By: E.H Long
Hivemind Creative Co-Op is finally ready to unveil our latest anthology “Mother!” This project is a 32 page collection of stories about motherhood from working creative moms in the art industry. We sat down with Hivemind Creative Director and cover artist N. Celeste Snyder to talk about the project and the behind the scenes work that went into building out this anthology.
Hello! Thank you for sitting down this morning with your team! We’ve been working together a lot over the last year. We know you pretty well, but how about you tell us a little about yourself for those who might be meeting you for the first time.
-Sure! So I am Celeste, I’ve been a professional illustrator since 2009, so about 17 years. I studied illustration at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (RIP) with the intention to do comics and sequential art primarily. I was born on the East Coast and spent most of my formative years in Philly or the Jersey shore before moving out to Colorado. I’ve been here for…. *pff* 16? Years? I think it’s about that. It was supposed to be a temporary stop on the way to moving to California, haha, but I guess things changed!
Really? What kept you in Colorado?
-I mean, for a long time I was kind of desperate to get out of here, haha. I don’t know, I think I have a bit of a restless heart in that way. But I also have a romantic heart and I met my partner here and he had to stay here so that’s what I committed to do. I get homesick sometimes for Philly, my people there, the ocean. But we try to visit when we can, and over time I have found things that really fit for me here. Like the tempo is just a lot slower, people are a lot quieter and softer, the only people I have met here that care if you are on time are transplants from the east coast, haha. And as a chronically late person that really works for me! We recently started discussing other living options and it’s honestly been hard to commit, which I never thought would be the case. It’s extremely expensive so it’s hard to live here in that way, but every morning I get mountains majesty out my front door and my mental health has improved a lot in terms of anxiety because of that slower pace.
You brought up your family so that kind of circles us back to the topic at hand, “Mother!” You are the cover artist on this book as well as the creative director behind Hivemind as a whole, what brought you to a project like this?
-So my main identity for almost a decade now has been “mom.” I don’t think I was ever naive enough to think becoming a parent wasn’t going to change my life, that’s obvious, it’s supposed to. But once I was on the other side I was surprised in the way things changed and surprised how it was affecting some of my peers who were making this transition at the same time. I used to live a very “punk rock” lifestyle. I lived in a lot of housing communes and anarchist co-ops. I wanted a bit more of a conventional life (just a bit!) when it came to domestic life, but not all my friends looked for that and they were suddenly cut off in a lot of ways when they entered parenthood. It’s harder to find housing in general and that was definitely true for that community. I watched a lot of friends struggle and it was so surprising because that community had always been all about mutual aid, but having that extend to parents and mothers particularly just wasn’t happening. Then there was the personal changes in friendships. I put it to one of my friends who became a new parent that you really know what you mean to people when you become -slightly- inconvenient. When I became a mom I just couldn’t go out as much and I couldn’t go to people as much, I needed people to come to me sometimes too. And I definitely couldn’t stay out super late at the bar every other night anymore. I felt like we were all kind of in that same boat parent or not, but just that slight change was enough for relationships to just fizzle. I had this robust friendship group and suddenly it was just gone and I knew I wasn’t the only person experiencing that because my friends that had become parents were reporting the same thing, feeling the same kind of salty I was and also the extreme isolation that was suddenly thrust on us. So that was kind of the personal struggle with motherhood but it led to other things that came more from the observable.
