Making art that reflects and challenges the times

This is my second attempt at an ongoing, regularly published newsletter. The first one suffered from inattention—my own. Several pitiful updates later, it withered and ossified. I left it frozen here for years.

In the newsletter’s previous incarnation, I wrote about how to make art and shared my art in progress. I no longer find that kind of content necessary to make. There are plenty of artists with cameras, keyboards, and dreams of building a following who do that. Follow them and be entertained. If you want to be an artist you already know what to do—make things, show them to people, and improve by acting on constructive feedback. If there is anything else to add I assume someone has already made content about it. I don’t need to here (however, I’ll still update with work in progress just to stay in touch).

The world as I knew it transformed in the two years since I stopped posting, and is becoming (will become) what we allow it to be. Things previously unthinkable in America have happened. The military was sent to an American city (Anguiano) and it appears the president wants to do that again (Stoddart). Doors have been rammed down and people have been taken from their beds in the night (Tareen). There have been attempts to limit what can be taught in schools and what is admitted in public discourse (Trump). This is certainly not an exhaustive list of changes; I’m sure you can think of examples of your own. I won’t be an alarmist and say where we might be headed as a country, but we’ve seen this before in history, and we remember it because our grandparents and great-grandparents shared their stories so that we would never forget.

The question artists should attempt to answer is no longer, how do we make art? We’ve answered that and people have access to it. The better question is, what does it mean to be an artist in our current historical moment? We respond to it by taking a stand on what it means to be an artist through the art we make, how we distribute it, and how and where we talk about it. Will we continue in our work as if nothing has changed? Will we respond to the moment by challenging it or supporting the status quo? Will we need to prepare for clandestine modes of artmaking or become propagandists for those in power? Regardless of how we think we want to be as artists, the truth is revealed in our art.

For me, being an artist means being open to what possibilities the future is constantly bringing towards us, and to reach into that stream and creatively reveal from it an understanding that is useful for others who encounter my art. And to do this for its own sake without concern for how the art will be received or if it will be profitable. Art made from those motives does not speak to the moment. It shows the needs of the artist, which is valid and necessary; we do need to make a living after all. But every piece we make both reflects and contributes to society’s understanding of itself, even if only a few people see it. Art can support or challenge that understanding. It may be the only thing left that’s able to mount that challenge. Therefore, I think we are obligated as artists to create art (as much as possible), for its ownsake, on its own terms, that shares our understandings of the world.

However, being open to possibilities does not mean being open to every possibility. There are futures we don’t want, and our art should stand in the way of them becoming real—patiently, defiantly.

The question of what it means to be an artist has my full attention and has led me back here, where I’ve pruned the dead branches of my old posts and cleared space for something new. I plan to post at least once a month for the next year. Expect to see art that I make alongside writing about how art interacts with topics I find important, specifically related to how art and aesthetics interact with activism. Over the course of a few newsletters, I think it will become clear how my understanding of what it means to be an artist unfolds in our current moment. I hope it will anyway.

I’ll be back soon with a radical interpretation of what art is so that we can have a foundation for future discussions. Then, in a later post, I’ll talk about how art might help develop an ethics of care towards the environment in the face of conventional truths that have conditioned us to treat it otherwise. There are a few other things in the works: a website to act as an archive for this work and to catch anything that doesn’t fit in a newsletter, and a more professional portfolio site just for my art. In the meantime, you can see some of my past work at spinello.myportfolio.com.

Thanks for making it to the end. If you don’t mind, leave a comment and share what you think it means to be an artist.

Defiantly,

Pinello

References

Anguiano, Dani. “Deployment of All 700 Active-Duty Marines to Los Angeles Withdrawn.” The Guardian, July 21, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2025/jul/21/los-angeles-marines-deployment-recalled.

Stoddart, Michelle, Isabella Murray, Karen Travers, and Ivan Pereira. “Trump Directs Generals to Defend US from ‘War from Within.’” ABC News, September 30, 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-directs-generals-defend-us-war/story? id=126087035.

Tareen, Sophia. “Immigration Agents Become Increasingly Aggressive in Chicago.” PBS, October 6, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/immigration-agents- become-increasingly-aggressive-in-chicago.

Trump, Donald. “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The White House, September 26, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence.