I consider myself by no means an art expert. When it comes to what most people call “art” — painting, photography, sculpture, the occasional interactive exhibit — I tend to err on the side of “yeah, I just like the way I feel when I’m in the presence of that art/I don’t like the way that art makes me feel” and that’s where I land when it comes to filling my world/home with art as well.
And so it was that I stumbled upon Helen Rebekah Garber’s work on Tappan Collective, an online space for collectors to connect with original works of art and artists. I am so lucky to have a piece of Garber’s artwork on my walls (okay, to be honest, it’s leaning against the wall on an outcropping in our dining room next to another beloved piece by Ashley January, featured on the podcast here) and I’m excited to feature Garber’s perspective in today’s Finding Art in Life conversation.
Helen Rebekah Garber is an American artist whose work examines the aesthetic variations behind numerical patterns and codexes, as well as the pressures and paradoxes of caregiving in the current technological age.
One look at her body of work and you can clearly see her unique perspective, which merges scientific accuracy with creative expression, a view of the human body and all of its possibilities and constrictions. In Garber’s work, I am in awe of the way she combines materials and perspective to convey a sense of the lived experiences of motherhood.
She grew up in New York, New York, and spent two decades as a working artist in Los Angeles. (She currently lives in Kingston, New York.) Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. It has been reviewed extensively in publications such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, among others.
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She studied painting at The Long Island School of The Arts, The Arts Students’ League of New York, and The New York Academy of Art. After moving to Los Angeles, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The California Institute of The Arts.
While continuing to pursue a career as a professional artist, she later returned to school to study nursing after volunteering as an inpatient art instructor at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles.
After earning an associate degree, a bachelor’s, a master’s, and eventually a post-master’s degree in the nursing field, she became a Nurse Practitioner and has worked as a Neonatal Intensive Care RN in Level III NICUs across Southern California, and was a Clinical Nursing Instructor at Keck and LAC/USC Medical Centers.
Garber splits her time between her practice as a professional artist and as a Family Nurse Practitioner, which we all know can’t be easy.
Below, Garber beautifully and thoughtfully answers my questions that attempt to get to the bottom of how a mother, a nurse, and a painter can co-exist in one body.
1) Where is the most unexpected place you’ve found inspiration as a parent?
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I think the most unexpected place was in the simplified colors and shapes in my daughter’s early learning materials. When we lived in Los Angeles, I had a neighbor who had been a kindergarten teacher. Her garage was filled with early learning materials from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and she used to invite us over to look through them and take things to entertain my daughter during the pandemic. The simplicity of the colors and shapes have found their way into my work.
I also found inspiration working as a neonatal intensive nurse for seven years. My job basically consisted of growing fetuses into babies, teaching the mothers how to bond and care for them and emotionally supporting them through this intensely traumatic experience. It gave me a great respect for all aspects of motherhood, and this began finding its way into my work until it eventually took over completely.
2) When you parent your creative self, what form of discipline do you use?
I work when I can, which is usually late at night, from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m., after my daughter is in bed and the chores are done. I work consistently, and try to do even a little bit every night. I learned a trick from the artist Joe Coleman, when I was much younger. Before he was able to live off his painting sales, he drove an NYC cab. He would come home and paint for a designated number of hours every day, and mark them on a calendar. Some days it would be eight hours, some days only two, but keeping track of those hours showed how they really add up over time, and that was encouraging.
It’s a trick I have been doing for 30 years, and I highly recommend it for anyone struggling and feeling like they don’t have enough time to accomplish anything.
It’s about the long game at this stage in my career, and I have the confidence to know that even during periods where the rest of my life is busy with responsibilities, this will ebb and flow and I will get those long periods of work back as my daughter grows older. I do greatly miss those long days in the studio, when I had no responsibilities other than to paint, but that period was filled with other stressors, which felt even more daunting than the stressors and responsibilities of motherhood that I have now.
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Immediately after I gave birth to my daughter, all my self-conscious angst and artistic brooding resolved, and I became a very proactive, pragmatic person. I learned multitasking and efficiency because I no longer had the luxury of endless time to myself. I have to make what will always be an imperfect situation work for me and use it to hone my sense of ingenuity. When I was a single, childless artist, I would paint a show, live off the money from the sales, and hope that the next one did well enough so I could pay the rent.
