Comment: Art for Everyone

Ahh, the tyranny of the blank page. Screen.

When I’m driving along in traffic, I get great blog ideas. When I’m in the middle of refereeing two feisty kids and making dinner, I get ideas. But when I sit down to write? Not so much.

I usually get my ideas for my daily post early in the day. That way, in the evening, when my chores are done and the house is quiet, I just have to kind of plug into whatever I was thinking about earlier and write.

At least that’s my creative process. Sounds fancy, right? What’s your creative process? How do you make your art? There are many pompous and alienating questions that get asked about art. And there are way too many assumptions about artists. They must be crazy, or selfish, or mercurial, or some other socially accepted form of mental illness.

But I think everyone’s an artist.

We’re not talking about being paid to do it. Just like there are professional athletes, so too are there professional artists. But just because you don’t get paid doesn’t mean what you’re making isn’t art.

I’m taking another awesome writing class with Ariel Gore, online. And every single person in the class is really talented. Every one of them could/should be paid to write. But only a handful are. They are all, WE are all, artists. We just have days jobs.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make art.

Augusto Boal is a brilliant theatre educator/social activist/earth shaker who brought art to the people in the form of his Theatre of the Oppressed. He’s a freakin’ genius. Look him up sometime.

Art is all around you. And in you. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t be creative. Everyone is creative. Turn off the TV, mute your phone and shut your laptop, and go do something creative.

(But not while "Glee" is on; that’s a show about expressing yourself, whoever you are. I suggest you watch it tonight, then go be creative.)