I met Amy through Sandhurst Cooperative Preschool, Janne’s awesome preschool in Seattle. Her oldest child, two days younger than Janne and obsessed with dragons at the time, was in Janne’s group. Her youngest is about a month older than Willem, although I did not really realize that at the time. Blame the sleep deprivation. Amy grew up in Seattle, and moved back in 2014 from Albuquerque into what I consider the prettiest house I ever visited in Seattle. I got to know her as a devoted mom with – my favorite part- humor. I only found out later that she also draws comics. And not just any comics. Beautiful stories about parenting in all its chaos, laughter and love; sensible stories about personal loss and trauma; and committed stories about politics and, yes, women’s sports. All of them painfully beautiful. This interview is from June, 2018. So, some parts are outdated by now, but definitely not my descriptions of her.
MY THREE WORDS TO DESCRIBE AMY:
HONEST
In an interview with HuffPost, Amy said that she hopes to help exhausted parents by showing them they are not alone. And I am happy to tell her that her comics really help. Her honesty about how hard parenting can be is simply refreshing and the situations she depicts are – oh so – recognizable. As a parent of young children myself, I find it truly comforting to see one is not alone with these feelings of incompetence and frustration. Laughing with Amy’s comics is like laughing at your own moments of misery, probably the best medicine for young parents. With the same honesty, she also addresses other, harder topics, like abuse or the loss of a loved one. Painful, but without a doubt, helpful to a lot of people.
SENSITIVE
Of course, ‘honest’ goes hand in hand with this one. She draws out her personal frustrations and traumas with such sensitivity and hits the right balance every time, a rare gift only the sensitive are given. A while ago, she posted this on facebook:
I know that those who “make it” tend to be thick-skinned extroverts who can work hard on little sleep and aren’t easily overwhelmed by their environment, but sometimes I dream about a world where the highly-sensitive, thin-skinned empaths define our notions of success and set the baseline for “normal” human behavior. (April 5, 2018)
Considering the likes it got, I am clearly not the only one who loved it.
COMMITTED
If you start following Amy – which I strongly recommend, you will start noticing that it is not just about parenting. Amy is committed! She is a big fan of Women’s Sports, promoting them in any way she can, and she is not afraid of politics. Her drawings of for example Jefferson Sessions and Mitch McConnell might look cute but they are poignant as hell! She even has a series titled ‘Comics for Healthcare’. In Dutch, there is this expression which could roughly be translated as: “What fills the heart spills over through the mouth!” I guess in Amy’s case, it should be: “What fills her heart, deserves a comic!”
MY QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
What did you think of the three words I picked for you? Do they correspond with your self-image or not? And if not, which ones would you have picked?
First of all, I’m so flattered by your words about my work! Wow! And, yes, I’d probably pick very similar words to describe myself.
I try really hard to be honest in my work. You know how social media allows people to curate their lives in ways that can look impossibly wonderful from the outside? I hope my comics are the opposite, an antidote of sorts to that phenomenon. I hope my work creates connections with others based on the realities of being a human being.
About commitment: someone once told me that as a creative people, our job is to create. Every single day and even if no one is seeing or reading what we make. So, that’s what I do. I try not to think *too* hard about what I’m making – I just make it, put it out there, and move on. Since returning to comics 3 years ago, I’ve become incredibly disciplined about the time I devote to my work.
Finally, it’s interesting because I think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying NOT to be so sensitive. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been embracing this more and more. Part of this is because I have a really sensitive kid which I think makes him really special. Hearing his observations and watching him interact with the people, animals, and planet around him truly gives me hope about the world. But I also see him struggle to conform, to be more “tough,” and it breaks my heart. I wish we were better at lifting up and listening to people like him.
I know you went to art school and used to be an arts’ teacher. (She is back at it, btw) How and when did you get into art?
I took my first art class in my second year of college and it was *really* hard (I actually went to a Liberal Arts, not an arts’ school). School in general had come fairly easily to me, but learning to make art and then presenting it to a group of professors and peers for critique was really challenging. But I’ve always been someone who tries (not always successfully) to walk towards the things that scare me, so that’s what I did. I spent the rest of college in the art department. I later got my master’s in art education at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. I’m passionate about teaching and that program combined art education with social justice which I loved. That said, I will be paying off those students loans forever.
Do you consider your comics a hobby or a passion? What makes it worth your while? What is most challenging about it?
I get asked this a lot. Honestly, making comics is one of the most important things in the world to me. It’s truly how I make meaning of what I’ve been through and what’s happening in the world around me. I work incredibly hard on each piece, and I’m always striving to get better. That said, none of this makes much money and sometimes I’ll post something and get very few “likes.” So, while I would say making comics is absolutely a passion, does it’s lack of monetary value or public exposure categorize the practice as a “hobby” to the masses? I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel like a hobby to me. It feels like survival.
