The Ability to Rest: Trust, Care, and Collaboration

Text by Gwen Hoeffgen with Emily Fitzgerald

"To engage in a roundabout way of connecting with people that isn't about any outcome or transaction. It is possible that it can be a counter to a lot of systems of inequity and a useful practice to subvert these more competitive or capitalistic structures." - Emily Fitzgerald

A year ago, during my first year in the MFA program, I planted seeds that grew into friendships, mentorships, and lasting connections. Emily was one of those people who, through only a handful of meetings, became an important presence in my artistic development and helped me see my work more clearly. Now, in my second year, I have found myself returning to relationships that were formed during that first year. Revisiting these connections has become a way of marking time, allowing me to recognize both personal growth and the evolution of relationships.

Emily’s practice also extends beyond the timeframe of any single project. She maintains relationships that begin through artistic collaborations long after the work itself has ended. Reflecting on the past year, I wanted to speak with her about this aspect of her durational practice. Through both art and everyday life, Emily cares for the people around her and helps create spaces of belonging, support, and connection. This feels especially significant in a moment when many social and political systems encourage division and isolation.

We are deeply intertwined with one another, our communities, and the ecosystems that sustain us, even when those connections are not always visible. This interview explores practices of care in art and in life, and what it means to remain connected to one another over time.

Gwen Hoeffgen: I feel like we haven't caught up in so long. It was probably a year ago when we talked during “Directed Studies”, and we haven’t really connected since then. 

Emily Fitzgerald: I know. And so much has happened. I feel like I peripherally heard about all that you're now working on.

Gwen: Yes! Because Dom was your TA and you were working really closely with him, and I'd tell him, “Oh yeah, tell Emily hi for me”. 

I wanted to talk to you because I think care shows up in a multitude of ways in your work, and I’ve been really interested in how care shows up in my practice. I try to lean so much into showing up for people, genuinely loving people, and developing relationships intimately. I've been working individually with someone I met actually through Watershed, which was a connection you started. And I've been just going over to see her regularly. And I guess we’re kind of doing an art project, but it's become more like a friendship. She reminds me of this woman who used to take care of me when I was little; she was almost like a grandmother, and I think I am probably reminding her of someone as well. 

​Emily:  I love that. I love that it started from this little thing, and now it has its own life. There’s more collaboration happening and more possibilities, and it's able to continue to grow. There's this research grant through the Institute on Aging. I want to apply. I applied with my collaborator years ago to do a totally different thing. Because I have all these relationships with all these community organizations like CPAH, and some of them are older and intergenerational, and some of them aren't– This time it will be different. The main feedback from the last time was how this isn't either known qualitative or quantitative research. And I thought that it was artistic research. Right? It's not replicable, but it does have this ripple effect.

Gwen: That's the exact wording I use to talk about these connections!  It's a ripple effect –where you can see all these little connections being made that have potential. Maybe that is something that can be measured in some way. It’s interesting to hear you say that the work isn’t replicable. Sometimes, the way that I’m learning about system changing and structure changing in an artistic way, I think I want it to be replicable. Like KSMoCA’s “how to put a museum in a public school”.  Then it can grow and hopefully produce more ripples. But, I think you’re right. When you’re working with people, I’m learning that it’s nearly impossible to replicate. Even at workshops, I do on a weekly basis. It’s rare that the same structure or framework works consistently– as the group changes, the way I work, and what the work consists of, totally changes. 

Emily: Yeah.  I also think I don't want to make it a formula. Because it doesn’t work that way.

​Gwen: Right! So, I was wondering what you thought about the roles of care in your life– being a mother, a daughter, a teacher, a socially engaged artist. To you, are they separate, or do they bleed into each other?

Emily: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. It is all care work, right? I think of it a lot. We're doing this in an interesting time. I feel very tired in a deep way. So, I think it's an important thing to think about with socially engaged practice, and especially in the way that it sounds like you're doing it. It is so relationship-based. I had a similar kind of friendship that extended past the project, and I kept in touch with her and a lot of people. Even Paul Knauls ,who is someone from the project. With older adults, many of them have passed away, which is really hard. The person you were talking about reminded me of a project I did in grad school when she passed away. Her kids invited me to speak at her memorial, which was so touching, and I felt so sad losing her. There were two people, her and another person that I really connected to through projects, and then life was life, and I didn't feel like I got to put in as much energy into those relationships as I wanted to. So, I would've felt a lot of grief when they passed away anyway, but it was more so because I felt like I didn’t do as well as I wanted to navigate the  balancing of it all. And I don't know if I told you, but my mom had emergency open heart surgery during my first year teaching in the program, at that point, and my kid had just turned three, and my marriage was breaking apart. I ended up going with my kid to help care for my mom as she recovered. So anyway, it's very relatable. It's just a lot. My mom still has a lot of capacity. She is still helpful with my kid, somehow. But she wasn't during that time. But yeah, it feels like there's a lot of output in being a socially engaged artist, educator, parent, and child of aging parents .

