Sarah Harrelson

Cover of How to Start by Jodi Kantor. All images courtesy of Little, Brown and Company. With the publication of How to Start, New York Times writer and author Jodi Kantor turns her attention from her high-stakes investigative work to where it all began: the fumbling, tentative start of a career. Today, as a growing proportion of the workforce is shaped or made redundant by automation, a new kind of professional loneliness—perhaps even hopelessness—has set in.

The question of how women make art while raising children is not new, but it has never been more charged. As the structures that once promised support continue to shift, and the pressure to perform productivity—in the studio, at home, everywhere at once—reaches a fever pitch, four artists share something more vital than advice: a dose of honesty.

Tim Blum. Photography by Brad Torchia. When the Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe opened in 1994, its founders—two foul-mouthed surfer bros with very strong opinions about art—had a grand total of $25,000 to their names. It was enough to cover one year of rent and little else. Yet Tim Blum and Jeff Poe went on to build one of the most influential galleries in the United States, fostering the careers of then-unknown stars like Mark Grotjahn, Henry Taylor, and Yoshitomo Nara.