Your Art Will Save Your Life launch at Wolfman Books

Celebrate the launch of YOUR ART WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE with Beth Pickens and Tammy Johnson!

“I’ve already recommended Your Art Will Save Your Life to all my students and friends. I myself consult it regularly, for discipline, inspiration, and wisdom. This book is crucial, and Beth Pickens is exactly the person to write it—tough, friendly, experienced, politically incisive, spiritually wise. A slim, necessary revelation.” —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

Beth Pickens reminds us that art makes us want to be alive. It lets us know that we are not alone in this world no matter how isolated we feel. And in this oppressive political climate, art is more important now than ever.

Written in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election and drawing from Pickens’s extensive background in art fundraising and consulting, YOUR ART WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE empowers emerging and established artists alike to balance activism and financial concerns while nurturing their own creative processes.

From exercises designed to quiet inner critics to advice on navigating institutional funding, Pickens helps artists create foundations for healthy and sustainable expression no matter the medium. Reminding us art has always been a tool of the resistance, YOUR ART WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE provides simple yet powerful lessons on how to keep creating at a time
when art is more necessary than ever.

Beth Pickens is a Los Angeles-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. She provides career consultation, grant writing, fundraising, and financial, project, and strategic planning services for clients across the US. Before relocating to Los Angeles in 2014, Pickens was based in San Francisco and served as Senior Program Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Managing Director of both RADAR Productions and the Queer Cultural Center.

Tammy Johnson is a dancer, writer, and equity analyst living in Oakland, California. As a highly visible and effective community organizer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she directed campaigns on economic justice, electoral reform and public education. Johnson’s gift for strategy development and ability to nurture strong relationships with groups on the ground led to a decade at Race Forward. She is also a principal partner of Art/Work Practice, a firm that advances cultural strategies with a through an equity-based approach. For over a decade Johnson and Etang Inyang performed as the award-winning Egyptian Bellydance duet, Raks Africa, and co-directed Girls Raks Bellydance and Body Image program. She is currently the director the Northern African Berber inspired culture production company, Project Aiwa.