WHY do we ART?

...and how we value arting (verb) vs art (noun)

Jul 01, 2023

Too early on a Monday morning my phone buzzed.

It was during what I’ve been trying to preserve as Writing Time so, naturally, I sent it to voicemail. But when in rapid succession came a text ding!, and a Facebook message — all from the same lifelong friend — I started to worry if everything ok. His health? His kids? Sometimes you have to interrupt the flow.

I opened the text and quickly learned everything was fine. Turns out he’d seen a Facebook memory of a sketch I’d made seven years prior as part of a 100-Days-of-10 project (in which you commit ten minutes a day for 100 days to a creative project of your choice), and his urgent message was:

“I love your sketch! Let me buy it from you! Please!”

NOW, AS SOMEONE WHO MAKES A LIVING AS AN ARTIST and struggles some months to pay the rent, it may seem strange that after initial aw, that’s so sweet!, my next thought was, no way — that piece isn’t for sale.

On its heals, another voice in my head slapped back,

…what the fck kind of artist even am I?*

Isn’t an artist supposed to sell their work??

For the record, the sketch that my friend texted about is not some great masterpiece. It’s tiny. It’s full of flaws, line-weight inconsistencies and things I’d do differently if I did it again. It was an exercise. No. 35 in a series. In the itty-bitty sketchbook in which it lives, the daily progress I was making is obvious — you can’t help get better if you practice something every day.

The date etched at the bottom is: June 13th, 2016. The last year of Obama’s presidency. The year the Cubs would win the World Series. We were abstractly worried about Tr*mp but genuinely believed a woman would be our next president.

The Brexit vote would happen 10 days later.

But on that day — the why behind my chosen subject — officials were identifying 50 slaughtered bodies after an armed man vomited hate-bullets into the crowd of 300 precious humans at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

I ached to make sense of nonsense. To ground myself in hope while feeling hopeless. I opted to spend that night’s sketch staring into the eyes of John Lennon, wondering what it meant, really, to…

…IMAGINE.

I poured all the kinesthetic energy I could muster — heart-to-mind-to-hand-to-pencil-to-paper — into every detail. Every drop of the pencil meant something — each etch to signify an eyebrow, the definition of an iris, shadow or sparkle in his eye.

It was as though if I sketched hard enough, well enough, something of John Lennon’s spirit — a glimpse of his imagined place with no religion or war or hatred — might fall forward through time and space and into my world.

This world.

How in that world could I put a price on what that sketch meant to me?

Was there a monetary value equivalent to what I processed sketching through tears? Could any amount of “money” represent that meaning and if so, what would that amount be? $100? $1,000?

ONE MILLION DOLLARS??

for scale — my sketchbook for this project was really tiny!

WHY do we make art in the first place?

For me — and I suspect for most artists — the answer lies somewhere on an ever shifting spectrum between process and product. Some art is made to sell, some is produced on commission for a client. But, as this question reminded me, there are some pieces we make for ourselves. And some works that money can’t buy.

The goal of my 100-Days-of-10 project was simple: to reawaken my sketching hand after a decade away. I started out (rusty as hell) in what at one time (architecture school) was my comfort zone — quick pencil and ink vignettes. As my hand warmed back up to the page it only took a few nights for something to shift.

On the twelfth day, I pushed myself to try a portrait of my son…

the first few days of my 100 Days of Sketching exercise

I failed hard at his portrait (he doesn’t look like that!) and quickly remembered why I’d rarely attempted to sketch portraits. They’re really hard!

But I couldn’t stop thinking I wanted — needed — to try more. That’s what this experiment in daily creativity was all about, right?

So a few nights later I tried again. I sought out photos of subjects in a variety of different poses, with interesting light on their faces and provocative expressions. My hand started with a light, timid touch, but grew more confident with daily practice.

a few of my later 100 Days of Sketching exercises, experimenting with portrait sketches (pencil on recycled sketch paper, by J.Koskinen)

I look at the sketches now and I see that process, the learning curve.

I recall how scary it was — every night — to let those first marks land on paper. To convince myself they needn’t be precious. Every night I hit a point when was sure I’d screwed up irreparably. And then, most nights, I’d realize I’d surrendered to creative flow — that elusive state in which we lose track of time, feel at peace and derive profound personal satisfaction akin to joy. And from there we tend to make pretty cool stuff.

Researchers have discovered that flow — be it artistic, athletic, intellectual — is found at the edge of our natural abilities. You won’t discover it if you don’t push hard enough, and you’ll loose it to frustration if you go too far.

Anna Brones

has a great podcast episode, How Do We Find Flow if you’re curious about the science.

I suspect when we look at a (human-made) work of art, we sense — on some subtle level — the flow an artist fell into in its creation. We long for a tangential brush with that elation — the dialogue between an artist and their subject — that it might inspire us in our own journey.

For the whole of human history (until now) a work of art had an inextricable relationship with an artist.

A piece of art (music, painting, sculpture, writing, etc.) was a direct descendant of its creator(s). Imbued with the signature of their heart — unique questions, perspective, struggles, learned skills and raw talent.

AI art dramatically alters that relationship. It is the amalgamation of unrelated processes mashed together as data to produce something that no longer holds a question or the answer discovered by an artist. It’s missing lineage, origin, meaning and essential humanity.

And it’s the depth and humanity of art that helps us access our own depth and humanity. As artists and audience. It’s why we keep coming back to certain pieces over and over.

It’s a strange but simple fact that, right now, my friend could ask DALL-E or midjourney or any AI art generator to whip up a sketch of John Lennon. It surely would be technically superior to mine. But would it have depth? Meaning? History? Value?

Would anyone have learned or improved their skills in that exercise?

Actually the answer to that last question is yes: the machine would.

And how strange that we are choosing to teach machines to get better, while we relinquish the exquisite joy — the gift of pushing ourselves to learn, to improve, to engage our own curiosity, develop our skills and deepen our ability to think creatively.

Well, not all of us. Because the thing is…

Artists gonna art. Always.

We do it for the process. The discovery. The curiosity. The questions that take us into the artistic process and the answers we can find only there. For what we learn about ourselves and how it makes us feel.

Since this new (creepy) flattened version of art has flooded the news and my social media streams, I’ve been holding out hope that the proliferation of fast-art (computer generated) might actually increase the value we place in slow-art (human-born).

TO ART — the verb — is to ask questions and engage in curiosity and wonder. To explore and through that exercise eventually impart a transcendent message, passed through a human intellect, heart and hand — and even time — into a tangible work.

IN ART — the noun — there are answers. Messages wrenched from the hearts of artists across said time and space. Art is sustenance to nourish us when we long to metabolize heartbreak, beauty, repression, wonder, love, or any of the endless mysteries of human existence.

It’s one thing to assign value to art, the noun. It’s much trickier to price the verb.

Perhaps I’ll look into a limited print run while I continue to ruminate on this question…

I’m curious to hear your thoughts:

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be an artist, do you art?
Do you collect art? If so, what moves you to invest in a work of art?
Do you think about why certain art (music, theater, literature, architecture, etc.) moves you — is it because of technical aspects, or some undefinable emotion it evokes?

I’ll be attending the Cherry Creek Arts Festival this weekend — a celebration of human artists — some of whom I’ve known for years and I always enjoy hearing about their process.

I hope you find time to art, to be creative, to ask curious questions and/or find answers in something arty this weekend.