Child Raising and Art Making? These Iowans Do It All—Together

At an opening art reception, interdisciplinary artist Catherine Reinhart wandered about. She had a piece in the show, hosted at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Ames, Iowa.

At the time, years ago, Reinhart’s baby bump was showing. A stranger noticed.

“She comes up to me and she goes, ‘I’m pregnant, too! How do you do this? How do you make art and have a kid?’” Reinhart remembers. “And so, we were like, ‘I don’t know how we do this. Do we do this together?’”

Their answer was—and still is—yes. By 2021, both women became involved with the Iowa Artist/Mother Collective, which Reinhart founded. The collective is part of a larger network of groups meant to support one another throughout artmaking while caregiving. It can be a feat.

Members of the Iowa Artist/Mother Collective at their Octagon Center for the Arts show.

“Motherhood can be very vulnerable and raw and lonely. Carving out a place for people to be that way, together, is so valuable,” Reinhart says. “Our politics don’t support that. Our corporations don’t support that. Our health system doesn’t support women very well, either. But we have always shown up for each other.”

Several dozen statewide members share book recommendations or upcoming grants in a group chat, send work and progress with one another, and exchange ideas and support. It’s all free, low-barrier, and casually egalitarian. They meet up a couple of times a year, sometimes for exhibitions.

The collective’s current traveling exhibition is Elusive Balance. It’s at that very same Octagon Center, now with kid-friendly programming times.

The group exhibition is highly varied in medium and backgrounds—from ages to motherhood stages. The collective calls the work at- large a sewing of “rest and productivity, contentment and overwhelm, stability and transition, responsibility and absurdity/play, and societal expectations vs. personal intuition.”

Elusive Balance pieces on display.

Iowa Artist/Mother Collective members displayed their work at Public Space One.

Elusive Balance pieces on display.

People check out works by Iowa Artist/Mother Collective members at the Octagon Center for the Arts.

“It’s this negotiation between these different roles that you’re navigating,” Reinhart says. “I literally get so proud of the people in this collective because they are making bananas amazing work in their basements in like 20 minutes of nap time.”

It’s a sentiment many people—mothers or not, Iowans or not—can understand. The times are fast paced. Consuming. Demanding. Scary, even, Reinhart says. Add parenting and an art practice on top of that, and support becomes essential to survival. It’s just a matter of interconnection.

“It makes me excited to think, ‘Where are all the other artists?’ There’s more out there in these little towns in Iowa,” Reinhart says. “Where are you? And can you find us? Can we find you?”