The word “artist” may conjure the image of a painter, isolated in a room with nothing but their easel, oil paints, and (with any luck) muse. A 180-degree swing away from that stereotype is DonChristian Jones ’08.

DonChristian is more of an artistic magpie — someone who collects shiny bits of inspiration and materials wherever they go. Then, with community as their muse, distills them into a Bright Idea that’s fresh, exciting, and meaningful.

“It’s true,” they said. “Referencing a wide variety of genres, media, and collaboration is a huge part of my practice — leaning into the organics of collaboration and the communities of people I’m around.”

The first community that influenced DonChristian was their hometown of Philadelphia, where they soaked up the vibrant art and music scene. Later, George School opened their mind further.

“I was lucky to get to go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art at a young age,” they said. “My parents took me. That changed the course of my interests. And the music of Philadelphia hugely informed me — the history of soul, R&B, funk and disco.”

“At George School, [former faculty member] Pam Grumbach was the first art teacher who lit a fire in me to keep painting. And Douglas Tsoi was my history teacher. He taught this course called ‘Global Interdependence.’ These teachers expanded my whole vision.”

In 2015, after graduating from Wesleyan University, DonChristian took a position as an assistant artist at Groundswell, a New York City community mural organization that links artists with schools, recreation centers, and probation centers. After they became a lead artist, DonChristian was sent on an assignment to Rikers Island NY, where they worked with incarcerated youth in mural making. The groups created five murals in five years, with each project spanning two to three months.

“The murals are all led — in design, concept and fabrication — by the community,” DonChristian said. “They are messages of the youth missing home. Missing their mothers. Missing their children. Wanting another chance. The hope of turning their lives around. The murals end up being extremely beautiful and riveting; they almost feel like portals to the outside world.”

Having been sent to George School to escape Philadelphia — which, despite its cultural riches, was buckling under street violence in the early 2000s — DonChristian connected deeply with the youth at Rikers.

The experience “changed my whole life,” they said. “It exposed me to the depths of the carceral system that I know to be an industry, having seen it and borne witness with my own eyes. I’ve been painting in pepper spray when melees occurred, holding a brush to a wall and trying to breathe.”

“It has totally informed my personhood and things that matter to me,” they continued. “It means a lot for me to maintain a practice that is a hypervocal community within marginalized communities — brown and black and queer and indigenous persons that are disenfranchised by systems.”

That practice continued at Harvey Milk High School/Hetrick-Martin Institute, where DonChristian worked concurrently. From morning to midday, the facility is a public school for queer youth; in late afternoon to mid-evening, it is a service agency for them. “I taught an art class of my own design, called ‘Contemporary Aesthetics,’ at the high school,” DonChristian said. “In the afternoons, I ran an open art studio, where anyone could just drop in and create, and a music production program, where people could record, write songs, and perform. It was really fun.”

When DonChristian left Groundswell and Harvey Milk High School/Hetrick-Martin Institute in 2020, they launched their next Big Idea. It was more ambitious, included far more community collaborators, and came to life during the height of the pandemic and socio-political unrest. Public Assistants is “a fully-functioning production house,” explained DonChristian. “We do projects with a focus on intergenerational and cross-cultural skill building, all founded in collaborative art making and in mutual aid. We can produce media across film and video. We’ve done photo shoots for Paper Magazine, Interview Magazine, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). We’re a print shop. We also have a 24/7 livestream radio server.”

Collaboration, when it genuinely clicks, is “the magic I’m always chasing,” DonChristian said. “It dictates my trajectory: each project or performance gives way to the next thing. They become light bulbs.”

Along with Public Assistants, DonChristian’s current collaborative light bulb is at the MoMA, as the inaugural Adobe Creative Resident. The year-long position, in which there’s “an emphasis on engagement with the public,” they said, means they host regular events at their MoMA shop. DonChristian will exhibit in early 2025.

They credit George School’s community as a significant influence in their life and career. “I feel so lucky to have gone there, to be nurtured by really open-minded, big-hearted educators who supported us beyond words,” DonChristian said. “I met all my friends from New York, and we would go to the city on the weekends. That’s when I knew I had to end up here one day.”

DonChristian has fit a great deal of artwork into their young life, and it’s all a labor of love. They don’t stop; they don’t keep office hours.

“What fuels me every day to keep doing this is to see members of my community flourishing, nourished, fed, with jobs, housed,” they said. “Harvey Milk and Rikers opened my eyes to the plights and social ills of the world that I myself have not experienced, and introduced me to all of these effervescent creators, activists, and educators that show up every day for one another and keep one another safe. They are what drive me.”

Why does art matter, in an overall global sense and in 2024? “Because it stands to change lives,” DonChristian said. “It stands to change people’s minds to new ways of thinking. I think expanding imagination is often the impact of art. That is very important to me — to instill in others that they can dream beyond what they’ve seen or felt or been told. And that, in fact, our dreams are often more accessible than we may think.”

About Public Assistants

“In 2020, I got the keys to a vacant, 6,000 square-foot commercial lot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn that housed a laundromat, methadone clinic, and pawn shop. But it had been vacant and blighted for almost four years. I had some friends who knew my work and were property managers and who gave me the keys,” said DonChristian. “This was at the height of the pandemic and socio-political unrest. I was painting banners and sets for protests and hadn’t had a studio of my own since undergrad. So we cleaned up the space, I put a tip jar up on my Instagram and said, ‘Help us get this place cleaned up.’ I woke up to $4,000 in my Venmo and knew we had something special on our hands.” “Within weeks, we had covered the walls in murals, and I was employing local youth to help me. My friends were showing up daily. We renovated all the space and erected raised beds and had a community garden. We had a community fridge and were handing out hundreds of pounds of fresh food weekly. We started fixing bikes. We gave out over 80 bikes, prioritizing women of color in need, three days a week. Anyone could show up and get their bike repaired for free or sign up on a waitlist to receive a refurbished bike. People started sending me bikes and bike parts from California and Hawaii, donating computers, sewing machines, every art supply I could imagine, rolling scaffold, camera equipment. We’re in our fourth year and our third space."