Professionally, I saw a lot of my peers enter motherhood and they would disappear from the creative sphere entirely and some never came back. Like putting a pause on a creative career, where tastes can play a huge role in the jobs you get, can be really detrimental and it was hard to bounce back from. The world continues to move, it does not care about your maternity leave. And that was hard to see. It was hard to see peers go through hardships like pregnancy and child loss and kind of be left twisting in the wind, because we don’t traditionally get a benefits package for this type of work. There was suddenly just less of us, some amazing voices in art just fading away because of all of the above you know? And I had one experience that really cemented this as something I wanted to tackle. I went in for an in house job interview, and it was a slam dunk. I had the availability in spades, I had been doing that kind of work for about 5 or 6 years at that time, I had the portfolio and skills. I even lived super close. On paper there was not a reason I shouldn’t have gotten this job. But I went in and interviewed like a man. I talked about wanting a family as an asset. I wanted to provide a good life, I wanted a family and that meant I needed a good and steady income so I would be committed to that position. And that’s how my husband interviewed. Like he always used the family as a reason he was a good and loyal worker and it always was seen as a good thing. But the people at this shop they saw “future maternity leave” “will call out if kids are sick” “will be loyal to family over the company” and there is…-a lot- wrong with that line of thinking. Like Fathers are also committed to their families and might need to take time off for that and just assuming it all falls on the “mom” side of the equation is terrible on its face, but confronting this very typical viewpoint was jarring. I mean, not to brag on myself, but up until that point if I never interviewed for a job I wasn’t offered. And that switch was very noticeable to me and it always came down to “we would rather take the single person who we assume has no obligations or outside life” and if its happening to me there is no way it’s not happening to someone else.
The whole point of Hivemind is to get people opportunities so I wanted to create that space to kind of balance out that experience. Well that was a long answer sorry!!!
No, no! It’s fine! It’s a big topic! So you saw a need and wanted to address it.
-Yes! And I hope to be able to continue to do that with other projects, not just for this community but others and everyone. It’s sad that there is less art in the world to me as people have to walk away from it because it doesn’t pay enough or often.
So let’s talk about the cover! That’s the whole reason we sat down as it’s cover reveal day!
-Yay!
What inspired you with this piece?
-Well, I am the creative direction behind the whole project and I didn’t want to approach motherhood in a soft way. It’s actually very violent in a lot of ways. The birthing process, the grief that comes along with it. Like for all the joy and magic you get, you pay it in blood. Which I guess also makes it kind of spiritual. So a lot of the visuals I was falling towards were kind of messy and aggressive and loud. Then when I am creating an anthology cover, I am a bit literal and I want to represent everyone that worked on the book, so I am always thinking of how I am going to approach that.
I ended up getting this vision in my head of a Norman Rockwell painting. Like he is the OG, right? And he captured this Americana…this slice of life in his work that is kind of unmatched. And I remembered this painting he did of a mother serving her family food and it kind of encapsulated the ideal of motherhood to me. But when I went to look for the painting, I realized I was conflating things and it didn’t actually exist! So I pulled the actual painting I was thinking of, because I still wanted to pay the homage, I think the Rockwell homage in comics is a classic. But the way i saw the finished piece was slices of different realities of motherhood laying on top of each other and the ripped paper approach made it feel more aggressive to match where i felt we were going to take things, especially having a rip go through the mother’s eyes because it’s like an erasure of identity. That creates a “this could be any mother” feeling but also touches on a very real experience with motherhood. So that was the genesis of the idea and as the completed works came in from the artists, I used their realities as reference for each strip so they are all represented on the cover.
Wow, so you are thinking pretty deeply about it?
-Always! Haha. My cigars are never just cigars and I am kind of a lunatic. I love getting into the meat of things, so even giving me a platform to talk is probably a mistake!
So all the stories are represented on the cover. How did you select this crop of artists?
-When we agreed to move forward with this idea, we knew the selection pool was going to be smaller, so we only planned to take maybe four stories. And that judgement was right, the submission pool was small. And I think I have said this a million times in this experience but DON’T LIE TO YOUR ART DIRECTOR. Of the submissions we got, at least a 3rd were cis men lying and pretending to be moms and it was easily fact checked, or they didn’t read the requirements and just submitted anyway asking to be paired with someone. And that’s frustrating, don’t do that. The artists and writers that chose that path are not going to be working with us in the future, especially because if they would have gotten past the vetting, you would have taken a place specifically designed for working moms to combat all of the above!
