Heydee-hoo, art fans.

I spent the first part of the day with a large group of artists who were not at all happy (and not at all afraid to tell anyone about this). This was not a new experience for me–being around unhappy artists, I mean; after all, I’m an art critic in my after school hours, so I’ve dealt with my share of unhappy artists. Still, I have to admit I’ve never seen quite the amount of concentrated artistic disgruntlement in one place before.

Of course, there’s not much that I, nor just about anyone else, can really do to relieve these artists’ collective dismay. And as artist after artist took this opportunity to stand at the mic and give vent to years (maybe decades) of pent up frustration, I found myself wondering about the nature of happiness: What brings it about in people? Why is it so elusive to grab onto? What are some sorts of people (as opposed to others) so much more prone to go without it?

As it happens, author (and former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts under Bill Clinton) Bill Ivey asked similar questions about happiness in a (not really very happy) book I just finished this past week, Arts Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights. According to his summation of various studies about what makes people happy, there’s an “underlying agreement about what it takes to increase happiness once the basic material needs of society have been satisfied.” This includes factors most people would think are obvious: friendships and families, a sense of accomplishment, security in work. But this also includes something that is less tangible and more difficult to define, variously described (by commentators like Nobel Laureate Robert Fogel) as a “balanced inner life,” “personal growth” (as opposed to consumerism), “a sense of purpose,” or an “education of the spirit.”

Ivey argues that “art unquestionably gives us a way to pursue self-realization without forcing us to deny the materialist and competitive drives that pass for human nature in the West… Art making is spiritual, long-lasting, and (compared to psychotherapy and drug rehab) relatively inexpensive; it contains and even expands many parameters of a well-lived life that have to date mostly been attributed to work, religion, family, and community. In addition, an engagement with art permits us to indulge our drive toward success and self-realization without forcing us to buy into the nastiness of America’s unhappy rat race. It is the yin of individual achievement that complements the yang of heritage, making our expressive life whole. Thus completed, a rounded expressive life can be a reservoir holding the two overarching ingredients of happiness–adventure and security.”

Of course, all you friends of AHH! will recognize that I’ve been arguing such effects for art (of course in much less eloquent terms) for quite some time. The secret to happiness is simple: Art will make you happy. Also, Art Happy Hour! will make you happiest of all!

(And with that I say: Stay tuned for an announcement in the next few days about Art Happy Hour!4: The late summer edition.)

The spirit of Art Happy Hour! 3 was best embodied by barkeep Freddie’s Brandy Sidecar.

June 5 turned out to be one of those days in Minnesota — where the morning’s promise had turned, by late afternoon, to stormy skies. A midwestern menu of tornadoes, thundershowers, hail, and flash floods was looming by the time I reached Clubhouse Jaeger twenty minutes after 4 (late for my own happy hour!). There were three people in the bar.

“What’ll you have?” asked Freddie (pictured above), Jaeger’s semi-famous happy-hour barkeep. I wasn’t sure — the long commute, traffic, roiling clouds had unnerved me a bit. I asked him to make me something, “in the martini family, but not a martini, and not sweet (I don’t do sweet).”

He thought a moment. “How do you feel about brown alcohol?” I answered that I could do brown alcohol. “Lime?” Sure.

He said he had just the drink for me. And so he made a Brandy Sidecar: Up, with a lime twist. It was perfect. Happy Hour had begun…

Below are some more pictures from the event. Art Happy Hour! so far has been a great chance to meet various parts of the local arts community. The first three events have drawn, as intended, a wide range of local arts professionals: arts writers, painters, gallery directors, filmmakers, cartoonists, sculptors, designers, arts web managers, museum rats, and arts editors — in conversation and good spirits and in the name of the arts.

I’m currently contemplating options and suggestions for AHH!4, which will take place either in later July or sometime in August. If you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or words of praise, send them to me at admin(at)arthappyhour(dot)com or arthappyhour(at)gmail(dot)com.

Cheers!

A few AHH! tidbits for today:

• L’Admin d’AHH did manage to stop by the Martini Social @ Clubhouse Jager the other night, and he was disappointed not to see any of you there… You missed a fantastic event! Kudos to Kate Iverson and the crew—she’s doing some great work to bring together the ever-disparate parts of the arts community, and she’s really fun to talk to. I’m hoping she’ll be able to make it to Art Happy Hour!3!

• Speaking of which, I promise, absolutely promise, that crucial information about the next iteration of the nation’s ONLY happy hour for artists and art lovers is coming soon. Though, in keeping with the happy hour aesthetic, I won’t say exactly when…

• In the meantime, here’s a poem about my favorite family of happy hour beverage, the Martini:

There is something about a Martini
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth -
I think that perhaps it’s the gin.
From A Drink with Something in It, Ogden Nash

• Also, here are two jokes by Roger Angell from his essay on martinis in The New Yorker a couple of years ago.

In the Second World War, Navy fighter pilots received a tiny survival kit, “Open Only in Extreme Emergency,” it said. Inside was a tiny shaker and a glass, a stirring straw, a thimbleful of gin and an eyedropper’s worth of vermouth. One downed pilot opened it, mixed and stirred. Vessels made toward him at top speed. A torpedo boat raced up and its commanding officer shouted, “That’s not the right way to make a dry Martini!”

Also: If you’re ever lost in the woods and can’t find your way out, just announce in a loud voice that you know how to make the perfect martini. Three people will suddenly appear out of nowhere to dispute you!

• Finally, I have to send a thanks out to the lovely and wonderful barkeep at Club Jager, who, when given a direct challenge by your Admin to make up “something in the martini family, that’s refreshing, light, and not too sweet” (you have to understand, Mr. Admin can be a bit of a handful in bars sometimes…), without skipping a beat went off and concocted this:

That Springtime Feeling
(She said she’d seen it in an old bar book from the 1920s; likely it’s a drink named after a 1915 movie of the same name. It’s also known, in modern parlance, as a Spring Feeling.)

2 oz gin
2 tblsp lemon juice
Add gin and lemon juice to iced shaker. Stir until chilled. Swirl green chartreuse in a chilled cocktail glass. Pour drink into glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.