【推荐1】Each Wednesday evening, around 6:30 p. m., an unlikely group of artists gather in the activity room downstairs at the Anne Douglas Center for Women, located in downtown L. A. For an hour and a half, we sing, share tales from the weekend, praise each other’s work, and make things.

More specifically, we make wire sculptures, multimedia masks and self-portraits（自画像）, and write letters to our future selves. We draw with closed eyes. Some projects come together with ease, others are not that easy.

However, regardless of the finished products, all of us value the time each week when there are no strict instructions, no right answers, no winners. And this is not to say the finished products aren’t surprising, genuine and wildly beautiful—which they most certainly are.

On Saturday, Nov. 12, the artists of the Anne Douglas Center will take over Bruce Lurie Gallery for a single night, selling their work to raise money for next year’s art programming. The evening, titled “The Art of Love”, is both a chance to support women and aspiring（有雄心的） artists in the community, and to see some quality artwork.

“Art therapy（疗法）is more than just making nice pictures,” art therapist Tally Tripp explained in an earlier interview. “In fact, art therapy is more often a process of making ugly or messy pictures that describe a feeling state, not a final product that is all neat and tied together. Art therapy is about that creative process where the customer, in the company of an art therapist is working and re-working problems via a range of variable art materials.”

Neither I nor Justin Waring-Crane, my partner, are art therapists. (She is an occupational therapist.) The projects we’re leading are not, therefore, art therapy. And yet, the healing（治疗的） benefits of creative expression are powerful. I can, at the very least, speak for myself; I leave our meetings feeling both accepted and inspired.

【推荐2】If it had not been for Fan Jinshi and her team, the world cultural heritage at Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in a remote Chinese desert might have long been destroyed by sand, weather or humans.

Born and raised in Shanghai, Fan has spent half a century fighting an uphill battle to preserve the ancient Buddhist wall painting at Dunhuang, in Northwest China’s Gansu Province. The 1 651-year-old Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes are a huge collection of Buddhist art—more than 2 000 buddha figures and 45 000 square meters of paintings spread among 735 caves. It is China’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Archaeologist Fan was sent to Dunhuang after graduation from Peking University in 1963. While in Dunhuang, a remote village in the desert then, Fan lived in an abandoned temple. At first, she did not even dare to go out to the toilet at night. To protect the treasures from sand and dampness, Fan and other workers put doors on the caves, planted trees and started monitoring temperature and humidity（湿度） in the caves. They also controlled the number of visitors.

In the late 1990s, with tourism booming nationwide since national holidays were extended, the local government planned to go public with Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, but found Fan firmly in their way. “The heritage would have been destroyed if it had been listed,” she said.

Dunhuang Academy has now photographed and cataloged（编入目录） online all the sculptures and paintings. “Despite our efforts to minimize damage, we can’t completely stop them from being eroded（侵蚀）. But the digital database will last. ”

Fan was grateful when her husband joined her in Dunhuang in 1986 after 19 years of separation. Her two sons grew up in Shanghai with their aunt. “I have not been a good mother or wife. With regard to my family, I’m full of guilt,” she said. Fan, 79, retired two years ago as the director of Dunhuang Academy but continues her efforts as a national political adviser.

【推荐3】How to release your art potential? Traditionally, people may bury themselves in learning painting skills at a studio and begin from drawing lines. However, Maggie Wiebe, a 21-year-old girl from Stamps School of Art& Design at the University of Michigan, has her own method.

Wiebe and her school friend Jessie Rice are trying to do something that shows their love for art and also benefits the environment. For the past year or so, they have tended a garden at their campus farm, planting a variety of colorful flowers, as well as flax (亚麻) to make linen (亚麻布) and paper to be used in art.

Inspired by a group of old ladies in Canada who plant sustainable art materials and post their videos on social platform YouTube, Wiebe learned about how to plant, harvest and separate fibers. She planted different fruits and vegetables traditionally used to dye (给……染色) fabrics (织物) . She then put their peels (外皮) into boiled water and added hot pressurized air to make a dye. For her, it’s a demanding but enjoyable process.

Wiebe and Rice plan to eventually buy some land in Detroit to grow these sustainable art materials — a dye, fiber and pigment (颜料) garden   —— “a bigger version of what we’re already doing”, Wiebe told Minnesota News. “We’d set it up like an organization where artists can volunteer a few hours a week and then use all of the plants that we grow.”

Wiebe also likes fiber-based art, such as quilting, weaving and sewing. She has applied those techniques to her recent works, displayed as part of the annual Senior Exhibition at her school. During her sophomore (高中或大学二年级) year, Wiebe joined the Michigan Daily as an illustrator, learning to conceptualize and complete complex illustrations on tight deadlines. Wiebe’s works received a lot of help from others. “Because the art school doesn’t have departments, we have studio coordinators who take care of each studio,” she said. “I see them every day, and they’ve helped me a lot.”