What is an artist? Of course, if you ask anyone (artists included, I would hope) an artist is anyone who creates. Be it a painting, a recipe, a knitting pattern, a photograph, or maybe even graffiti on a wall. But, if you are one of those things, a photographer, a painter...whatever, it's easy to think of what YOU do as ART and what they do as...I dunno...something else.
I try to tell my students all of the time that if you create something...whatever it is, it's yours (and often copyright laws would back me up) so, copying a photo out of magazine, for example, is a no no. That is another ARTIST's work.
Maybe it's the snob appeal factor of whatever thing you do. If you are a rock star, is a person who sings in the church choir a 'musician'?
Of course, when you call attention to it, anyone would say 'of course that's true' and wax philosophical about it, but it's what we say in our everyday vernacular that shows a bit of how we think.
I dont think any less...or really any thing about the lady who said it, it just got me thinking about how what WE do is the real thing and what others do is something else.
How many painters get ruffled when a juried 2-D contest allows photography. THAT's DIFFERENT!! is it? Especially now, when so much of photography involves way more than pointing the camera and knowing a little about the mechanics of the camera. It's composing, often editing, color correcting, light balancing. How different is it?
When someone says "Im an artist" we usually think painter. Right? Or...maybe...that's just me because, I'M a painter...therefore what I do...must be the real thing.
Rock on all you artists!
