YEAR END THANK YOU

and what's coming in 2026

This year Art Monster reached #52 of the Artist Date Series, hooray!! This stream of consciousness writing follows me while I go out for three hours on a Saturday and try to stay off my phone. Using museums, music shows, spa, hikes and reading critically as my tools, I shared with you those time-constrained journeys.

A huge shift happened as a result of this practice: I let art into the other parts of my life. Around #32 I realized (and shared with reader, friend, writer, Celeste,) that I didn’t understand why I was living my own life on the outside of my life. After this realization, I was able to see that art and writing are HOW I live, and so I needed to act like that more often.

I also realized that I was holding myself back with all my self-doubt. As much as I loved writing this series, reading it back made me feel like I was obsessed with writing about life on the margins. I so wanted to live more centrally inside myself. This is what prompted the new series: One Piece.

With this group of essays, each about one separate piece of art, I’m working in two directions: one is that I’m exploring more of my form, which is a hybrid of art critique and personal essay. I read that Zadie Smith thinks of an essay in the form of a square, and I thought, ok, I will work in the form of a circle. Most, if not all, of the essays in this series offer an objective critique of a work, plus a journey through subjectivity and then back to a more objective place.

This is an expansion: I’m accepting that I have a dream to be a recognized art critic. But I’m also asserting that art criticism can, and is actually always, told through a personal lens.

I’m also, though, narrowing my scope, in a way. Concentrating on just one piece as opposed to a whole exhibition helps me get more precise about what I’m saying. I’ve noticed that I have a rangy voice, which is fun, but it also means that I can hide in some chaos: if I have a lot of interesting and possible ideas, then who cares if one or two are not well thought through.

I love my Artist Dates and will continue that series next year. But I realized that practice was also a place where my identity of never having enough time, always starving myself of the inspiration I need, and thinking three hours a week would sustain me, was thriving, too.

So my 100% full subscriber commitment to you is the one-piece series: 52 of them for the next year, with the current six as my head start.

And now for all the other good stuff:

One of the most exciting things that came out of writing this newsletter was my writing about my daughter, Olive, and the tremendously funny, accurate and brilliant, and sometimes hard to accept things that she does and will say. For instance, this week I described to her part of my novel before she fell asleep – details I told her for the first time. The next morning, she had questions but also suggestions.

I had, she said, not written enough about what my characters look like. And also, she said, I have so many great ideas, but I’m confused about time. YES. THAT IS WHAT MY 9-YEAR-OLD SAID. She then proceeded to map out all the events of my novel on a timeline that revealed the causality that I couldn’t see.

No topic is more tender and creative and inspiring and heartbreaking than the inner lives of a kid, and I know that this year I will be sending more of those missives. I have decided that those emails will go to paid subscribers only, not only for reasons of livelihood and also privacy, but because of the need to protect those stories from reaching a wider audience until they are well-written and edited. So if you love to hear raw stories about my kid eviscerating my ego in two seconds, and then building me anew, then my paid subscription will be for you.

And finally, about books. If I were forced to give up everything in my life and do just one thing for the rest of it, I would choose reading. There are SO MANY BOOKS I have wanted to write about this year, and every time I try to sit down and write a review, I end up thinking about a different book that I want to read, and do that instead. So I will absolutely be resolving to change that in the next year, and have prayed to the Library Gods that once a month on Monday mornings, I will write and send a very brief but accurate letter about the bound written word. I also occasionally want to say things about technology and sexuality, two topics that I used in conjunction with each other in my 20s and 30s, that I often miss. So thank you for accepting these emails sprinkled in with the rest.

Finally, thanks so much for reading Art Monster this year! Every time I heard from you — an email, a text, a response, or a call — after I published a piece, I was so excited. Unexpectedly, these often came right when I needed them — like after I published the essay about getting a mammogram or when I started the new series on one piece of art. These were two times I remember thinking: What am I doing? This is way outside of the range of what I’m comfortable with, and I have major questions about what I’m writing about here. If anyone has ever told you that art making (and living) is about risk, I’m here to agree and to encourage all you art monsters to take them with me.

Signing off and until then,
Emily.