in contrast.
And so, I feel alone. More than ever, lately.

But I create as a woman. That is it.
A human being - one of a certain gender and age - but merely human.
My art is universal. Feminist, yes, but not political.
It is about and for everybody.
It is about being human.
About women. About the body. The mother.
The ache and joy of living, the beauty and pain of aging.

I’m trying to stay close to this place of creating, and not isolate.
But I’m changing. I don’t want to, but I am.
And so, I wait to see which forces within me will carry me forward.
Some changes we choose, others we surrender to.
We will meet our future selves - both you and I - tomorrow, next year, a decade from now.
Maybe we already glimpse them in the art we make today.

The glimmers you shared were beautiful, thank you. Quiet, and calming.
I’m sending you two photographs related to my Jewishness. I hope this is not taking you further away from me.

It is my children's birthday today, and we are all together.
But I can't help but feel a deep sense of sadness about the time passing and them getting older...
I know we should celebrate, but I can't help it.

Thank you again for your authentic, thoughtful, and deep voice.
I can almost hear you... and I want to see you.

I definitely want to see your self-portraits!

Yours,
Cat

Week 6, Message from Sparrow

Week 7, Message from Cat

Dear Sparrow,

I hope this letter finds you safe and well. I haven’t heard from you, but ‘hearing’ your letters to me in my head, I can hear this silence, I can hear quiet spaces that nurture the artist within you, where you might be now.

Our dialogue, a space where words, images, and thoughts could meet, might have touched not only each other’s experiences, but our own characters as artists, and as women.

We each have our own rhythms, our own ways of creating. Some of us - me  - show the world everything, paining ourselves to where even the rawest vulnerability can be held and shown. Others of us – maybe where you are now - find a cocoon, a quiet sanctuary, where the most tender and painful places can be allowed to exist, can breathe, and can eventually take shape in our work. We must follow that process, for it is the path that leads us to our truest work, to the voice that is uniquely and genuinely ours. Follow it also when it changes. Remind each other to do so.

I hope that our correspondence has offered a small mirror in which to see ourselves reflected back, a way to know ourselves better, to recognize what is right for us as artists, and to understand the forces that guide our work and life, whether they are good or not, healthy or not, joyful or painful, wonderful or difficult.

I think of what it would mean to meet you in person someday—to look into your eyes - two women artists who have spoken across distance.

I wanted to send you two images, one that represents you, and one that represents me, inspired by our words to one another. However, the images I looked at all became intertwined, because within me are elements of you, and probably within you are elements of me, so it ended up being a mixture of images that represent elements in both of us. Maybe you can figure out which one is which.

I can’t.

Until we look at each other’s eyes, and to wherever you are.

Cat

Week 8, Message from Sparrow