Skye Parrott - Interview and Pictures

Mother Stories

NYC Photographer, Curator, & Mama Of Two Skye Parrott

Written by James Kicinski-McCoy

Photography by Photographed by Maia Harms

Aug 18, 2015

Being a self-employed (not to mention, extremely bad-ass) photographer has its many perks! Skye Parrott, a Jill-of-all-trades—including co-founder of the new site Double or Nothing and Curator—invites us into her eclectic, art-filled home. Join us as the Brooklyn mom (and step-mom) to two happy kids discusses city life, the ins and outs of motherhood, and a new project she’s got in the pipeline.

: "Mid-century, modern hippie, with a little Paris thrown in. I find myself drawn to a lot of the things that were around when I was a kid, like spider plants and patterned textiles."

: "Not really, but that’s an ongoing conscious choice."

Skye wears a black Electric Feathers jumpsuit and Pamela Love locket. Stig wears a Catcher in the Rye t-shirt from Housing Works Bookshop and grey Gap Kids shorts. Oona wears a Spiderman t-shirt and a purple Crewcuts tutu.

: Books upon books!

: "I love our couch, which is vintage Milo Baughman for Thayer Coggin from the '70s. We got it on eBay. It has the original upholstery, which is the most beautiful color orange with gold undertones. It actually needs to be reupholstered, but I’ve been putting it off because I love the fabric so much. Upstairs in the sitting area, we have a daybed that was my grandmother’s bed as a child. The person who made it signed the bottom in pencil in 1932. I love the way having it in our house makes me feel connected to her. I also love the orange arc lamp in the living room. I spent my twenties living in Paris and it’s one of the few things, aside from my books, that I brought back with me and still have."

: "I don’t have much of a philosophy. With anything creative, decorating included, I pick what I like and then find a way to make it all work together."

: "The main floor of our house is open, so the kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one space, which is probably my favorite. It feels really big, but cozy because there are lots of different areas to sit. I love how many people can fit in it comfortably, but also how enveloping it feels to be in alone, which I am a lot, as I often work from home."

: "We seem to spend most of our time in the living room. Between the fluffy rug and the cozy couch—it’s pretty hard to leave."

: A hammock in the kitchen—genius!

: "I’ve been so changed by becoming a parent. It’s such a huge identity shift, and I don't think any part of my psyche has emerged from the process without a reshuffling."

: "All the things that worried me about having kids before I had them were the wrong things. I worried, really worried, about things, like how I would not be able to have brunch or sleep in on Sunday mornings. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what my life was going to look like and that seemed terrifying. Of course, all those things are true—I never sleep in, I rarely have brunch, but what I didn’t know is how little I would care. I try to tread gently when I say this to friends who are deciding if they want kids or not, because I can sound like I’m into evangelizing, but my experience of having a baby was that it suddenly pulled back the curtain to an entire part of the world I couldn’t see before. I had no idea how big my heart could stretch, how vulnerable that would make me feel, and what an amazing experience it would be to learn to live in the world with all that vulnerability."

: "I probably have an unusual perspective on this, because Stig splits his time between our house and his mom’s, so I have the experience of having two kids sometimes, and then other times, only having one. Having your first baby is so intense on so many levels that you don’t realize how much you can do with only one kid. When you’re used to having two, only having one feels like having half a kid! You outnumber them, and the balance of energy is completely different. With only one, you don't get to watch their relationship with each other, which is one of the best things about having multiple kids. They have this world that has nothing to do with us, although we're lucky enough to get to look into it. I feel lucky to get to have both experiences."

: "Oona’s name is Oona Mae Sunshine. Oona is an Irish name. I’d heard it over the years—it was Eugene O’Neill’s daughter’s name, Oona O’Neill, who was a debutante who ran off and married Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and he was 54 (it was scandalous, but they stayed married for the rest of their lives and had eight children together). I like the feistiness in her story, but Oona isn’t named for her, we just thought it was a pretty name. Mae is for my great Aunt Mary, another feisty woman, who just passed away at the age of 94. And Sunshine is for the song 'You Are My Sunshine.' Obviously, I didn’t pick Stig’s name, but he’s named for his mom’s grandfather, who was Swedish, and Jeremy’s grandfather Irving, which is his middle name. I think naming kids is one of the most fun things about having them. I wish I could have ten more kids, just to name them!"

: "Everything. Being Oona’s mom, and being one of Stig’s parents, is the greatest thing I’ve done in my life. There has been no bigger adventure."

: Artwork everywhere.

: "My favorite days with the kids are ones where we don't have to do anything or be anywhere. We go to Maine every August, and that time with them, which has no obligations, is by far my favorite. It allows me to slow down and meet them in their world, which is infinitely more interesting than mine."

