In the fall of 2018, I kept track of what I was doing all day long in a spreadsheet. Each activity I assigned to one of half a dozen different categories, including child care, housework, art practice, and sleep. I picked one week of that time period and during the course of my artist residency at the Women’s Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles, turned it into Timesheet: November 4–10, 2018, a work comprising seven weavings, one representing each day of that week. I wove it during weekly studio hours, on my floor loom that I moved into the space for the exhibition. By giving these ephemeral activities form through my weaving, I have created an analog data visualization of invisible and undervalued domestic labor and transformed it into an artwork with monetary and cultural value.
Broodwork is the ongoing art and design project founded by Iris Anna Regn and Rebecca Niederlander to investigate the interweaving of creative practice and family life. BROODWORK’s multi-faceted approach of talking, blogging, designing, event-making, and curating exists to examine and illuminate, and also to foster an advantageous environment that will in itself stimulate innovation.
Mission: the cross-disciplinary art and design project that names the previously unspoken community of practitioners whose work realized an unexpected perspectival shift after becoming parents. All creative practitioners find themselves at crossroads throughout their life; however, being affected by the specific juncture of practice and family is not generally acknowledged for its true impact. Who would have thought that writing for his son about a bear named Winnie-the-Pooh would catapult the political satirist A. A. Milne from Punch magazine into the stratosphere of literary history. His era’s exception, however, is our rule; the convergence of family and practice is recognized by BROODWORK as a pivotal influence to produce profound and unexpected work. Through its multi-faceted approach—including talking, curating, designing, and blogging--BROODWORK exists to investigate and illuminate, and to foster an advantageous environment that will in itself stimulate innovation. Curatorial installations are a predominant expression of BROODWORK in which Regn and Niederlander work hand-in-hand with creative practitioners to facilitate an entirely new conception of specific works within their practice. All BROODWORK events incorporate participatory elements that foreground the intergenerational and community-building aspects of the project. BROODWORK also collaborates with other organizations to further the discussion of creative practice and family life. Regn and Niederlander act as Family and Practice Advisor for the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, write about interweaving family and practice for the Herman Miller Lifework blog, and design the SUNBLOCK series of family-oriented events for the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.