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.

So yeah.  Gas.  I had not anticipated that.

After having nothing but a banana for breakfast because we ran out of milk, and after losing my temper over missing my new lenses arriving via UPS, I gave in.   I just finished some McDonalds.  Barely should qualify as meat, honestly, but there it is.

I admit it, I am weak.  I am surprised  I made it as long as I did.  I’ll attempt it again later in the summer perhaps.  While camping, maybe.

Why are you doing this?  Aren’t you practically a carnivore?

Yes.  I love meat. I famously love meat.  How many other people do you know that keep a running tally of the number of species they have eaten? (In fairness, I keep a list of what has bitten me too).  And I find ethical ideas about not eating meat mostly suspect (all food is alive, unless we find a way to consume raw carbon).   I’m not doing this because I care deeply about cows or chickens.  This is  about putting myself in an uncomfortable situation and seeing how I do.  Challenging myself to make do with a different kind of food than I would usually take.

And for my health. If I could adjust my diet to have less meat, I’m likely to live longer.  This is really kind of what I am aiming at, beyond the nebulous goals of personal growth.

Why should Catholics have all the fun of giving stuff up for a period of time?  I want to play too.

Cheese?  You’re eating cheese?  I bet you’re eating eggs too, you MONSTER.

That’s right.  The only thing I love more than meat is cheese.   I will never give it up.  Abandon all hope, ye who think you can convert me to veganism.  In fact, there’s a 95% certainty I’ll go right back to meat again next Sunday.

No offense. I respect you non-meat-eating folks.  Anyone who can decide, deliberately and willfully, “I will never eat bacon again in my entire life” after having tasted it even once, is a tougher mofo than I am.

Can I send you some vegetarian/vegan recipes to help you out?

Sure!  Drop me an email or use the contact form.  If I try it and like it, I’ll write it up on the blog.   Here are some caveats though;  I won’t eat lettuce or onions (I do eat baby spinach though).   I very much like fruit more than vegetables, but when I do eat vegetables, I mostly prefer them cooked.

Ha!  There’s no way you’re going to make it through the week.  Can we start placing bets on when you give up and go to McDonalds?

Sure, use the comments session and place your bets.  It’s entirely possible that I will fail. I have no idea if I have the willpower to make this work or not.    Again, it’s an experiment to see how I do. I’m not sure that a lapse will really be a failure.  Just an indication that I don’t do “extremes” well.

Do you have plans to tinker weirdly with other aspects of your life?

Yep.  I have a lot of ideas of one week life-shifting projects that I want to attempt in the name of SCIENCE!  It should all make lovely blog fodder as well. So that’s a bonus.

Tobias Buckell suggested I post this on my blog, so here goes.  I’m looking to buy a Sigma 50-500mm lens for my camera.  I’ve in fact been saving and scraping to get this lens for 2 years now.  Frankly, I need more reach to continue to grow in the direction I want as a photographer.

My problem is, all the usual retailers, Amazon, B&H Photo, Adorama, and so on, have the lens listed as “backordered.”  I found one place, Unique Photo, that had it listed, and I placed my order despite not knowing anything about them.  What do you know, they don’t have it, they cancel my order and send me an email telling me that the lens has been discontinued.  Funny, the Sigma website doesn’t mention that.  That’s the first and last time I’ll order via them.  They were the ONLY ones listing it on froogle.

Anyone know where I can get one of these lenses?  Slightly used even would be fine.  I am not paying $400 more to buy the one on eBay listed from Hong Kong–that pushes it out of my range.

This is ridiculous that I’m in tears over this.  It’s just a stupid lens.  But it makes me feel like I should never actually try to save for anything, because if I do, by the time I can afford it, I won’t be able to find it anywhere.  It’s the first god damned time in my life I showed some financial restraint over something I really, really wanted.  And right now, it’s as if the lens never even existed.  Guess I learned my lesson.

I was not set up this year to pay estimated taxes because I had not intended when I started out to be freelancing for the entire year.  I spent half the year looking for a job before finally giving up on that and settling into being a full time freelance designer.  I’ve done alright for myself in those last 6 months.  But I’m looking at my savings and knowing that a considerable chunk of it is owed in taxes.  How much exactly is what I would like to know.  I don’t even begin to understand how the tax system truly works.

That’s all a long way of getting around to saying, I file early every year.  As soon as I have the paperwork.  I almost never fail to have my taxes done by the second week of February.  This year, I’m not sure what to do, because of a bunch of 1099 forms from my clients are slow to arrive.  Several have not even been sent yet, despite the fact that the government requires that 1099s be mailed no later than January 31st.  Now, I have very detailed records of my income thanks to using fantastic invoicing software.   I  don’t need the 1099s to know what I made.  But I think the government expects me to send them in.

Any tax experts out there know what the requirements are regarding 1099s that are so damned slow in arriving?  If I report the income myself, does it matter if I don’t send a 1099 that didn’t come in time?

Ugh.  It’s enough to give me an ulcer.  You know, it’s not like freelancers don’t have enough to worry about.  The complete lack of income security is plenty!

I guess when I gave up writing, I *really* gave up writing.  I hadn’t  intended to stop blogging, but here we are.  I need a fresh start in blogging anyway.  My interests have changed a bit, or at least the focus has.

So.  Another filler post just to say that I am still here, and that I still think about you all.  I miss your attention.

Remember that I’m posting a photo a day over here though, so if you want to keep up on at least one of my projects, there you go.

At this point, it’s clear I shouldn’t have set up a different blog to run the 365 project.  Lesson learned.

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.

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.