I would exhaust myself leading up to the next show because the uncertainty of my financial future was always at stake. I really felt this affected the creative process.
I don’t have those financial stressors anymore, but when you have a young child, their needs come first, and it takes sacrifices. I watched a documentary on Alice Neel where they interviewed her adult children. You could see the pain in their eyes as they talked about what it was like growing up with a mother who virtually ignored and neglected their needs as children because she was concentrating on her work.
I vowed that there was no way in hell, if I brought a child into the world, that I would be that sort of mother… and I am not. I love my daughter dearly, and will always be there for her needs, and I want to be there as she grows up.
However, I am also a person with creative needs as well, and I need to pursue them to be a fulfilled, whole person. Before I had parental responsibilities, I was a late-night painter, sometimes staying up until dawn. I find that night is a more creative time for me, I enjoy the quiet and the privacy. When I was younger, I lived a very wild existence, but I’ve found becoming a parent has grounded and focused me in more constructive ways.
I’ve learned to value the time I have and have become extremely efficient. I’ve also lost a lot of my self-consciousness in making the work. I can no longer afford to spend days being indecisive in creative decision making, and I think this direct approach benefits the work as a whole. It makes the work stronger.
3) Who are your caregiver-artist inspirations?
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I love the work of Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, Niki de Saint Phalle and Dorothy Iannone. These artists all make work about the intersections of caregiving, living in the female body, and spirituality.
I think motherhood is a sacred experience which connects all women to the timeless thread of the universal feminine experience. It is the most transformative and conscious-altering experience in all humanity, and it’s importance is minimized and undermined in our hyper capitalist society. I want to push the boundaries of exploring this within my own work.
In the contemporary art world, there are things you don’t discuss as a female artist. You are supposed to project an image of being perpetually single, attractive, possibly available and completely devoted to your work. I feel participating in this farce does a grave disservice to female artists and is a rampant form of covert sexism. The general thought is that you must be completely devoted to your career, because this makes financially investing in that career more attractive for both dealers and collectors. No one wants to bet on the horse who is going to take a decade off to be “mommy.”
Alternatively, this doesn’t apply to the male artist, who can have as many children as they want and it’s inferred that they will have a wife behind the scenes doing all the family labor.
Female artists are afraid to go against this convention because it will hurt their career, and since most already live a tenacious financial existence, silence is protective.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was encouraged to downplay my role as a mother because it would make me appear less career-focused. I did the opposite, because I’m a boundary pusher, which in the short-term hurt my career.
I still ethically stand by my choice to be publicly outspoken about juggling motherhood, supporting a family, and maintaining an art career because I think it has helped other peers break this silence. We are all in the same proverbial boat.
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At the age of 36, I experienced an ethical crisis regarding my involvement with the art world. I decided to return to school for nursing after a stint as a volunteer, teaching art to the inpatient residents at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
My art world peers were shocked. I supported myself through nursing school on my painting sales and kept my schooling mostly secret because I was concerned that I would be blacklisted for both having a child and pursuing nursing. And that absolutely happened.
I was dropped by my dealers after I graduated nursing school. I had a one year old and was no longer free to attend art dinners and social events as I had before. It was a tough period, but I bounced back. These experiences radically transformed both my life and the work I was producing.
A decade later, I realize it was the best decision that I ever made because I am no longer completely vulnerable financially, solely relying on my painting sales. I am busy, because now I am a mother, an artist, and a nurse practitioner in family medicine. However, I know that whenever I need to cut back my hours working in medicine to focus on the studio, I can do that.
The studio is my selfish place, where the only caregiving I do is for myself.
It allows me to maintain a balance in my life because both motherhood and medicine are selflessly caregiving activities which can lead to loss of self and caregiver burnout. The studio is where I can be utterly selfish and replenish my sense of self. It’s where I play and leave my responsibilities at the door. I am secure in my art practice because it fulfills an internal need nothing else ever will.
I’m in it for the long game, and if everything goes well, I will drop dead in front of my easel at 105 surrounded by my great grandchildren.
To see more of Garber’s work, visit her site here, and follow her on Instagram here.
I’ll be back soon with another conversation! In the meantime, listen to our latest podcast episode featuring actor/comedian/mother Lauren Lapkus: