In my series “Nourishing Flourishes,” florals and food playfully exaggerate the tension between homemaking and artmaking. While the viral tradwives of the internet serve their families only the best, I am interested in preparing food on the page... instead of in the kitchen. Art as resistance to “women’s work” manifests in two mediums—essay and collage. I am a self-taught visual artist and trained writer. My essays are non-narrative, composed in fragments and images, relying heavily on repetition and juxtaposition, gaps and silences, to make meaning. My collages are analog, made with scissors and glue. Material springs from the pages of books, magazines, found objects, and a growing collection of ephemera. Unlike the digital files I create as a writer, when I collage, I make inherently physical objects. I see the tactile nature of these works is evidence of life and creative energy, an imperfect record of days. Since becoming a mother, collage has become my primary creative outlet and a natural extension of my writing practice. I'm interested in text-image combinations and the novel ways their fusion allows interplay between my old standbys—repetition, juxtaposition, gaps, and silences. Even working strictly with images feels familiar because the process of composing mimics the way I write. Motherhood has reoriented my creative impulse, and my collages bear witness to the experience of transformation—its darkness and messiness, alongside the euphoria of becoming new. I am not the same, and with me, my art has changed.