: "I spend a lot of time alone with Oona, and have since she was little. For the first two years of her life, she often traveled with me for work, so I would find myself alone with her in far-flung places. I do find that we can fall easily into a dynamic where Jeremy spends solo time with Stig and I spend solo time with Oona, because that’s kind of how our personalities break down, but we both make a point of making specific plans alone with both kids. They're at such different ages that what you can do with them alone is really different from what you can do with the two together. Recently, Stig had a half-day from school, so I ended up bringing him into the city with me for the day. He hung in the waiting room and played his iPad, while I had an appointment, and then we went to MoMA. That’s a day I couldn’t even dream of having yet with Oona."

: "One of my favorite parts of watching Oona develop is observing the ways we're similar and the ways we're different. Like me, she is very stubborn, determined, fiercely independent, and always challenging herself. She's very curious and observant. She loves people and new experiences. Unlike me, she is incredibly sunny. She's almost always in a good mood and runs around singing to herself. We say that she's made of rainbows and unicorns. She's also much more of her own person than I remember being as a little girl. I was always aware and worried about what people thought of me. My main goal was to blend in, which I never really did. She doesn't seem to care that she doesn't blend in. Stig is an amazing big brother. I love watching his kindness and patience with his little sister. He is incredibly sensitive with a hard exterior shell, much like his dad. He is very much a boy, but I love the way he challenges me to understand things that don’t come easily. He’s very creative, and loves to go see art. I love doing that with him, and when we do, I'm always surprised and impressed by the depth of his insights into what he's seeing."

Skye wears a vintage dress from Stone Fox Bride and an Electric Feathers belt. Oona wears a striped Gap Kids romper.

: "My mom and I are very close, but temperamentally, we are different in so many ways. My mom was a hippie. She was 21 living in San Francisco in 1969, and that laissez-faire attitude is definitely a part of her personality still. She is much more easy-going and less driven than I am. She’s an artist—our house growing up was always a little messy and she never paid much attention to what she (or we) were wearing. She was much more concerned about showing us a beautiful sunset or taking a picture of a great textured wall she saw. She's aesthetic but a different kind of aesthetic than I am. In terms of how we’re similar, my mom is very intellectually curious, which she passed on to me. We are both serious readers. She loves to travel, and meet different people, as I do. She has a gentleness, kindness, and awareness of how her behavior impacts the world around her that I try to bring into my own hectic life. As a parent, my mom always treated us with intellectual respect. She never talked down to us or assumed we couldn’t understand something because we were kids, and that is something I really emulate. She exposed us to a broad range of experiences, people, and places, and she really let us have our own experiences of them, which is something I hope I do with my own kids."

: "I was raised by a single mom, so I have a special respect and awe for single mothers."

Stig's wears a Gap Kids t-shirt and shorts.

: "My friend Gerard told me to remember that most people survive childhood, and that pretty much everyone learns to wipe their butt before they get to high school. I took that advice to be permission to relax a little, something that doesn’t come easily, especially when I care so much about what I’m doing."

: "I am always trying to do a better job of putting down my phone and being in the moment with my kids."

: "I feel like I read this again and again, so at the risk of sounding like a broken record—Jeremy and I are serious about making time for each other. I don’t know how any relationship could survive the mania of having young children without a commitment to prioritizing it. We go on dates, take trips that are just the two of us, and sometimes drop everything on a Tuesday and spend the day in bed together."

: "I would like one more (Jeremy thinks I’m completely insane). I would be open to having another baby or adopting. I think at some point, in some way, we will."

Stig wears a red shirt from Norway and Gap Kids shorts.

: "1973."

: "Completely. I dress much more for comfort than I used to. I literally didn’t own a pair of flats before I got pregnant. I started wearing Birkenstocks back then, and now you rarely find me in anything else."

Skye wears a Raquel Allegra dress, an Isabel Marant sweater, Pamela Love and vintage Doyle and Doyle rings, and an Hermès watch.

"Electric Feather jumpsuits, plain t-shirts, various kinds of jeans, Birkenstocks, and clogs."

The coziest digs.

"Whatever I’m wearing that day with a little more jewelry added."

Skye wears a vintage Calvin Klein dress, a sweater from Maryam Nassir Zadeh, and an Aesa necklace and bracelet. Stig wears a Crewcuts t-shirt.

"I wear a lot of Electric Feathers and have since I got pregnant. I love that her clothes look chic, but feel like pajamas. I also wear a lot of Pamela Love jewelry. She’s one of my closest friends and her stuff is just so beautiful."

"I do most of the kids’ shopping online—lots of Gap, some H&M, and Crewcuts—except for my friend Bronagh’s store Sweet William, which I buy a few special things from every season, and always in person. The store is so well-curated and smells so good that it would be a shame to shop online. I don’t really buy much for myself, but when I do, I love French Laundry Cleaners, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, and Oroboro. I also get basics from Madewell, and most of my t-shirts from Base Range—a great organic line from Copenhagen. Honestly though, I feel like most of my clothes come from sample sales."

