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“The Opie Bunch” is the story of one happy family that began when two very lovely ladies, artists Catherine Opie and Julie Burleigh fell in love.
When artist Catherine Opie decided to have a child, she didn’t realize she’d be giving birth to a family of five.
CATHERINE OPIE, ARTIST I’m not one of those people who ever crushed out on straight girls before—I’ve always been pretty butch-on-butch in my relationships—but Julie had this really great tomboyish attitude. We’d been friends for about a year, and one day as we were driving back from one of my openings, I said, “Julie Burleigh, you’re the kind of girl I would want to marry.” And she said, “Cathy Opie, I take that kind of proposal very seriously.” And we fell in love. I was already working with Rodney on getting pregnant, and I said, “I want to let you know that I’m trying to get pregnant, and how do you feel about all that?” And she said, “Well, I guess I don’t have a choice because I’m in love with you, and I would love to do that with you.” And I said, “Fan-tas-tic!” I just really liked the way she held herself and that she just had all these kooky things about her. When we met, she was breeding Persian cats. Like, really? She moved in with five Persian cats, and then one of them had kittens, and there were nine, and you know -- having a lot of cats in the house is kind of gross, so her farming is now outside the house. We took over this abandoned lot where Julie has 36 families growing their own vegetables and teaches community gardening to kids. She’s basically turning our house into a farm.
I’ve always had this longing for family, and a family that was much more functional than my own childhood. There were moments in the beginning when I thought, Whoa, what is going on here? I didn’t expect Rodney to be so completely involved, and being such a very strong feminist, I was like, Well, who are you? But that went away, to the point where Rodney and I just bought a building together, a 1913 duplex near our block. And now Oliver can say, “I want to go see my dads before dinner.”
I have to say that I feel very settled, and I never felt that before. My partner is my best friend at this point. We’ve been doing nothing but building since we met. The result is that after 10 years we’ve built this amazing life together.
JULIE BURLEIGH, GARDEN DESIGNER, ARTIST I was dating someone when I met Cathy, and as we got to be better friends, I found myself wanting to ditch the guy and hang out with her. It was one of those things I had on the back burner: “I think that one day I’ll become a lesbian.” I’ve always had a strong intuition and followed my intuition, and I thought that this was really who I needed to be with. We made a plan to spend the day together, take our dogs out, and have a picnic in the park—stepping up the intimacy a little. So on that day, she passed by this church sale, and she saw a bamboo cane chair and thought, Julie would really like that. She asked about it, and apparently it was a whole set of living room furniture for sale. She bought it all and said, “Oh! I got a present for you. I might need your station wagon in addition to my minivan to give it to you.” It was just like the old joke, “What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A moving van.”
She had already made one or two attempts at getting pregnant by the time we met, but I have a grown daughter of my own, Sarah, so I was a little hesitant at first, I mean totally in love with Oliver when he was born, but also thinking, Wow, here I am again, raising a kid. I thought I did this already. But Sarah and Oliver have always had a great relationship. He worships her. Sunday is daddy day, when Oliver is with Rodney and Taka, so Cathy and I get to spend some time together, see a movie or have dinner. It feels like there’s a lot of support. I’ve heard Oliver say to his friends, “Oh, and my whole family is gay.” He doesn’t know that in some situations that would be damning him. He’s just really proud and thinks it’s really cool.
OLIVER, AGE 9: I’m not sure what other families are like, because I’m not a part of my friends’ families, so I don’t really know, But ours isn’t strange -- it’s great. It’s just that having two dads and two moms evens it out a lot. And I have a lot of people caring about me. Do my friends think it’s odd? I’m pretty sure one of my friends doesn’t think it’s odd, ’cause their parents are gay too.
RODNEY HILL, GALLERIST: I was the director of Cathy’s gallery in New York, and my boss had told me that Cathy was moving to the city and that when she arrived, she was hoping to get pregnant. I had this totally caveman reaction, which surprised me. I thought, I hope she asks me. Most gay guys don’t go hoping to bear children with women, but when she asked, I knew I was going to say yes. It was a real fork-in-the road decision. Having a child is an amazing experience, and one of the things I’ve discovered is that it takes a long time to create a person. As a parent, I’m even more bewildered by those earlier experiences of the Reagan era, of witnessing duplicity in terms of family values. Like, How could they? Cathy and I were both in ACT UP. Julie, too. We are all from that generation. The idea that I could become a grandparent someday was just flabbergasting.
Taka’s Japanese, and we met on MySpace. I was obsessed with Japanese culture all my life, and I got this flirtation that I responded to. We charmed each other with our clumsy language, and now Taka, who was born in Nagasaki, lives in Los Angeles [with us] and New York and is a father to a blond, blue-eyed 9-year-old. I think he got a lot more than he bargained for. Oliver went around the other day thanking his mom for asking me to be his dad, and thanking Taka for sending me a message on the Internet -- he was drawing the lines of how his family was assembled. I asked Taka this morning, “What’s it like?” And he said, “It’s fantastic.” Phew.
TAKA NONAKA, ART DIRECTOR: Rodney and I started exchanging photos and chatting and telling each other our background. I decided to visit for a two-week vacation. I already knew this was the guy for me even before we met. We’d speak on iChat every day, two or three hours, for three months. I’d never seen this big nature -- the desert and Joshua trees. Everything seemed so dynamic. Rodney is a very patient guy. He’s never angry, and he never says no. He just makes it very easy for me. On that trip, I met his son, Oliver, and Cathy and Julie, and it felt very natural. That was when I decided I wanted to live here.
Photography by Catherine Opie
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