I met Donna Lynn Caskey at the FolkWorks party in March of 2025 – a reminiscence of grand shindigs that used to happen in the Shapiros’ Los Angeles home back in the day. It was a family reunion of sorts; even Donna Lynn thought so: “I thought it was cool. I had a good time… I think it helped that me and a few people found a good room to Songcircle in.” Songcircling as a verb – this is one of many creative perspectives Donna Lynn has added to my lexicon.

When I reviewed Tiny Victories, Donna Lynn Caskey’s latest album, I found that she, too, is a visual artist. The cover image of her CD is actually a mixed-media self-portrait created with bits of tissue paper and paint. DLC is a multimedia artist.

Folks, that’s why I’m here. So I went into this planning to ask Donna Lynn about the comparison and contrast of creating visual art vs. music, but she got me with this phrase: Art as Service.

me: So you were an art major, and that brings me around to the other branch of the conversation. What I’m trying to do is answer this: A lot of people advised me to just pick one thing and specialize in it? I can’t.

dlc: So here’s a little bit of my path, just for what it’s worth, and this is not a bragging thing, this is something that just kind of came naturally to me. Visual art came pretty naturally to me. And in school, I won a lot of awards for visual art, and I won scholarships for visual art to go to college. But then when I was actually looking at colleges, I was looking at potentially going to art schools, but I’m the type of person I like to learn about a lot of things. Creativity and connection and heart. Those are big values in my life, but I like learning about all kinds of things. To me, I see the connections, I see the through-lines, also service. That’s huge.

And to me, I can also see arts as service. It probably saved my life, making things and sharing that with people, or saying, “Hey, you can make stuff, too.” It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be on the wall of a gallery.

me: I like that. Art as service. That’s big.

dlc: Art can be of service. Like anything of great power, it can be destructive, too. Even folk music, like the ballad of Sir Hugh/ “Fatal Flower Garden” being blood libel in song form; minstrelsy: “Oh! Susanna” ( I wasn’t aware of the full, original lyrics of that one until I was an adult, though it was an elementary school music class staple.)

As humans, it seems inherent to create: paintings on cave walls, petroglyphs, song and dance as an intrinsic part of life, spirituality, community across cultures and centuries. It seems good for us as humans to create at whatever level, for any audience even if only for ourselves or a handful of friends. By making music, singing, drawing, baking, dancing, painting, woodwork, whatever, we lift our own spirits and that has a ripple effect out into the world, flavors our interactions with others. Creating as part of our own total health and well-being, which can make us more of a joy to be around. That’s a service!

For me, creating also is very connected to spirituality and intuition. No coincidence that “Creator” a word for the divine and that inspiration, spirit, respiration all related words. Art as a form of communication and connection between others, with life itself. Art bringing people together, a shared experience, can foster community, can rally folks in righteous protest or around a noble cause.

A service when voices join together in song, when someone is moved to tears or moved to dance. A service when a song, a film, a poem, a book, a photograph, a painting, a recipe, etc. etc. helps another feel less alone in their humanity, helps them feel seen and understood, inspires them, encourages them – imbues them with heart and courage, provokes thought, evokes a memory, creates a new memory. Art can be of service because it can help us better see and understand ourselves and others, art can foster empathy, compassion, self-compassion.

Art can entertain, distract, relieve, amuse, comfort, disturb – can be cathartic – can be mood-altering and set a mood, a time and place for the full range of experience and emotion. A service because each medium, modality, creator can express what cannot be expressed via other means. Sometimes art is the only safe outlet of expression. Creating and experiencing art can be life-saving.

It doesn’t have to be on a stage. It’s a human creative, your version of putting something on the cave wall.

me: Thank you. Because that was the other thing I heard growing up: “Okay, but what’s it good for? What can you use it for?” And so I got this weird twist, which actually has helped me, where everything has to be functional, but it can be functional and weird. But service is a function.

dlc: Or it’s so meditative to make things. So it’s like, okay, it helps me be a calmer, more centered, healthy person going out into my life. Great. What’s good for my mental health is good for anybody I come into contact with. There’s that, but also that thread of service. So here I am. I chose to go to a liberal arts college rather than art school. Again, I like to learn about a lot of things. And then, okay, yes, I won art awards, but was I particularly ambitious?

There was this trajectory like, oh, you go to New York City and you try to get in a gallery. I don’t know that I want to do stuff. I like to make things, and it’s nice if it touches people’s hearts in some way, bonus.

In terms of some ambition of some gallery, big city dream, that was not me. So I did liberal arts college, majored in art. So roll around senior year, a lot of my friends are doing internships. There were options like do an internship at a gallery downtown or do an internship at a museum. And I’m like, well, “when in doubt, help people” was my thing. I ended up doing a sociology internship at a drug and alcohol rehab home. I’ve worked for more than twenty years in social services, mostly as a social worker, now helping manage a social work program.

And that is how I have, in some way, funded my art and music habits, but then also have a job in a way that’s meaningful to me and of service. And there’s some common ground there, but that wasn’t necessarily a plotted thing. Just following the next little breadcrumb, stepping stone.

me: Yes. That all makes sense to me, and I’m still doing it.

dlc: “Welcome to life!”

dlc: Music was always part of my life. It was in my environment. I did take some piano lessons when I was a kid, but like I said that kind of ruined it for me for a minute because I wasn’t instantly good at reading the dots on the page; therefore, I must be bad at it. Or okay, I’m seven years old, and the 5-year-old who has the lesson before me is more advanced in the book. Oh! I should have started as a fetus.
As an adult looking back, I could reason and see that wasn’t true. But as a kid, I came to these conclusions: Oh, I must be bad at it. Oh, I started too late. Oh, I love music, but I’m bad at it. Also, I love to sing, but then at a certain point, kids would tease me for singing, so then I got quiet.

And that’s a human thing. Part of it’s that focusing on negativity helped us survive to a point, but that at another point, it backfires. Right? Having to get through the whole obstacle course of my own conditioning… It was very scary for me as an adult to start singing in public after I got quiet about it and just would do it if nobody was around or in a choir with 40 other people. Or it’s like, I’ve got asthma. But then to be brave through the fear and do it, or the inclusivity and accessibility of folk music. I am a folk singer.

Read the full interview here: Donna Lynn Caskey – Daughter of the Tidewater. Find her music at donnalynncaskey.com and heck, sign up for her newsletter. Promise she won’t spam you.

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debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer-review at Consilience Poetry Journal, or designing books for Igneus Press. Follow @DebsValidation on X and Instagram. Read her self-distractions at FolkWorks.org and JerryJazzMusician.com.