A lot of your comics are autobiographical and, as such, very personal, which seems brave and hard to do at the same time. Are there topics that you still avoid? Which ones and why? Do you even have complete fictional comics?
Ha! I only have one fictional piece I’ve written – it’s a children’s book that I’m hoping to illustrate by next Fall. When I was little, I loved writing stories and they were always really fantastical. But as an adult, I’ve been drawn to autobiographical work, especially graphic artists like Lynda Barry, Marjane Satrapi, and Alison Bechdel. There was this really painful and gorgeous book called “Becoming Unbecoming” by an artist called Una that just rocked me to the core. It was so heartbreaking and so good.
Barry talks about the fuzziness of autobiography, how what we remember isn’t always what really happened. I’m super interested in this! I find my childhood memory, which feels really clear and detailed, is often full of factual and historical errors. I just write about what I *think* happened.
Have you ever had bad reactions or comments to your comics? How do you deal with it?
Um, a few times. Once, someone commented on a Huffington Post article about my parenting comics that I was a terrible mother and wasn’t appreciating the beauty of children. And there were some criticisms of my comic after Trump was elected that I was depicting assault survivors as weak, as rolling over rather than fighting back. I don’t agree with them but I also think those reactions are pretty tame considering all of my work is on the internet where we often see the very worst of humanity.
Have you ever considered a different career? Which one and why?
No. To be clear, I’ve worked lots of different jobs, often just to pay the bills. Right now, I do freelance design which supplements our income and which I can do on a really flexible schedule.
In terms of a career, sometimes I dream about doing something that would make more money and be less exhausting and all-consuming than teaching or parenting. But I can’t imagine doing anything that didn’t provide an opportunity to work with other people of all ages and backgrounds in hopes of improving the world as we know it.
You are also very much into Women’s Sports? How did you get into them?
Oh man, how much time have you got? I could talk about women’s sports FOREVER.
I’ll give you the short version – supporting women’s sports is a highly enjoyable, subversive political act. Professional female athletes are paid criminally low wages (the minimum salary in the National Women’s Soccer League right now is at an ALL TIME HIGH of $15,700/season). Their sports are rarely, if ever, covered in local and national media outlets. Their games are rarely broadcast on mainstream television. And they are often subject to awful playing conditions that lead to physical injury.
Putting money and energy into these leagues is a direct way of combating forces of sexism and misogyny. And it’s really fun! I grew up playing every sport under the sun. As I got older, I struggled with the often sexist and racist culture around professional sports (hello, NFL). I just couldn’t support leagues that protected those who commit violence against women or treated their players (often players of color) like property for profit. So, as much as I loved watching sports, I gave most of it up. Discovering the world of women’s soccer and basketball has been a dream come true.
How does your average weekday look like? When do you find time to draw?
Every day is different and finding time to draw is a huge challenge – I have far more ideas than I have time to execute. As you likely remember from when Janne was there, my daughter is in preschool only a handful of hours per week without me (I work one day per week there).
I draw or work on design projects every night after the kids are in bed. Two days a week, I have almost 3 hours during the day to work. On those days, I drop off my daughter, walk to a nearby coffee shop, and work for 2.5 hours before I need to walk back to pick her up. Then we run errands, have lunch, and pick up my son from school. Then it’s playing, doing chores/after-school activities, making dinner, and bedtime routines. Sometimes I try to work when my son is at school and my daughter is here but it’s pretty challenging and I always feel guilty about it.
Come September, both kids will be in school full-time and I’m really excited to make more comics and take on more freelance work. I’m giving myself a year to see if that plan is financially viable.
What book(s) are you reading right now?
Too many! I just read Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu to my son which I loved. On my bookshelf right now is So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (almost finished), The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (started), and Tenements, Towers and Trash by Julia Wertz (just picked up from the library). I read just before bed and I’ve been so tired lately, I only get through a few pages.
Have you ever lived abroad? Have you ever considered moving to another country? Which country and why?
Yes! I spent one summer living with a family in Accra, Ghana, and another with a family in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. I also lived for a year in rural Honduras where I worked in an English-immersion school. I love traveling and used to do it way more before I had kids. I once had a savings and I blew it all on plane tickets around the world.
I would love to live with our family in another country for a year or more. Honestly, since the election of Trump, moving to another country is something we talk about a lot. I want to stay here and help make this country a better place, but what is happening is also really scary. I’m really scared about the future of this democracy. We talk about Canada, the UK, Australia. Do you have room in your house? Maybe we’ll move in with you!
THANK YOU, AMY! And I am sorry it took so long.