“Something drew us to this house. After a year of looking all over Brooklyn, Westchester, Connecticut, Upstate New York, even Berkeley, we both fell hard for this place the second we walked in. Since then, we have learned about several insane coincidences linking us to the house and town.”

“We were in Williamsburg before. The change has been wonderful. We are lucky to be able to go back and forth, but a bit of distance—and lots of green—has renewed my love for NYC.”

Even the staircase has personality.

Molly wears an Electric Feathers jumpsuit, on top of a pink A Détacher onesie, and thrift shop earrings. Isadora wears a hand-me-down dress and Adidas socks. Eleanor wears a Petit Bateau tank and skirt made by Molly.

“You have to like it a lot.”

“Maybe…spare maximalism?”

Little music-lover, Isa.

“Definitely corralled! Also, continual hard edits. It helps that much of our furniture doubles as toys.”

“The noodles were inspired by a need for a sofa without flame retardants, made in the USA, completely snuggly and cozy, kid-friendly, adult-friendly, a fantastic object in and of itself, which could work well in the very small space we lived in at the time. I started making them around 5-6 years ago when Eleanor was an infant.”

“You mean the Tit Pendants! Oh, everyone should get one of these just to experience the hilarity of the installation process. Our electrician brought his teenage son and they were both snickering and red in the face the whole time. These are a collaboration between me and my beloved childhood nanny, the incredible glass artist Melodie Beylik. She used to take me to her studio with her when I was around 4-6 years old. We reconnected a couple of years ago. She had made these wonderful small tit teacups, or ‘teat-cups’ as I like to call them, and those inspired me to create the tit pendants. I said, hmmmmm, just how big can these be? We worked together on the design and Melodie made them in her shop in Berkeley. They are hand-blown and are meant as a gentle reminder of the radical power of womanhood, and of our common beginnings at the breast.”

Vivid hues.

“They have separate rooms, but they do sleep in the same room. Bedtime is easier that way. Somehow, they managed to score the best bedroom in the house. It’s the seat of power!”

Thrift-store find earrings.

“The glass portion of this piece is by the phenomenal artist, my stalwart friend Chris Wolston. It originally had a piece of pink neon following the shape of the glass, but we broke it, so I stole this from another public art piece I made just after the election—a rewording of the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty in pink neon.”

“My god, it’s just such a delight—a grueling, painful, grinding, heart-wrenching, humbling, utter, and total delight. I didn’t expect to love it—how will I fit in reading time, etc.?—so it’s been a surprise to be so happy within its constraints.“

“I suppose getting sucked into oblivion, the future of the planet, the political morass, the bizarrely accepted cultural and self-subjugation of women, the school system as it relates to the prison-industrial complex (modern slavery)….my wrinkly neck…just the usual!”

Plant life, everywhere.

“Our older one is Isadora Raven Gallagher. Isadora was after my great grandmother, Gallagher is my maiden name (now my middle name), and Raven was for my husband Everard’s mother, whose name is Merle, which means blackbird. Ravens are the stewards or go-betweens of the physical and metaphysical world, and that is very much Isa and her grandmother. My youngest daughter is Eleanor Wolf. Wolf is my great grandmother’s maiden name, and Wolves and Ravens have a special symbiotic relationship in nature. The raven leads the wolf to the kill, then shares in the spoils.”

“Isa is finding her voice, she is into composing and singing, laying down her own tracks. She is on Soundcloud at @isasmusic. She is also the resident beekeeper. Eleanor is cutting her teeth on books, she is quick of wit and sharp of tongue, wickedly funny. She is bound and determined to be the President of the United States, so she is building up her constituency. Right now (summer holidays) they are mainly into snatching any device within sight and squirreling it away under their pillows. Don’t despair, though, we’ve changed the passwords.”

“Well, my own mother, Mary Ann Gallagher, my other mother, Lyn Haber, my other other mother, Brana Wolf, and my husband’s mother, Merle Carmichael (first cousin of Stokely Carmichael), who raised four raucous boys.”

Isadora wears a Petit Bateau sweater. Molly wears an Apiece Apart top and vintage pants. Eleanor wears hand-me-downs.

“Parenting is an absurdist adventure—slightly delusional state required for entry. Lately, the best parenting book for me has been Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken. It was given to me by my mom. I also like Adyashanti for remembering that they (and we) are part of the divine—they have their own path. I like all of the Japanese animation kid movies, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, etc. They have a way of recognizing the deep feelings children feel, being fine with otherworldly activity, and best, the kids are respectful to their parents, even when their parents mess up and turn into pigs.”

“Kind of like Satyricon, but in the California desert, with maybe a bit more nudity.”

