what is art

If your intention is to ‘make art’, then maybe you’ll get a couple of good paintings. You may even get a show or two.

But I think of it this way: I don’t make art. I make things . Framing it like that keeps what I’m doing from becoming precious. And that’s a good thing, because to be precious is to be timid—and that’s bad. Creativity requires

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“Art is what we call...the thing an artist does.

It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human.

Art is not in the ...eye of the... See more

But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the... See more

Poetry is an essential part of society—but only as itself and not as a vehicle for something else.