In our America, there is no time to tend to last week’s heartbreaks¹ because we must always begin bracing for the next.² The gears of injustice continue to turn, holding open the door for hopelessness.

For anyone wondering what an arts writer is doing writing about current events, racial injustice, or systems of oppression, I would say that any arts writer who is not is falling down on the job. Art is not something that hangs in pristine white spaces removed from our suffering or our triumphs. Art is a reflection of those things.

Many times last week I asked myself the same question I ask myself whenever things feel irretrievably awful:

Why does art matter when the world is broken?³

My answer is this: Art is a way for humans to transform pain into beauty. I speak to so many artists whose practices serve, in part, as a way to process trauma or to help them find their place in the world. It’s my belief that every artist is the first intended audience for their own work. It comes through them to help them heal, to guide their way, then it goes on to do the same for the rest of us. That’s the difference between art and therapy: in therapy⁴ your healing process is personal and private. An artist gets to share their healing process with strangers; it has a transitive property that therapy does not.

Artists also process our collective pain, or the collective pain of their communities. Not everyone can paint or dance, sculpt or sing, write or act. Artists act as proxies by externalizing that which would otherwise remain internal for so many of us. We get to look at what they’ve created and see in it a reflection of our own lived experience. Or we get to witness something that is unknown to us and begin to fold it into our understanding of other people. Either way, it brings about the possibility for change and collective action.

What we must not do is imagine that this is art’s only function. Or that artists must serve as activists or alchemists, transmuting ugliness into something more productive or palatable. Sometimes ugliness is on the menu. At other times, an artist’s practice is purely an extension of their joy.

Too often, those of us outside of a community have expectations about the types of expression we want to see from certain artists.⁵ It’s too colorful or not colorful enough. It’s too figurative, too conceptual, too too. By pigeonholing an artist’s practice, we effectively refuse the gift that only they can give to us.

Here is my plea to you: as you think about what you can do to fix this broken world, consider the ways that you can support artists who are already engaged in this effort. This part’s simple: buy their work—their joy, their activism, their ability to break your heart and mend it all at once, their brilliance, their mischievousness, their empathy, their subversiveness, their humor, and their healing, which they’ve chosen to share with us.

I guarantee that a drawing or a small painting will last longer and bring you more pleasure than that pair of third generation AirPods. And they will never need charging.

In the coming weeks, here and on Instagram, I’ll be featuring artists⁶ and galleries who have incredible pieces for $50–$500.

We had our first weekly discussion thread last Friday and it was great. Just a reminder: no particular knowledge of art is required to participate. This one involved gin, candles, and sitting down in the shower.

During the thread, someone introduced us to the soul-affirming work of Andrea Gibson. Here’s one of their pieces for your heart:

No discussion thread this Friday Nov 26th because of the holiday, but we’ll meet back here Friday December 3rd. Be there or…continue to stand in the shower.