Am I an Artist?
Am I an artist? I ask myself this question almost every day.
My entire life, I have loved creating. Being creative has driven me forward every single day, and I love seeing the ideas in my head turn into reality. In elementary school, I became fascinated by sock monkeys (a little strange, but I promise it leads somewhere). I loved looking at sock monkeys in stores. But instead of buying them, I wanted to make my own. Thus, my obsession with sewing began.
Before I got my first sewing machine, I became enthralled in the world of needles and threads. To fulfill my dream of having my customized sock monkey collection, I scoured my house for old socks. I would then take these socks and hand-sew them into perhaps the most terrifying creatures on this planet. Many didn’t have arms, and others ripped at the seams after only a day of coming to life. Nonetheless, it was these sock monkeys that allowed me to discover one of my favorite activities: sewing.
Not long after that phase, I got my first sewing machine, and let me just say, I was awful at sewing. I didn’t know how to properly thread the machine. I couldn’t work with any type of fabric besides your basic cotton, and don’t even get me started on zippers and buttons. Eventually, I found my way into creating actual pieces of clothing, and today, I am still learning.
Even though sewing has stuck with me for almost ten years now, I never sat back and considered it to be a form of art. I was a sewer, but never an artist. This mentality began to solidify itself into every creative endeavor I pursued.
A couple of years ago, I discovered my intense love for writing. At first, I fell in love with writing essays on any topic I could find. More specifically, I loved to connect two ideas that seemed to have no relation. For example, after finishing my European History class, I wrote an essay comparing the Robespierre (radical) phase of the French Revolution to the American Red Scares in the 1920s and the 1950s. Although I still love history, this love for writing quickly transitioned into creative writing during the pandemic’s initial lockdown.
As many of us experienced, time became this abstract concept at the forefront of our minds. What would we do with all of this time? I was lucky enough to have the privilege of occupying it with new hobbies. So, I began my journey to become a creative writer. Two years later, I completed and re-wrote a novel. And now, in my seemingly endless quest to find a literary agent, I feel less and less like an artist every day.
Whenever I tell people I wrote a book, they look at me with eyes filled with wonder. They tell me that it’s amazing, and I smile and say thank you. But what I really want to say is that it is all not that impressive if the book never actually gets published. Soon after finishing my story, I realized that the world of publishing is not easy. Many people, including myself, equate being an artist to having some immeasurable level of success.
Being an artist is one of the most fulfilling and yet stressful titles one can have. I still don’t know if I even consider myself one. When I think of an artist, I envision all of the world’s favorites: Renoir, Monet, Picasso, etc. The one thing that all of these people have in common is that they create visual images. I don’t paint, nor do I sculpt or design or draw or even glass-blow. So can I consider myself an artist?
Recently, I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Each floor represents a period of time, and as you go up a level, the time turns back. I walked from display to display, questioning the very concept of what it means to be an artist. The first floor of the museum was filled with contemporary art: sculptures, videos, pictures, and even a bed.
Robert Gober, Untitled 1986, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Photo by MoMA.
At first glance, this bed seemed like nothing out of the ordinary. It even looked comfortable, like I could roll down the thin covers and take a nap while all of the other museum visitors went about their day completely ignoring me. When I read the description, the piece simultaneously made so much sense and no sense at all. The feeling was surreal.
Gober created Untitled using materials purchased at a local lumberyard and a neighborhood store. Far from commonplace, though, this bed is surreal: a personal space of dreaming and desire that is strangely generic, recalling a dollhouse copy or a vague childhood memory (MoMA gallery label, 2021).
Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night 1889, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Photo by Payton Breck.
After seeing Untitled (bed), viewing the famous Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh felt completely different. Here I was, looking at perhaps one of the most famous paintings ever, and I couldn’t get my mind off of why MoMA would display a simple iteration of a childhood bed. The disconnect between that piece and Starry Night was significant, not in the idea of talent, but in the purpose of creation. Starry Night was painted to reflect Van Gogh’s scenery from his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in southern France, and Untitled was created to invoke an unsettling, familiar feeling. To me, both of the pieces make me feel unsettled.
Now, back to the initial question that constantly looms above my head like a dark storm cloud: am I an artist? The more I view art in person, and the more I come to terms with the idea of art itself as a means to evoke and express emotion, the more I believe that we shouldn’t put so much pressure on what it actually means to be an artist.
Van Gogh is an artist, Gober is an artist, I am an artist, and you are an artist. The dictionary definition of ‘artist’ is a person who creates art using conscious skill and creative imagination (Merriam-Webster). But my conclusion is that the term ‘artist’ is best left undefined.