Five Rules for Artistic Integrity for RULES TO LIVE BY Zine (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
As a mother, my priority isn’t to be liked by my children. I want to be liked by them, and I hope that hundreds of moons from now, when they don’t have to call or visit or care, they still choose to—but it isn’t a need, the way their safety or ability to respect themselves is.
My actions don’t waver. They march to the tune of my priorities, even as my heart falters—even as my mind, alert to my own fallibility, nicks me like a sharpened blade. Ten years from now, when they have friendships and interests and independence, will my children still want to be near me?
Yesterday, N and I sit outside for hours and draw: first, me on my iPad, working on final drawings for Dear Library and N in her sketchbook, working on self-portraits; then me, in my sketchbook, working on my diary comics and N on my iPad, experimenting with different brushes. Then: both of us together, concrete under our knees, squished together on the old, emerald bedsheet used to protect the porch.
It’s quiet between us. Our work is important and we take it seriously. It is no small task turning a large cardboard box into a rocket. After some time, N breaks the silence. “Mama, you draw me and I’ll draw you,” she says, and I agree. I choose neon yellow, she chooses blue. I draw her sweet face, she draws my topknot. “I like listening to nature’s music,” N says. “And did you notice that breeze? I like drawing with you, mama. I like when it’s just us.”
I wish I were more like the earth, who rolls along on her axis and grows her great trees and recycles her sweet air and demands nothing—not to be loved, not even to be liked, in return. I don’t know what life will be ten years from now. I don’t know who my children will become, or whether I’ll have found my road towards self-actualization. Lately, it feels like I’ve only taken wrong turns.
Still, I am aware enough to recognize love when it’s in front of me. In this moment, it is here, on this porch. It is in this child who once lived in the belly of her mother, and upon her escape, grew into her own person who can also feel and express love. It is in her valuing of birdsong, a fresh sketchbook, and, for now, time alone with her mama.
TUESDAY
An image of Rules to Live By, a risograph zine (2025)
I was honored to contribute to the Rules to Live By zine organized by Carolyn Yoo, which is a collection of creative manifestos written by 18 fellow artists: Coleen Baik, Dan Blank, Anna Brones, Lian Cho, Kristen Drozdowski, Kelcey Ervick, Petya K. Grady, amelia hruby, Nishant Jain, Adam Ming, Jenna Park, Michelle Pellizzon Lipsitz, Beth Spencer, Nina Veteto, Mitchell Volk, and Seth Werkheiser.
I contributed my 5 Rules for Artistic Integrity, which is something I’ve considered more deeply over the past few years as I’ve felt the consequences of living as a working artist in the age of social media:
5 Rules for Artistic Integrity by Meera Lee Patel, as part of the Rules to Live Byzine (2025)
The zine was printed, assembled, and bound by hand. Carolyn generously wrote about her entire process for making this zine, including the inspiration behind it, and several contributors wrote about their own experiences with this project:
Dan Blank wrote about 5 Rules for Sharing Your Creative Voice
Kelcey Ervick wrote about 5 Rules for Dreaming
Nishant Jain wrote about 5 Rules for Making Sneaky Art of Your World
Kristen Drozdowski wrote about 5 Rules for Creative Authenticity
Mitchell Volk wrote about 5 Rules for Collaborating with Yourself (and made an amazing GIF cycling through all the pages of the zine!)
Many thanks to Carolyn for including me in this thoughtful project which was a joy to consider and illustrate.
WEDNESDAY
I was pleased to see How it Feels to Find Yourself awarded in theSkimm’s 2025 GOOD FOR YOU AWARDS as the best book for self-discovery.
I finished reading We Do Not Part by Han Kang; I started listening to Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver; I started re-reading—with a new appreciation for the beautiful writing—Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.
I’m over my own heels for Japanese illustrator Rokuro Taniuchi’s work, which is difficult to find. I’d love to own a copy of Taniuchi Rokuro Gensouki (Shinshindo, 1981) one day.
THURSDAY
Portraits of N and Mama (Mother’s Day 2025)
FRIDAY
We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness.
She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Daughter, where did you get all that goddess?
Her eyes are Neruda's two dark pools at twilight.
Sometimes she's a stranger in my home because I hadn't imagined her.
Who will her daughter be?
She and I are the gradual ebb of my mother's darkness.
I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open.
Her surface is a deflection is why.
Harm on her, harm on us all.
Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.
—The Daughter by Carmen Gimenez Smith
See you next week!
xx,
M
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