Hey everyone. Sorry about the double send, but that earlier email *should not* have had paywall. THIS SERIES IS 100% FREE. Let’s try this one more time.
Here you go, ALL text and the full video is FREE:
Hi friends.
On Sunday we launched our three-part series on Creative Action — how creativity and making art helps us be more resilient, connected, and hopeful in challenging, overwhelming times like these. We started with a focus on “Making Art During Fascism” featuring the work of author, counselor, and advocate/activist Beth Pickens. The response has been incredible.
If you missed Sunday’s kick off, definitely check it out before watching the video above.
I received some push back on being explicitly political at the DrawTogether Grown-Ups Table. You can read my response here. I’ll repeat this part: “There is no aspect of life untouched by the forces of power. We ourselves are a powerful force in the world. Your art has power. My life, your life, all our personal and artistic lives are inherently political. We cannot avoid it even if we try. To take politics out of art would be like taking paint out of a painting. It is baked into everything we are, do, and make. Even doodles. Even flowers.”
Drawing is attention. Where we put our attention grows.
Onwards.
STUDIO VISIT WITH BETH PICKENS
The wonderful Beth Pickens and I sat down for a studio convo over zoom. You can watch/listen to our whole convo above.
Reminder — we are keeping this whole series FREE for now. Please subscribe and become a member to support work like this. We can’t do it without you.
FYI: I taught myself iMovie at 12am to edit this video! I did my best to edit out our lesser chatter, and I learned to make titles! I 100% used the Star Wars titles and went a little overboard with the sparkle screen at the end. No rules in art!
If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing (you do, btw it’s 30 minutes. Put it on while making dinner) here are some of the key ideas I took away from our conversation:
First, do it for you. Making art is like drinking water. Artists need to do it or we suffer.
Next, do it for other people. Make art and share it. Someone needs to hear exactly what you have to say, even if you never find out who.
Finally, it’s for our communities. Connect with people locally. Community sustains and amplifies our work.
Don’t wait for permission! Make what you want to see in the world today.
And here are a few Beth quotes from our conversation that resonated with me:
The challenges of making art right now:
“It is very difficult to have a creative practice right now. We are all in an overwhelmed, under-capacitated moment. We are completely on the internet, constantly exposed to terrible things, ideas, and predictions that are overwhelming and debilitating. [This is] the opposite of empowerment and of being able to do something with the world. It’s hard to create when you’re so bogged down in doom.
My work at the moment is helping people remember how to have a practice and why they want to do it—not from a punitive way, but from a restorative way. How do you build in a nourishing practice? How do you build a habit that helps you be more well? “ - Beth Pickens
The importance of making art in community:
“The community piece is tricky. A lot of people mistake being online and liking posts for having community. But that’s not the same as being with people in person, creating together, eating together, witnessing one another’s work. Real-life connection sustains us, and people are forgetting how to do it.” - Beth Pickens
Art as self-preservation:
“First and foremost, artists have to have their creative practice to be well human beings. And if they stop making it, they will be deeply unwell. So first and foremost, for artists who are in the political realm same as me, I need them to be well. Because I was like, no, no, no, you can’t disappear. So please take care of yourself, drink your water, paint whatever you need to do, but you’re going to have to keep moving. So first off, I just thought artists have to do this thing because it is self-preservation and you need it to be well.” - Beth Pickens
Art as collective survival:
“We cannot, the rest of us can’t survive without all this art being made. We need it so badly as a people and cultures. We have to have the art because artists are the ones who do everything that we need to integrate and learn from the world and understand our own experiences and feel. They do a million things that I write about more eloquently than I’m saying right now. So the premise of that pamphlet was, no, you have to make art one because it’ll take care of you, two because it will take care of us.” - Beth Pickens
Thank you, Beth!
You can find out everything about Beth on her website. I highly recommend joining her Homework Club for artists, her writing group Parakeet, and buying all her books, too. Make Your Art No Matter What is a personal favorite. And support Dopamine Books, too!
See you Sunday with Part 2, where we will be looking at examples of different ways artists have used their work as Creative Action.
And if you want to support DrawTogether and series like these, subscribe. It goes a long way.
Thank you. And…. Pencils Up! ❤️✏️❤️
xoxo,
w
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