Happiness, Beauty, and Home

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

At last, the final day of 2025. What a year it has been. I cannot express how grateful I truly am, but I can share a final memory and a few words.

This is for everyone who came out to the Mehdi Show, and everyone who wanted to but couldn’t make it. There is a nearly overwhelming sense of love and gratitude and investment I feel from you, yes, you! You reading this!

All of you who bought art this year, not even mine, any art at all, any culture, this is for you. This all revolves and moves and turns with your energy ($$!) investment. I very intentionally use the phrase invest in the arts (in lieu of “support the arts”) because “support” is for something weak about to fall, investment is what you can give when you care to see where something goes, when you are curious, when you cultivate a sense of beauty, interconnectedness, and know that the world you invest in is the world you are growing, creating, allowing to grow. Invest and you allow that world to create.

In a very real way, investing in the arts (if you want to invest in my art or the world I’m creating, you have a chance to go for the paid substack, or buy original art on this the final day of 2025, and the final day for this year of the 50% off sale) is actually the only way for them to continue to exist, at all (let alone thrive!) In your world. If you’ve been paying attention to the world being supported (!!!) And erected around you, there’s no easy way to deny that it’s one where you are being offered entertainment at the expense of art. Who’s to say where the line between the two is drawn (there is no line, no spoon either) but by not investing, you are no longer participating in the stewardship of your culture. If that sounds like, woof, a lot of responsibility, good news:

The more you invest in the art you love, the more the world that art comes from surrounds you and holds you gently, keeping you safer, warmer, loved. The specifics are neither for you to fully comprehend, or feel responsible for. Go to museums, galleries, shows, plays, concerts, buy merch, buy art shelves and treat your collection like an art museum, rotating exhibits. Take an art class (I offer free art lessons, email me at david@DavidOSmithArtist.com), meet a friend to draw with them. Draw them! Get lost in a new city and ask people for bookstore recommendations. Keep a journal, keep a sketchbook. Do what I do and just keep one - write scandalous unrepeatable words alongside your drawings! Hand it to strangers and see if they read it! Liked a concert? Buy their album, buy a t-shirt. Buy your best friend a handmade card. Throw a houses party and put up a bunch of art (Art Party Five, Sat Feb 14 Annie’s Art in Ballard, 6pm).

Go visit a museum you’d never ordinarily visit. Solicit recommendations for restaurants. Be a tourist. Bring a small art piece you love with you on a trip. Set it up in your hotel room. Don’t forget it!

Create the reality you want by investing in it - because you are creating your reality, anyways, already. You might as well give yourself full, outrageous permission to make it a work of art. It’s your choice to do so, your right as a human being. I look forward to seeing and hearing what you come up with, and I will always be coming up with ways to share with you what I’m up to. I am so grateful for the small and big ways we might inspire each other.

Warning: Art investment may lead to prolonged episodes of extreme happiness, beauty, and home.

Love,

Me