In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Los Angeles-based arts consultant Beth Pickens found her clientele in a quagmire. Her clients were saying things like, “Oh, I’ve got to run for public office now. I should go to law school. My art has to change.” In the chaotic weeks that followed, Pickens wrote and distributed a pamphlet called Making Art During Fascism in which she outlined ways that artists resisting the Trump administration could maintain their practice and engage with political resistance while also caring for themselves and staying true to their art.
“Over and over again, I heard artists devaluing the work they were already doing,” Pickens tells the Mercury. “I wanted to respond to that, and the pamphlet got very popular. I expanded it a couple times and it eventually ended up in this book.”
Your Art Will Save Your Life, is a slim, 130-page survival guide packed with useful anecdotes, advice, and exercises. “In my experience,” Pickens writes, “when artists stop making work, they become depressed, anxious, and generally dissatisfied with life. Making art is an essential form of self-care in their lives.”