Gwen: I am so impressed with how parents take on these additional roles. I am very much feeling like I barely have myself together, and it’s hard to imagine keeping up with a kid on top of that. The capacity to love and care, I do believe, is truly endless, but it’s probably about balance, too, or maybe about also fulfilling your own needs. 

I was also wondering how you use care in your work as a subject versus a method or in practice.

Emily: Yeah. It's interesting that you're asking that because I just wrote something about this for this book contribution recently. I feel like for me care is a subject, a method, and a philosophy, and those things are interwoven. It feels like when I think about collaboration, I think about care. And when I think about care, I think about collaboration, and that looks really different depending on what it is. I've been working on a photo project with my kiddo. It's about single parenting and raising a child, considering care work and labor and gender expression, and the ways that we create alternative family structures and communities as  networks of care. It is sort of an expanded documentary project. It's an extension, I would say, of a larger project I've been working on since we had directed studies last fall. I'm not sure if I've shared this with you, but I probably did. The project is on the spectrum of reproductive experiences. My collaborator, Molly Sherman, and I are making an artist’s book right now. We've been looking at so many images from the Flickr archive– from people's personal archives as well as institutional archives associated with Flickr Commons. We had a Flickr Foundation Fellowship to do this research. So much of that work is about care in terms of the content and subject matter of parenthood, black maternal health, pregnancy loss, abortion, and all reproductive care across the spectrum. But also, I think that our methodology– the way we were considering images– has been a process of care. I think the way I think about photo ethics and care is integrated too. We only used images that had a Creative Commons license, so they were available for this type of use, and we contacted everyone, regardless of the license, to inquire about the usage because of the sensitive and personal subject matter in the images. For the selection and categorization of images was a series of decisions that felt like running through all these filters with the awareness of our own identities and how those shape how we view archives. So there were filters, but also our questions around our particular lenses and identities that guide how we're curating this collection. 

And then what I was writing about, too, is about Molly and my relationship. We've been collaborators for like 12 or 13 years now. So, it's a friendship, and  it's also an artist collaboration. You know, it's all these things, but we're also both parents and educators, so the way that we care for each other is within our collaboration and our friendship.  As I was writing about this, I was also looking at the definition of friendship and wondering if that is my definition. Care feels like such a broad term. So what does it mean to really care for someone, and when is it sort of like a cycle of reciprocity versus so much output? And what does that look like in collaborative relationships, or like in a parent-child relationship, or in a different intergenerational relationship, or with a group? I think there's something about the trust in it. At least with my artist/ collaborator relationship. I have trust in her values, her friendship, her  work, and her  aesthetics, with all these things. And then being able to rest in that, to the point of levity or ease. So, there is something that's so generative about having a main artistic collaborator, in thinking about care and collaboration. 

Gwen: I have been learning about that, having Dom as my main collaborator. It’s funny– I hadn't even thought about that aspect of care in my practice, but that is an incredibly huge part of my work at this point. I think Dom and I are really lucky that we are aligned in so many ways value-wise. I don’t think that always happens with relationships or collaborations. But also, because we are in a relationship where we can be honest with each other, knowing that we aren’t being judged by each other, we can have conversations that are hard, or easy, or generative. Because there is care in a relationship, we can have care in conversation and care in the collaboration. I think that does really say something about trust in collaborators and friendships, too.

Emily: Yeah, it's maybe messy. And I do think it's important to think about if it's not someone that you're already in a relationship with. Also, if there's any type of power dynamic. And then, what does care look like? And then, as a methodology, how can it be utilized in a durational project that is not indefinite? And what are the ethics around that? It is possible that it can be a counter to a lot of systems of inequity and a useful practice to subvert these more competitive or capitalistic structures. To engage in a roundabout way of connecting with people that isn't about any outcome or transaction. But it is complicated, and those pieces are kind of overlapping and not clear. And I think for me, care is a practice and a theme. It's probably only been maybe five or seven years since I identified it as a theme in my work, even though it was a theme in my work before that, but I have really only identified it as a theme since I became a parent. Before I was a parent, I was doing caretaking for my grandma, and it was more organic, rather than “oh, now I'm gonna do work about care”. And then I think there are labor ethics that I am interested in that very much clearly pertain to parenthood. Particularly as a single-parent and feminist artist. I thought about that a lot before my partner and I separated, and that's when the labor ethics themes started coming up more. How labor ethics and patriarchy  apply to the workplace, but also domestic labor, which I think does get replicated within institutions. I think it's probably an important time for us to consider those things. 

Emily: What are you thinking about in terms of care as a theme? 

Gwen: I guess I am thinking more about systems of care and how they operate. I’m thinking about those who work in care– caregivers, healthcare workers, parental carers. I think it is an interesting thing to do for “work”. I am also thinking about the normalized structures of elder care. There is this project, I believe it is in New York City, where young adults are paired to live with older adults for cheaper rent. 