A glimpse into the woodsy backyard.

“They are great adventurers. My dad was an anthropologist and archaeologist who lived and worked throughout Central and South America. My mom continues to travel the world for work into her 70s and is a complete revolutionary working on climate change. My other parents are amazing intellectuals. But probably they all took us camping too much, so now camping is out of the question.”

“Yes, we are very close with his family, we go there often and are always FaceTiming and WhatsApp-ing with them. We have a place there just off the mainland on Gasparee Island. After many years, I’ve nailed the jokes-technique, so we have a lot of fun. The kids like curries and calypso and soca. Our communication style as a family is very Trinidadian—it’s direct! Everything out on the table, so very direct! But then laughing together after the fray. This is so different from my upbringing, which is more in the time-honored grumble-and-stew-silently-for-fifteen-to-twenty-years tradition. I love the Trinny style of arguing—everyone can feel confident and knows where s/he stands.”

“I love having girls. We didn’t have a preference one way or the other, but it worked out perfectly. My husband Everard is outnumbered though!”

“I struggle with depression and anxiety anyway, so I’d say that it just feels like a bigger portion of the familiar. Here’s where I’m at with it now: Our primary role on Earth is to leave a place where our girls and their children have a bit of air to breathe, a bit of water to drink, living oceans, a safe place. Everything Everard and I do is informed by their future. Especially with his work, we are global citizens. I’ve had to limit the exposure to news and focus on what is actually possible. For me, that’s been taking the form of building a business that is great for the planet and on building community across age, race, class, citizenry, all differences, even when it’s uncomfortable.“

Dance, dance, dance.

“Well, I was ambivalent about having children at first (infringements on reading time, as I mentioned), but I did get pregnant and then had several miscarriages before the pregnancy with Isa finally took. We were blindsided by grief the first time it happened, thought perhaps children weren’t in the cards for us. In response, we started a nonprofit to get kids in Trinidad access to school transport. At the time, I felt so raw and such a sting when anyone else discussed her pregnancy or young children and was barrenly chubby and hormonal to top it off, completely flailing. My perspective now is that there are many ways to be a mother outside of having actual children. So many women mothered (and still mother) me.”

“Go to as many movies as you can.”

Limbo time!

“Embrace the ridiculous!”

“Only the occasional couch-surfing urchin! We are strongly considering goats and chickens though, and more bees.”

Mama pile!

The sweetest love.

“I am a sculptor and have enjoyed a long and robust career doing sets and styling for all kinds of brands. Now I”m also returning to my roots and creating sculptural furniture that gently subverts our relationship to space and the everyday experience.”

“Okay. Growing up: Up and down California, Berkeley, the Mojave desert, the Eastern Sierra (Bishop and Mammoth), went to college at UC Santa Cruz and in Toulouse, France, where I studied fine art (emphasis in sculpture and installation) and linguistics, then moved to NYC the day after graduation to be in my friend Eric Wallach’s play, an adaptation of Waiting for Godot. It was at HERE, I played Didi, it was so fun. Then I scrapped around designing costumes for plays and films and working in the art department on films, then started doing sets as a means to support various art projects, writing operettas, a chicken-lady/accordion act, etc. I toyed around with becoming a trapeze artist, worked at Harper’s Bazaar for a while (lots of good world travel), then segued off from fashion into sets.”

“I have a deep love for and belief in the power of the collective, but being more of an introvert myself, also really value space and privacy. Mother of Thousands was born out of a desire to hold space for cross collaboration and collective support. It’s been wildly successful, and the artists are continually amazing me in the brilliant ways they conspire to help each other along. We stage various happenings in the fluxus tradition and create mysterious objects.”

Free form ceramics by Jennefer Hoffman.

“Leave, haha! They both came to work with me very early on. Isa at 3 weeks, Eleanor at around a month. I’m so lucky to have been able to bring them with me to work (with a babysitter). Our country is quite hostile to new parents, though. If policy dictated that fathers and mothers take equal parental leave, the workplace landscape would be instantly and radically transformed. Having an infant brought these disparities into sharp relief, even from my super lucky and privileged vantage point.”

“A friend described parenthood to me once like this, and it really struck a chord: Imagine taking a spaceship to a neighboring planet. You can still see earth. The new planet is great, you like it, you even love it! But then your spaceship breaks and you can never get back to earth again. This is work, and life, and everything else before vs. after kids.”

“Emphatically yes! I call it the Witch Network. Nyack is full of extraordinary women (and men) who show up for each other again and again.”

