What is "Good Art"? How Does Art Work? How Do We?

🎉 And a Might Could Anniversary gift! 🎉

Note: This is #1 in a new essay series, currently Untitled, on the transformative power of art and art-making.

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I recently finished the book, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, by the poet Jane Hirshfield, and it is not an exaggeration to say this book blew me away.

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while now, you know that for years I’ve been chasing questions about art. Why do we make art? What does art do for us? How is art so powerful? What is art?

I know I’m not the first person to ask these questions and many people (artists, art historians, philosophers, etc.) have attempted to answer them in their own way over the centuries. I’ve read the books and essays of many of those people. Some of them occasionally hit home and sound a deep clang in my mind. But this book—Ten Windows—is so closely aligned with my thoughts that I practically highlighted the whole book.

Though Hirshfield is a poet and focuses on the specific work and art of poetry, at the essence, she is hunting down the same questions I am. And her book does not answer these questions concretely (that would actually be quite sad, wouldn’t it?), she certainly collects heaps of wisdom. (One perhaps being, that there are no answers to questions like these.)

So! Having just finished it, I would like to comb back through this treasure of a book, pulling out the threads that spoke to me most, teasing apart the strands a bit more, and weaving in my own thoughts.

This will be a loose essay series, spanning as many weeks as it takes me to go through the book (or get bored). It’s still summer over here in the Nishiyama house, and I’m still doing IVF, so I’ll chip away at this as I can, in between playing Queens + Kings with Butterbean, driving to doctor’s appointments, and sticking needles in my butt.

Let’s go!

Throughout Ten Windows, Hirshfield offers up a multitude of definitions of “art” or answers to the question, “What is good art?” Many of her sentences begin, “Good art is…” or “Good poems are…” And so, it’s no surprise that the very first page of the book starts with this:

“Good art is a truing of vision, in the way a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. It is also a changing of vision.”
–Jane Hirshfield

With this, we can see the entire thesis of her book: art exists to transform us. And that “us” applies to everyone—both the creator (the artist, the poet, the illustrator, the writer, the musician) and the recipient (the viewer, the audience, the reader, the listener). And the continuation of her thesis is that, as individuals are changed through art, so too is the world changed. Good art changes, alters, enlarges, and expands us as individuals, and we then go on to change the world.

Hirshfield says that her book aims to pursue “a single question: How do poems—how does art—work? Under that question, inevitably is another: How do we?” And almost immediately she admits, “Such a question cannot be answered.”

And yet, she has chased this question she says, for 30 years! I myself have been chasing similar questions for…

…

Wait a second, y’all. As I went to count up the years, I just realized last week was my Might Could Anniversary! On July 17, 2012, I bought my web domain and officially started my indie-artist-business, Might Could Studios.

Baby-Me working on a cardboard box in my pajamas in an empty apartment in Texas in 2012. I’m a PROFESSIONAL, y’all.

Usually, on July 17 each year, I write a special Anniversary Essay, celebrating another year of being an indie artist and somehow making it work! As I write each year’s essay, I like to go back and read the last year’s essay to see how things have changed. Did I do what I said I would do? How did I grow and evolve? How silly and naive did I sound 365 days ago?

In 2022, I wrote this essay celebrating 10 years of Might Could. In it, I would say my overall goal for that next year (2023) was to “just be”. I was burnt out, emotionally exhausted, and tired of straining and struggling to make something happen. I was finally learning to cultivate a more accepting mindset and let go of trying to control every little aspect of my work and career. And, realizing that, I aimed to align my career (how I spend my time and the things I make) more with that mindset. I wanted to loosen the reins a bit, go with the flow, and just see what happens.

And y’all, I’m proud to report that, while I am absolutely an imperfect work-in-progress, I believe I’ve made some huge steps in that direction. The first piece of evidence is that I forgot my Might Could anniversary last year and didn’t write a post about it at all! I was too busy working on my jellyfish book and enjoying Summer with Butterbean, that I missed it! And didn’t even know it until right now! And then, I almost just did the same thing again this year!

The only reason I remembered it today (a week late) was by writing about Jane Hirshfield chasing her question for 30 years above and then doing the math on my own years of chasing. Call it ignorance if you want, but I see it as evidence that I was/am living more in the moment, following my curiosity, making the work I want to make, and just plain enjoying life.

And so, this year I suppose this is my anniversary essay, but I’m not making any grand plans or declarations for the future. My only goal is to keep writing, keep drawing, keep asking and chasing questions.

I am, however, celebrating the fact that I’m still here, still cobbling together an indie art career after 12 years. It’s erratic and unstable and always up-in-the-air, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m still writing, drawing, and pulling apart my questions, albeit now with a better understanding of why I’m doing it.

I used to think I’d find actual, concrete answers to the questions I asked, and that the purpose of my searching was to find answers. Remember when I started that Exploring the Big Life Questions Through Art series? Talk about naivety! But, there are parts of that series where I touched on something real. One of the headers of that essay was “Learning to Live With the Questions (And Recording the Journey to Get There)”. And I think over these last two years, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do.

Ask the question, chase the question… but not with the goal to answer it. The point is to learn to live with the questions.

Jane Hirshfield ends the preface to her book, Ten Windows, commenting on her two life-long questions “How does art work” and under that, “How do we?”:

“Such a question cannot be answered. ‘We’ are different, from one another and, moment by moment, from even ourselves. ‘Art,’ too, is a word deceptively single of surface. Still, following this question for thirty years has given me pleasure, and some sense of approaching more nearly a destination whose center cannot ever be mapped or reached.”

Art is a mystery. How art has the power to transform us, alter our mindsets, and change our lives is a question that can’t be answered.

And yet.

And yet, like Hirshfield, this asking, searching, following, pulling has given me pleasure too. The answer doesn’t matter! An answer would end it all, would put a stop to the search, the chase, the pleasure. It’s the question that propels me.

All I know is that art has transformed and altered me, and I hope it continues to do so for another 12, 30, 50 years.

A New Online Class + 2 New Books!

I did put out some new things since the last anniversary update! Art has had such a transformative effect on me and my life, that I try my best to help other artists (and people who are afraid to call themselves artists!) make more art. Art is good! Make more of it! If you’re interested, I have a new class and two new books available!

• Sketchbook to Style (my in-depth class on developing your artistic style) is now available as an online class on Skillshare! If you don’t have a Skillshare membership, this link will give you 1 free month!

• Sketchbook to Style is also available as a book, if you prefer a reading!

• Might Could Make a Book: Two of my most popular online classes, taken by over 14,000 students, are now available together in book format! This book takes you through the entire process of writing, illustrating, and publishing a children’s picture book—including how to submit to traditional publishers or self-publish your own indie book!

+ 30% off Paid Substack Subscriptions!

Or perhaps you are a generous soul, a patron of the arts, an angel to indie artists! You can support my work for an entire year with a paid Substack subscription for $5/month or $50/year $35/year. The button below will give you 30% if you upgrade in the next two days! This discount will expire Thursday, July 25.

Whether you support my work financially, artistically, emotionally, or whatever-else-ally, THANK YOU! Art is meant to be seen, read, and shared—it takes two!—and I am beyond thankful to each of you for giving my art a life.

I’ve been chuggin’ along for 12 years, and, like Jane Hirshfield, I hope to still be writing, drawing, and chasing questions for 30 more.

Thanks for being here y’all! ❤️

<3,
Christine