But in the end, we had a very special few make it to the last round and we only had to turn down one. The one we had to pass on was a son who was illustrating the stories of his mom and it was quite lovely, but it needed more time to cook. I was sad to let it go because it touched on a very specific stage of motherhood. But the final roster ended up being Aja Major, Eliushi, Olivia Williams and Leeta Rail. Everyone’s work stylistically is so different, which is a huge goal for me. I want each story to feel really distinct and I want to showcase styles that are out of the norm as much as I can. But it wasn’t just the artwork, but the mood and writing of each piece. They each cover a different stage in motherhood and they don’t shy away from messy stuff.
Do you have a favorite?
-Haha, no! That’s a cardinal rule of motherhood! No favorites! And seriously, I have really strong creatives here. Like the work is out of control, so professional. I am obsessed with everyone in this book. I know Olivia from conventions and I was dying to collab with her, so this was amazing on that end and she made such a beautiful story. It was also kismet in a way because she just became a mom! Then Eli. Eli is brand new to me on this project, but she is so committed to the craft. Super ambitious, I see her all over the place looking not just for paid work, but work that she thinks will make her better. And she’s already on a high level so that’s a dangerous person. That’s someone who is coming for the jobs, so if you want to compete, you have to get on that level, haha. Then Aja, I actually reached out to Aja directly when I got her submission because she had some insane credits on her resume and I was like “what on earth are you doing down here with the indie crowd?!” I had to ask her if she was sure! But the work was so good. I feel so lucky that all these creators have trusted me and wanted to do this, because it is a risk. And there’s so many projects out there asking you to work for nothing, it’s exhausting, so it’s hard to put faith in getting paid on a kickstarter project.
So the Kickstarter! That is in prelaunch, when are we going live?
-We are trying to do a good lead up. As we are still kind of brand new as a concept, getting our last title wrapped up had a lot of unexpected surprises and that affected some of our planning. We originally wanted to launch this -before- Mother’s Day but alas! So I think we are going to launch at the end of May and run for 30 days, but you have to follow the campaign! If you get on the kickstarter page it has a little button that says “notify me at launch” and you have to click that!
Are there any other surprises in store for “Mother!” We should be looking out for?
-Absolutely! So again, to sing the praises of my creatives we have exclusive alternative covers from Eliushi and Aja Major. Each one ties directly to their story. They are with our design team now getting title treatments and those alternative covers are only available through the kickstarter. If you try to snag this book later at a convention or online, you’ll only get my cover, so if one of those speaks to you, don’t hesitate!
Is there anything else on the horizon for Hivemind?
-Oh absolutely! Our next project is going to be horror based and there are no special requirements there, so it’s completely open to everyone and it will be longer. We are thinking about 7 stories with a through line narrative to connect them. I am so excited about that one because it’s the first collab I really wanted to do. And internally, our creatives have been really excited about it and kind of anxiously awaiting. Then after that, we are thinking about “Prism II” next year. People still need that hopeful vision that we wanted to put out with “Prism” and we had so many great submissions that we already have two lined up. And I really love seeing the vignettes that people come up with there. I am also hoping at that point, I can be a little more back end. I do a lot of the extra creative work just because I am free labor, I would much rather have the funds to pay more and other creatives to add some of that to these books. So I am hoping that as we enter year two we will have the reputation enough to know we can pull in a higher kickstarter amount. And just like PBS we can only do it with viewers like you! Maybe I’ll make tote bags too!
Haha!
-You need the totes! How else do you carry all the books!
Ok! Thanks again for taking the time to have, what is this a fireside chat?
-A fireside text exchange at 6:30 am! Thank you for coming to do it! Thanks all around!
So you can follow “Mother!” Now on kickstarter and be ready to donate at the end of May! And please stay tuned by following Hivemind on instagram, threads, Bluesky and TikTok and find out all the latest updates on new projects and plans for the Co-Op!
Hivemind Creative Co-Op 
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