“In terms of styling, I love having mastery. After years of doing this, I’ve gotten so great at it! I love problem-solving, I love freedom. I would always trade stability for freedom. I love being able to say no to a job. I love that the work changes constantly. I love the people I work with. My team is made of some of my best friends and we’ve worked together for years and years. I love complicated rigging, making compositions, working in a team. I love the photographers, creative directors, art directors, and courageous clients I work with. It’s so fun to solve problems visually and to do the impossible daily. I love research and all the eccentric people we get to meet along the way. For sculpture/design, the pleasure of figuring out how to configure a viable business is just a great thing to sink my teeth into right now. Thinking through each stage of the process and demanding that each aspect of everything we make be great for community, the Earth, the people fabricating these things, that’s the challenge before me now.”

“Of course! Becoming a mother allowed me to grow in empathy, and empathy is a prerequisite for being a genuinely good entrepreneur—e.g. how will these things serve the world, how do they make people feel, how do the people contributing to the process feel? Also, the children provide a rich ground for creativity. The noodle came about because I was trying to avoid flame-retardants, which exist in nearly every sofa, and I wanted the filling to be sustainable, the process to be humane, the actual object to be fun for children and adults, and without sharp edges. That’s a tall order! So, we did it ourselves.”

“Currently in the pipeline, I’m working on a design project with Everard and his colleague, Dr. Stephon Alexander, creating habitat for scientists, a space based on string theory and sound theory for their project AmplitudeFrequency.”

“That’s a hard one. My friend, the super talented set designer Megan Caponetto, called my style ‘Elfin Wonder.’ My friend Misha Kahn calls it ‘The Chic Police.’ I’ll gladly take either! Brana Wolf called it ‘Nancy Regan’ last summer, but that was after a questionable haircut.”

“My classics are shoes from A Détacher (Mona is a genius), a harem jumpsuit from Leana of Electric Feathers (worn to ribbons), a Marlow Goods bags, and t-shirts from Correll Correll.”

“Friends, foremost, brilliant women and men who like women. Thanks to my second mother, Lyn, and Isa’s godmother, Brana Wolf, I have a closet full of treasured vintage couture—early Yves Saint Laurent, Missoni, Ungaro, Balenciaga, Valentino, Chanel, etc. For furniture design and interiors, I tend to like women also, not in a sexist way, it just seems to work like that. Ilse Crawford, India Mahdavi, Eileen Grey, Charlotte Perriand, Patricia Urquoila, Paola Navone…Axel Vervoordt also for interiors.”

“I rarely shop actually, since shopping is a big part of my work life. Usually I do it in person, because it’s an excuse to see (designer) friends. Then, when I find something that works, I keep buying the same thing over and over ad infinitum. I have my own clothes made often, as well.”

“Simple, simple, simple! My favorite thing of all time is Tooth Soap. We all used to get a lot of cavities (except Everard) and now we don’t anymore. I use Elta MD for sunscreen, Lucas Papaw Ointment for lip balm, and not much else. I will tell you one secret though—Giovanni conditioner (the green one) has saved our lives. Before that, bath time was like going through the gauntlet every night. Tears! Wails! Despair! But now we don’t sweat it. The tangles come right out. Also, Dr. Ben’s cedar oil for tick repellent, Regime des Fleurs for fragrance.”

“For workout—schlepping furniture, walks, bike rides, and dance parties with the kids (mostly schlepping though). I rarely sit down, so that helps. This year I’ve finally begun meditating around 20-30 minutes a day.”

“Wandering around looking at trees and creatures. Wandering the city streets and looking at people. I’m working on a moss garden. I like to spend a lot of time thinking about shapes and spaces. I like to swim.”

Secrets.

“We are lucky in that we get to travel a lot and split our time between Nyack, Brooklyn, Berkeley, and Vermont. For the past year or so, Detroit, as well. Nyack is full of great people and great trees, lots of creatures, and the Hudson. The girls have more agency and freedom and a beautiful community.”

“Yes, absolutely, we are nomads! But Nyack is great as a base.”

Noodle lounge.

“O lar in Piermont has great food. Kiam Records in Nyack is our go-to for books, vintage, and records. The Outside In Gallery in Piermont has amazing ceramics and a sweet farmer’s market on weekends. We live at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown. We often go up to DIA Beacon and Storm King. We hike up to the top of Hook Mountain every week or so. The Nyack Beach Park has an incredible walking and biking trail along the Hudson. In New York and Brooklyn, I love The Future Perfect for furniture and objects, CHCM Shop for menswear, Oroboro Store for me, Mantiques Modern, Wythe, Paula Rubenstein for objects and furniture, and Sweet William for kids clothes.”

To keep following along with Molly and her adorable family, check out her Instagram feed.