What is What’s Good?
A breath of fresh air.
Greetings, friend.
The What’s Good Project celebrates the meaningful stories from where we live.
Inspired by the conversations she has with folks around the country, artist Jennifer Drinkwater creates original paintings about what’s good in each of their communities. A portion of each art sale is donated back to these communities.
Dive into the places Jennifer’s visited so far, explore available paintings or prints, check out her weekly blog, download a free community art toolkit, and sign up for a free art postcard delivered right to your front door.
Jennifer here. Why What’s Good, you ask.
The What’s Good Project is my combined attempt to learn from folks, make art, and shift my default way of thinking.
Culturally, it seems that we’re addicted to negativity. Myself, I’ve always been a glass-half-empty kind of person. Scanning the horizon for danger, much to the trying patience of my husband. Looking for holes, flaws, possible disasters to prepare and rally against.
(In academia, we call this criticism. Let me tell you, while necessary for evaluation, it’s an exhausting way to live one’s life.)
In an attempt to counter these well-worn habits…
I started this project by asking myself these questions: What happens when we make a choice to look for what’s good where we live? Can this build momentum and lead to communities getting even better?
The What’s Good Project is inspired by the philosophy of asset-based community development. According to research, when we shift our focus from what’s wrong to what’s right, we can affect positive change where we live.
It’s hard, it takes effort, and some days, it feels like we’re swimming upstream.
But artists like nothing if not a creative challenge.
At the end of the day, The What’s Good Project celebrates the best parts of us and the best parts of our places.
Funding for The What’s Good Project has been made possible by the Puffin Foundation and by the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities at Iowa State University.
The What’s Good Project has been featured in Delta Magazine, Southern Jewish Life Magazine, Iowa Public Radio, and The Little Yellow Building Art Magazine.
A Mississippi native, Jennifer Drinkwater decided to pursue art full-time halfway through a 700-mile trek on the Appalachian Trail. She’s spent one year of her life in tents, and currently lives with her husband and their big yellow dog in an almost tiny house in Ames, Iowa.
Jennifer explores how we bring artwork from the studio into the world, and how art-making can both build and shape community. Over the years, she’s helped to organize a community-wide steamroll printmaking event in Perry, Iowa; created installations in restored prairies in Nebraska; collaborated on public art projects in vacant sites on Iowa main streets; spearheaded a community knit-bombing project; and has painted murals with middle school children on a juke joint in the Mississippi Delta and behind City Hall in Perry, Iowa.
If you’ve got a little extra time, read Jennifer Drinkwater: Blending Art and Community to Find the Good in Delta Magazine to discover more of Jennifer’s background and inspiration for the What’s Good Project.