Labeling Oneself as an Artist and Why I Have Avoided It
Filed Under: creativity, personal
I’ve strongly resisted the label of artist for a long time, because I don’t feel worthy of it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to avoid the negative connotations that are entwined with the label in my backwards, redneck brain.
Who is an artist? (the ingrained notions)
Here’s what I grew up thinking of artists–not actively thinking or deliberately deciding to believe, but just absorbing in Kansas/Midwestern culture.
Artists are people who do not have real jobs. They are as likely to spend their time drinking absinthe, doing drugs, and sleeping around as they are to do anything honest and deserving of compensation. Artists do not contribute to the growth and welfare of society in meaningful ways. They are probably not very smart, because if they were smart, they would have gone into a profession like engineering or medicine where they could actually do some good and make real money to support their families. Artists, above all else, are irresponsible, childish, and poor. POOR!
Conversely, artists are talented (even if that talent isn’t valued very highly). They can draw anything they can imagine effortlessly. Their imaginations are superior to almost anyone elses’s. They speak a secret language of color and form, and really, if you want to rearrange your living room and get some new curtains, an artist would not be a bad person to ask. They’ll probably help for beer money.
Why I am not an Artist (the rationalizations)
I’m creative, sure. I do a bit of writing, but writing isn’t art, because art is visual, and writing is language. And yes, I know how to operate a camera, but artwork should convey emotions, tell a story, and my photography doesn’t convey any such thing. Anyone can pick up a camera and point it at something. Anyone can take enough shots, throwing out the bad, to make themselves look like a moderately decent photographer.
I’m a web designer, but design is not art. Design is communication, and it has strict rules (rules that I struggle every day to learn and understand better). And anyway, I primarily excel at writing code and solving technical problems, less so than making things beautiful and artistic.
Despite my ingrained beliefs about artists as professionals, I grew up secretly wishing I could be some kind of science artist, but I wouldn’t ever really because I wanted to contribute and make money. And finally, for some reason, I cannot ever be an artist because I cannot draw anything that I picture in my head.
Why I am an Artist (the realization)
First of all, most of the bullshit I grew up believing about artists is just that–bullshit. Artists are as intelligent as anyone else, if not more so,as responsible, and they are no more likely to drink heavily and do drugs than anyone else. They contribute to society in less quantifiable ways than say, an engineer, but they act in a way as society’s conscience, as it’s outlet. As a means of self-reflection. Artists play a role, and while I don’t quite understand that role, I know they have one and it’s deeply important. Being an artist is a real job, and has all the baggage that jobs have. It’s also really, really hard to make a living at.
Being any good does not determine whether one is an artist or not. And art encompasses many more skills than just drawing. My photography may be something anyone can do, but every once and a while I make something nobody else but me could make. I’m actively trying to sell prints of my work actively, so I guess that right there makes me an artist in the same way that actively pursuing publication made me a writer.
Design may or may not be art, but I’m a working creative individual. Sometimes, what I create is art. Sometimes, it’s crap. Well, more often than not. But I share more in common with working illustrators and painters now than I do with my friends who spend their days slicing DNA in laboratories.
So, yeah. I am an artist. Whatever that means–I’m still learning. It’s not all that I am, but I’m done not calling myself that just because I can’t draw and I grew up believing some kind of dumb things about who writers are. My life is centered around creative acts of one form or another, so. There it is.
Have any of you ever resisted labeling yourself like that, for similar mixtures of reasons? I’m curious to know if this is difficult just for me, or if it is for others.
PS: I keep trying to fix that drawing thing. I’ve been stuck in the first couple of chapters of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” for a couple of years. Maybe this year will be the one that I finally get past the weird tracing stuff and start learning how to stop myself from drawing on the left side of the brain.
Say, is that a Tumbleweed?
Filed Under: creativity, personal
It’s rare that I let my blog go 3 weeks without updating, but all of my bloggy updatey energies have been going into the 365 project. I decided early on that I needed to spend most of January on acquiring projects. This is the cycle that I’m settling into–I spend time hustling for my freelance, and once I have a good group of projects lined up, then my extra time gets put into projects like blogging and writing.
So what’s on the horizon? A newly reinvigorated Roundbottom project, with new avenues for storytelling being explored. I’m reading a lot about browser-based social games, to give you a hint. Also, a redesign of this site–I have a ton of new design ideas that I want to explore and experiment with, and my own site is the best one to try that on I think.
So, again, sorry for the radio silence. I’ll try to find some time a few times a week to update things around here so you don’t think I’m dead. Unless you’re my student loan or credit card companies. I would prefer it if you think I’m dead.
Announcing JT365
Filed Under: Photography, creativity, personal
Today is my 32nd birthday.
I can’t say that I’m happy about it. But I’m coming to terms with it.
At this point in my life, birthdays for me are a reminder of my mortality. They ceased being about gifts when I was in my teens. For a while in my college years, I thought my birthday was bad luck due to a string of nasty events around my birthday, so I went out of my way to hide it from friends well into my late 20s. I’m past that nonsense, but I still grow melancholy.
I wanted to do so much more with my life than I have. It feels as if I have squandered the last ten years, even though I know this is not so. I have some wonderful things to show for my time. Nothing of serious consequence in the greater world, but… I am content with this.
It’s time that instead of doing things to impress other people and draw attention to myself out of some misguided sense that it would be a way of achieving a kind of immortality, I have instead determined that I will attempt to dedicate my remaining time towards living a life that I can look back on without regret. As my old boss used to say, each day is a gift, and it is up to us how we use them. I have long squandered them on things that I will not remember when my time comes to pass.
So today, in an attempt to live each day more fully, to connect more with the passage of time and develop more of a sense of being here in the now, I am launching my 365 day photography project. I am taking and selecting one photograph each day for the next year. There’s nothing original about it. Many people have done these before, but I have not. I At times, I will experiment with new techniques. Sometimes, I will probably not be able to get out of bed, and so I will be forced to find some interesting way of capturing the ceiling of my bedroom.
If you all, the audience, serves a purpose in this project, it is to keep me honest. I find that when you do something like this out in the open, you feel more dedicated to the task. I let myself down often enough, but it’s a motivator to avoid letting others down. Ultimately, however, this is a project I do for myself. You’re welcome to take pleasure from the project, and I hope you do. But I’m doing this for so many more reasons than usual.
The 365 project can be found here. You can follow it on twitter here.
So that’s my primary goal right now, on the road to turning 33. We’ll see how it goes.
Exit Funk, Stage Left
Filed Under: creativity, personal
You might have noticed that I was in a bit of a funk last week. Thank you to everyone who made lovely comments on my last post. I was feeling a little ashamed about my whining there, so I haven’t thanked or replied to anyone individually. I appreciate you all being there for me when I get like this. Thank you for putting up with it.
I’m seeing things more clearly this week, and I feel some energy returning. Part of the problem I suspect was that I had a really nasty cold, combined with coming down from all the excitement of being back home to see folks.
I’m focusing all my energy right now on becoming the best web designer I can. I think the time for exploring other potential careers is not when you’re scraping by as a freelancer. I’ve been slow to commit to life as a freelancer, worried about any number of things associated with it, but I’m slowly conquering those fears and starting to treat my business like, well, a business, instead of just a guy working out of his office all day.
I have plans to rebuild this site from the ground up, as well as build a photo store to sell prints of my landscape photography. Stay tuned for more about all that in the future.
Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will hopefully start to have cool things to show and share again soon.
