Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. So I love visual art; I think it is so good and helpful to have stuff on your walls that connects you to beauty and wonder and awe, but one thing about art is that it is often very expensive and thing about art is that the art world be be kind of, gross? You know, headlines like Paul Allen's art collection to be auctioned for 1 billion dollars does not make one feel like as if the art is for normal people, but I promise it is.

So first off, art does not have to be expensive. Like one of my favorite artworks in our home is this print by Nathaniel Russel demanding snake poems NOW! I love it because its beautiful, and also because posters tend to make political statements or encourage consumption habits, and this poster just wants snake poetry. And I like to imagine rallies for snake poetry where people are like WHAT DO WE WANT? SNAKES POEMS! WHEN DO WE WANT THEM? HSSSSSS.But anyways, Russels' prints are available on his website for $40, and there are similarly talented artists all over the world who have works available. Many even do commissions via Instagram or Twitter. And if you want to get really inexpensive art, you can go to thrift stores and garage sales, and often find unique works there, and you can always make a good thrift store great painting by adding your own Star Wars, Like Dave of daveruinsart.com does (by the way, his prints are only $20). Also you might think art auctions are only for rich people, but there are art auctions on eBay all the time, and also Artsy.net, where for example right now there is one fundraiser auction with an artwork by Michelle Grabner, one of my favourites, available for $300, which is a lot of money, but if you look at it every day for 50 years, it's less than 2 cents a day. I know what you're thinking- John you just turned 45, you're not going to look at ANYTHING everyday for 50 years. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR BRING THAT ENERGY INTO THIS VIDEO.

Back to art! For me, Artsy.net is kind of like Zillow for art- its a great place to just, scroll through and get a sense of what you like and what things cost and what galleries or artist you might want to follow. Now there are two big auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, and they make almost all their money selling like, Rolexes and Warhols to the world's richest people, but anybody can visit their websites. And I like to visit them, partly so that I can think, "Wow, someone's gonna spend 1 million dollars on this painting by Claude Monet and store it in a windowless facility. Wealth is one hell of a drug." But also not everything is Monet-expensive, like one of my Impressionist painter is Eugene Boudin, who was one of Monet's teachers, and whose works sell for couple a thousand dollars.Which is a ton of money, but its 1/100,000th of the cost of a Monet. Plus, its fun to look at the art and if you zoom in and make them full-res, that costs Sotheby's and Christie's a little bit of hosting money, which they pass on to the bajillionaires who buy the stuff, so its like a very indirect tax on the rich.

Okay, then of course there are art galleries and local art centres ad schools where works are often on sale. Also art fairs, where you can see a curated selection of lots of art! Like this weekend in Indianapolis is Butter, an annual art fair featuring Black artists from Indianapolis and around the world. There are also DJs and workshops and tons of other awesome stuff that goes on. It is overwhelmingly the coolest thing that happens in Indianapolis, and I'm not just saying that because my wife, Sarah, is part of the curatorial team. So if you live in Indianapolis, there's Butter, but wherever you live, there's so much cool art!

For me, the art that means the most to me is the stuff I'm connected to personally. Maybe that's because I see a painting that looks the way OCD feels to me, or maybe it's because its made by someone I love. Like my favourite work of art in our home is this painting my mom made of the La-Z-Boy where I wrote Looking for Alaska. It just brings me so much joy and solace- and I hope that you have or find good art for your walls that does the same for you. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.