The idea of Together sounded so beautiful.   

My excitement toward the show was that both of my most loved identities, being artist and mom, were about to come together.  

Once they started to intersect, I could not believe how hard it got. I was really judgy about my children’s art pieces, I kept worrying about quality and timeline. And my mind was in kind of chaos with this.  

I started to trick my kids into making art, so they will not feel self-conscious about “showing” and I was secretly curating their making. All these things I have never done.   

As a mom, I loved all of my children’s art til Together art pieces were started to be made in our house. I never even held a thought like, “ahhhhh, wow, that is, huh, like, not… good… it looks ugly,” but once their work was going to the museum, I started to have a lot of those types of thoughts. I think these thoughts are something I have as an artist.  I always have audiences and relationships between my message and audience perception, and that leads me to have very critical minds towards the art that I create. Also, I am not much of a visual artist myself, so I was not sure how to lead art pieces that were going to hang. Or I just could not put myself in making behavioral art pieces with my children.   

As Atom was making a piece, he started to worry about the “look” to his piece; he is usually a very free art maker, but he started to control his elements of lines, colors, concept and theme. The more he controlled the less he was satisfied, it almost looks like he was more confused as to why he was making art. It was interesting to me to watch him go through the same struggle I always go through as an artist, and it led him to say, “I don’t want to show my work.” I told him “I think your piece is natural and amazing, I want to show the world your piece.” He ended up saying “whatever.” I am not sure how I feel about that… but I was like, “I would take whatever as YES at this point, we are running out of time!!!”   

Yukiko on the other hand, free as a bird in the sky. Loving all of the art making time with me, she just produces and produces. I got envious feelings towards her, “gosh how can she make so much art without judging anything?!” Also, I started to judge her work as what is good work and what is not. Like I was thinking, “gosh, how can she make this composition, it is not dynamic at all…” I could not believe I was thinking that towards 3 years old. But what started to happen at our house with Yukiko’s overproduction was a series of exhibitions she curated herself. She would put up about 5-7 pieces on the wall in 1 line and say, “Look mama, I put my art in the museum” She even gave us artists to talk about each piece. Children are super observant, and somehow the experience of making a piece for Together brought an artists out of Yukiko that I did not know before.   

The first time I heard about Together I did not really think of myself to make anything; I felt that I should be in the shadow and make sure all the spotlights are on children, but after a couple times meeting up with parents artists I started to realize that it is about how my mom identity meets artist identity and then I decided to put Japanese traditional Sashiko pattern sewn into their drawing, as it is that care and love I always want to give to my children. What I do as a mother is give the space for children to be them, but at the same time, give the moment of guidance. I am from Japan, and I struggle a lot to keep Japanese culture and heritage to my children as I am raising them in the USA. So, the Sashiko piece I gave to them is like a little wish. For Atom, I gave the wave pattern so that he can be like an ocean, wide and peaceful mind so that he does not need to judge something that is external. For Yukiko, I gave the seven treasures pattern, which symbolizes roundness and abundance. That is what she taught me in the process of nonjudgmental art making, I want her to keep it forever. I hesitated to put something over their art and change it, but it was that beautiful chaotic mind of wanting to be mom and artist that created these pieces. After going through making pieces for Together with Atom and Yukiko, I am in a deeper understanding of the richness of both identities and how much I care for them. I’m not sure how often they should clearly overwrap and intersect but I now know that they are always intersecting and influencing both spheres. It is just like Together.