And then I am also thinking about the benefits of practicing care. I think it’s not only something that is beneficial to the person being cared for, but also gives something to the carer. I am also thinking about my own parents, too, and our relationship. And then I think about socially engaged work and wonder about my own boundaries separating art and life when thinking about care. 

Emily: I think there are times when it doesn't have to be an art project. But I was listening to you at the beginning talk about your parents, and actually, that could be supportive. There have been times when it has been helpful for me to formalize a particular situation as an art project and others where it is just life and relationships and not art, or both. At points, making something a  project can actually make the time or the relationship or whatever feel more generative and supportive. So maybe it's also just like being okay with making that decision and distinction for yourself. 

The way we make work as social practice artists is so different. The integration of art in life, which I think adds more possibilities, but also more confusion, I mean, I took Atlas to the student drag show last night. We dressed up. He’s five, and I feel like it’s important to explore gender and his pronouns. Sometimes he goes by “she/her” with me and then “he/him” with his dad. I've been really trying to bring threads of art and culture and performance, so that the “life” things, like gardening and cooking, are not far from the kids’ space over there, you know. 

And then there is that life part connecting with social practice. It feels slippery to me right now. I don’t feel like I’ve fully figured it out. I think that's a little bit of a  challenge for me– with projects and care work, everything feels kind of disparate. So, you drive to Tigard, and then go to the senior center, and then you pick up your kid from school, and then you are teaching or whatever. It is all over the place and so scheduled. One of my questions is, if life and art are interconnected, how do I make it more integrated in a way that's supportive?

Gwen: That makes me think of the question about roles from earlier, and the separation of all of the parts of a person. And with people as well, I feel like people are also isolated from each other in that, too. I’m also thinking a lot about what it means to be accountable for each other in community, and genuinely knowing your neighbors.

Emily: I do feel like that's something that has been so generative and supportive for me in the last few years of single parenting, is having that community. In the way that has been  generative in terms of art in the past, but is now so  useful for parenting. People stop by, and I hand my kid over the fence to our neighbors. He loves them, and they have a puppy right now that wants to visit every day. And the other neighbors– there’s an older woman who is my other neighbor, and he'll run outside when he sees her come home. And so I think I do have some of that. It's just not as  organized   or consistent, and we are so busy. Then I also think I'm teaching, I'm parenting, the labor pieces are separate in some way. If the labor pieces could be more integrated, then that would be nice. 

Gwen: I love hearing you talk about this community web you have, especially in relation to care with Atlas. I think about the webs of community that Dom and I are creating out here, too. For me, I feel like once I start a “project,” I never stop it. Or, maybe sometimes the project ends, but the relationships never stop. And then from those relationships, more projects happen. I think it is really beautiful, and I really love this aspect of the work, but it does make me consider my time more now, and what I am capable of. 

Emily: You're a human. So at some point, you just can't hold it all. Especially with the work that is very care-based and relationship-based, those things take so much energy and time. There is also a level of depth and commitment, and like you said, trust, either with your artistic collaborators or the participants. Then once you build that, it can be hard for it to stop. Because there is momentum there. I think it's really complicated. I'm someone who has had friends for like 20, 30 years, and then if you are always making more, how do you sustain all those important relationships? We only have so much capacity. It makes reciprocity feel like such an important component of making work and relationships in general.

Gwen:  For me, it’s been really nice having this year marker come up. This time last year was when I started working with people who really impacted me, like Watershed, which started a year ago. And If We Could Talk also started being developed around this time last year. Also working with Street Roots, which has been an almost a year-long collaboration at this point. So, it’s cool for me to step back and think about how far these relationships have come within a year-long span, and also how far the projects have come. It’s just really cool to me. I don’t know, it’s difficult to describe, I think. 

Emily: Yeah, that's a little bit like what having a kid is like, 'cause you're like, oh my a year ago you were a completely different age. That is a fourth of your whole life. But yeah, there is something about time and having that as a reference point. I think time does matter. This work is time-based.

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Emily Fitzgerald is a socially-engaged artist, photographer, storyteller, and educator. Through her work, she investigates what it means to collectively tell a story, equally prioritize the relational and the aesthetic, collaboratively make conceptual and visual decisions, and co-author a body of work with the 'subject.' Her work is responsive, participatory, and site-specific. Emily brings large-scale art installations into non-traditional, public, and unexpected places in order to deepen our understanding and reframe our ways of relating to one another. She is the co-founder of MATTER gallery and Works Progress Agency. Emily is an assistant professor in photography in the School of Art + Design at Portland State University.

Gwen Hoeffgen is a visual and social practice artist who investigates the physicality of emotional experiences, and how those experiences live within the body waiting to be released. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she worked as a social worker in the mental health, addiction, and cognitive health fields, and then received her MA in Drawing at Paris College of Art. Currently, as an Art and Social Practice MFA student at Portland State University, she uses mediums of painting, drawing, photography, sound, and conversation to explore how we find stories within pieces, creases, breaks, and bends.