Artists are typically viewed as living somewhere on the
edges of the labor/work community. After all isn’t the making of art often
considered by others (non-artists) as a hobby? “Oh he/she is “artsy”, or she is
an art “teacher”, or worst of all, he’s so “artsy-fartsy” (I HATE that one!).
Many people cannot seem to utter the statement “This person is an ARTIST”.
Instead, they qualify it with the addition of other adjectives. It’s as if by
making that simple statement, “Joe is an artist” they are stating an untruth.
To be an artist – as opposed to “Joe is a lawyer” – is somehow not legitimate.
It’s certainly not viewed as a profession that makes and sells a commodity.
Yet an artist is
part of the economy, and not just what we know as the creative economy, but
part of the real work a day world. Most artists do not sit around hoping for
inspiration to strike. They work. Like
the woman who reports to her office job every day at nine am the artist reports
to his or her studio and simply gets to work. If we waited for inspiration to
strike we might never create anything.
Which brings me to the title of this post. Artists are in the
business of manufacturing ideas, taking those ideas and turning them into
tangible objects, available for purchase, thank you very much. They take the
ephemeral and turn it into the tangible, put a price tag on it, market it, and
by doing so, fuel the economic community in which they live. And work. Just
like everybody else.
By the way, here is one of my "manufactured ideas":
This collage is titled "King Billy", the slang name for the Monarch butterfly. It is my interpretation of the monarch feeding on the milkweed pod.