"My tendency has always been to buy something really nice and use it forever, but I realized early on that tactic doesn’t work with kids. They outgrown stuff too quickly, and what they don’t outgrow, they completely ruin. Now, I try to buy them a few nice things each season, but otherwise I worry a lot less about the quality of what I buy them."

Relaxing corner.

"For products I only use Joanna Vargas. Her products are natural, smell great, and most importantly, really work. For scent, I wore Serge Lutens' Chêne for years, but it was discontinued. I found a good replacement in Bois d’Ascèse by Naomi Goodsir, which I get from my friend Ivy’s store Wilder in Nashville. They’re both heavy and woodsy and smoky and very much unisex. In the summer, I wear various Hermès scents—Un Jardin en Mediteranee, Un Jardin Après le Mousson, Un Jardin sur le Nil. I switch back and forth, because they’re all good."

"I had some hesitations when planning Oona’s room. I wanted to paint it pink, but I didn’t like the implication of painting my daughter’s room that color. In the end, although it required some mental gymnastics, I decided to try and give her the room I would have wanted as a little girl. Her room is colorful, cozy, and fun, with some ethereal touches, which is how I want the world to feel for her. Stig has often had very colorful rooms in the past, but we chose black and white for this one, now that he’s a little older. We tried to give him a room that would feel fun now, but would also stay cool for him as he continues to grow older."

"Stig loves his bed in the teepee. It was his idea to put it there when we moved and he gets a great response to it from children and grownups alike when they visit the house. He also loves his dresser, which was a cabinet from a high school science lab, because of the colors. And he loves the Robert Longo Cadillac print hanging on his wall because 'it’s black and that looks really cool.' Oona loves her giraffe that I brought her from Haiti and the paper maché planet she made, which is hanging from it. She also loves her bed, which is from Ikea and can expand as she grows. She told me she really loves everything in her room because it feels so cozy at night when she sleeps."

Oona wears a dress and barrette from Sweet William and a pair of H&M leggings.

"I need a new everyday purse and have been eyeing one from Mansour Gavriel. For Oona, I really love the Vans Disney collaboration. I steer her away from clothes with characters on them, so she would probably die of happiness if I got her some princess sneakers."

"I grew up in Hoboken and went to high school in Brooklyn, so New York is very much home. I’ve lived in LA for two years and Paris for six, but I’ve always felt drawn back here. So much about New York has changed, but I still love the energy here—the mix of so many different kinds of people in such close proximity and the surprises of what you’re going to see every day. I love seeing my kids become New Yorkers. They’ve known all different kinds of people, and treat everyone the same. They know how to ride the subway and what train you take to get to our house. They take so many amazing things that we have access to for granted, just like any New Yorker. We were listening to an old Fugees album in the car the other day and Oona heard them say 'Brooklyn' and she called out, 'They said Brooklyn. They’re talking about our home!'"

"Jeremy and I are both self-employed, so there isn’t really a typical day during the week! Our schedules both change so much. On the weekends, we often stay close to home, going to the farmer’s market, the playground, and watching movies with the kids on rainy days."

"I’ve been a commercial photographer since my early twenties. In my later twenties, I co-founded Dossier, a biannual arts and culture magazine, which I was the creative director for until we stopped publishing last winter, after eight years. I’m currently working on launching a new online project called Double or Nothing, which creates original content designed to exploit the internet’s interactive capabilities."

"I studied political science in college and thought that I was going to be a lawyer. Halfway through college, I went to Paris for a summer, because my boyfriend at the time was there, and ended up staying for six years. I got an internship at a photo agency, then another internship at photo studio. I started working as a photo assistant, then worked for a year at Self Service, as the managing editor. Later, I worked with Nan Goldin as her studio manager for four years, and started shooting on my own as a photographer. I moved back to New York in 2005 and started Dossier, which led to various projects as a curator and creative director."

"With my job, I get to see a lot of places and meet people I otherwise probably never would. And since I’ve become a parent, I have a huge appreciation for the flexibility of being self-employed."

"I think the biggest shift has been consciousness around what lessons my work and life choices teach my daughter. I’m aware that the choices I make implicitly teach her about being a woman and balancing a family and a career. I know that what I do sends her messages that get hardwired in. I want her to see that I work so hard because it allows me to have a career that I love, and also to know that none of my work matters as much as she does. I’ve also been driven to find more meaningful projects since becoming a parent, to make sure the commercial work that I do fits with the values that I want to pass on to her (not shooting underage or underweight models, for example), and trying to find ways to use my skills to bring awareness to issues that I believe matter."

"I’m lucky, in that, being self-employed, I have a lot of flexibility in my daily schedule. If I’m not shooting, I make my own schedule, which means I can choose to take the afternoon off, pick the kids up from school, and take them to the playground. Doing that is one of the ways I reconcile myself with having to travel and be away for days or weeks at a time. I’m also lucky to have a partner who is a very hands-on dad, and whose schedule also allows him to jump in, when I need him to. We also have a great nanny. All of those things make a huge difference in allowing me to be a full-time parent and have a career that I love."