The Art of Us

Seeking, exploring and Deepening our art, together.

“It’s helpful to have fellow travelers around you. They don’t have to be like you, just like-minded in some way, even if their art form is different from yours. Creativity is contagious, and spending time with other artistic people allows you to absorb and exchange new ways of thinking.”

— Rick Rubin

Much of the artistic life is solitary. It’s in the darkness and quiet of our interior world where the seeds of our creations first take root. But that same solitude can easily tip into isolation. Alone with our ideas, our doubts and our burgeoning skills, our creations can languish. Too often, what lives in us fails to see the light of day. Art of Us exists to support artists with that process - to set aside time for creative companionship, provide fresh perspectives and to help coax out of each other the beautiful work that lives within.

Like a book club but for artists, we meet to discuss the progress of our work, swap ideas and seek new paths of inspiration - maybe share a glass of wine or two. The hope and belief is that through our meetings we will return to our craft, renewed by the buzz of collaboration. The friction of our lives rubbing against each other offers warmth and a generative spirit which illuminates possibilities we can not see alone.

Art of Us is open by invitation to creatives of any persuasion: writers, singers, painters, performers (professional or aspiring to be) whose work inspires us and whose presence in the group elevates our time together..

How our gatherings work

Our meetings are open inquiry-style salons. There will be no curriculum, no syllabus, no expert at the front of the room. What we create instead is an ever-evolving container — loose enough to hold whatever wants to emerge, but sturdy enough that we’re not just sitting with a glass of wine and wondering what will happen next.

We eat first. Sometimes it’s potluck at someone’s house, or a meal at a local restaurant or bar. This isn't a warm-up before the "real" part of the evening — it is part of the work. Sharing a meal together warms our hearts before we are asked to bare them.

We open with a prompt. Someone (a different person each month) brings a scrap of inspiration - a poem, a piece of art, an essay… they present it, then we sit with it in silence for a few minutes before anyone speaks. The silence isn't dead air. It's there to protect the question from being answered too quickly — to let it land in each of us before it becomes a conversation.

We share our work. Each person who wants to share brings something — a piece in progress, a wall they've hit, an intention they're circling. The rest of us listen, and then we offer questions. Not advice. Not fixes. The discipline here is real: we're trying to open the work up, not close it down by solving it. We seek not to tell someone what they should do, but instead frame our feedback as a question — “I wonder what would happen if… or What are you afraid is missing?”

We close in a single round. One sentence each, no cross-talk. What are you carrying out of the room tonight? What do you intend to wrestle with before we meet again?

Some months it may feel ordinary. Some months it will feel profound. Both are fine. The format is designed to make a regular space where inspiration can show up. Our job as a collective is to help each individual with their own work - To trust it. Develop it. And be fearless in the face of what it asks of them.

About the organizer, Erik Jacobs: I am a photographer, projection artist, writer, farmer and teacher. My creative process feels like prayer - a private conversation between me and the universe and my creations like an offering - a way to repay the gifts of encounter. And I have been a beneficiary, time and time again, of the magic that happens in relationship with other creatives.