The Art of Us

Seeking, exploring and making 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

To create art reflects a belief in our endeavor as a species. It is a belief that an artist’s work - transmuting inspiration into physical form - can lift spirits, impart beauty and inform our collective life together. By nature, a large part of this artistic process is solitary. It’s in the darkness and quiet of our interior world where the seeds of our creations first take root. But that solitude can easily tip into isolation and loneliness. Alone with our ideas, our doubts and our fledgling skills, we can flounder. Too often, what lives in us fails to see the light of day. Art of Us exists to support creatives with that process - to balance solitude with creative companionship and to coax out of us that beauty which we struggle to create alone. Art of Us exists because we believe in a flourishing that happens as we gather, seek, and share in making art together.

Like a book club but for artists, we will explore ideas, share works-in-progress, and probe the products and processes of other creatives. We will strive to continually conceive of and finish pieces of art. But the focus is on building community as an integral part of the artistic process and trust that the product will come. Art of Us is open by invitation to creatives of any persuasion: writers, singers, painters, performers (professional or not/practicing or simply aspiring to) whose art is recognized by their peers as making a generous contribution to our collective wellbeing through healing (personal and planetary), insight (meaning making), or sheer beauty/awe.

As a group we gather monthly to:

• Eat: Food is the magic lubricant for all beautiful gatherings. Initial meetings will be hosted by Erik Jacobs and Dina Rudick at their farm in Townshend, VT where we will co-create a meal together from ingredients that are seasonally available from the garden.

• Listen/Discuss:

• Seed our time together using prompts by Rick Rubin, Jessica Böhme, Suleika Jaouad, Ana Brones…and reflect as a group.

• Invite inspiration into the room by workshopping a fresh piece of art/literature/music that holds particular meaning for a group member and discuss its impact.

• Share: We will make monthly presentations on our own projects, identify your creative challenges and set intentions for what/how to explore next. As a community we will help each other overcome our inner critics through accountability and provide compassionate feedback, perspective and encouragement.

The hope and belief is that through our meetings we will return to our craft, renewed and inspired by the buzz of collaboration. The friction of our lives rubbing against each other offers warmth and a generative spirit which illuminates and brings into being that which is adjacently possible.

About the facilitator, 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.

‘DISCLAIMER: Suspicion is warranted. I am not an expert on any of this. The creative process is murky and mysterious and highly individual. It is also very real and touches an energy that is undeniable and present for all of us. I am baffled by it. But I am FASCINATED by it and I spend a lot of time exploring how it moves through us. And I have been a beneficiary, time and time again, of the magic that happens in relationship with other creatives.