Alison Mutha Magazine Article [new] Today
: A contributor who focuses on queer identity, spirituality, and the complexities of building non-traditional families. Prominent Themes in Their Work
There’s a particular kind of quiet that lives in the canyons of Topanga, California. It’s the sound of chaparral brushing against denim, the low hum of a vintage amplifier warming up, and the soft scratch of a charcoal stick on recycled paper. For , 34, that quiet isn’t an absence of noise. It’s a presence. It’s a choice.
“We’ve confused ‘output’ with ‘value,’” she says. “I have a rule: I don’t create anything before 11 a.m. I don’t check my phone until I’ve finished one stupid, useless thing. Draw a snail. Memorize a single line of a poem. Count the number of tiles on your bathroom floor. That’s your real work. The rest is just commerce.” alison mutha magazine article
Born in suburban Maryland to an Indian-American cardiologist and a Jewish folk musician from the Bronx, Mutha grew up in a house where a discussion about the Bohr model of the atom could segue into a Dixieland jazz session. “My father wanted me to be a surgeon,” she laughs. “My mother wanted me to be Joan Baez. They compromised by buying me a secondhand Moog synthesizer and a scalpel. I was the only 12-year-old at the science fair who could dissect a frog and score the procedure in D minor.”
: A featured contributor whose work often delves into the visceral and sometimes uncomfortable aspects of motherhood. Her notable essay, "Not My Newborn’s Mother," examines the psychological and physical experience of a surrogate, detailing the "otherness" felt during the postpartum period and the exhausting nature of newborn care. : A contributor who focuses on queer identity,
The result is her first solo gallery show, “A Kindness of Crows,” opening this November at Regen Projects in Hollywood. The paintings are massive, brooding landscapes where the horizon is always a little crooked. Crows appear in every frame—sometimes as observers, sometimes as the landscape itself. “A group of crows is called a ‘murder,’” she notes. “But I think that’s wrong. When I was out there, they kept me company. They reminded me that solitude isn’t loneliness. It’s just a different frequency.”
For the last decade, Mutha has been the best-kept secret of the Los Angeles underground—a polymath who refuses to be polymathic. “The moment you call yourself a multi-hyphenate,” she says, sipping cold brew from a ceramic mug that looks like it was thrown by a potter who was very angry at the universe, “you stop being an artist and start being a brand. I’d rather just be late to my own dinner party.” For , 34, that quiet isn’t an absence of noise
Photography: Jordan Reed Styling: Marcus Chen
If you are looking for Alison Muth's most widely recognized piece of magazine journalism, the subject is likely .
So she vanished. No Instagram. No newsletter. No fermentation workshops.
While there is no single prominent public figure by the name "Alison Mutha," this likely refers to a 2022 article by Alison Stine